I’m curious what you think the value of II will be in the future. A few questions along this line:
1. Reading the forums here I’ve seen mention of sales weasels saying Marriott or other systems will be feeding a smaller amount of inventory to the system in the future. Any truth there?
2. What percentage of the inventory in II comes from developer deposits v. owner deposits?
3. It would seem that the willingness of owners to deposit depends on the expectation they have of making a good trade. If the owners believe that destinations they want won’t be available to achieve by trading then they won’t deposit their own weeks, and a key source of inventory will dry up. I’d expect a pretty fast downward spiral in utilization and membership from there. Does that seem right?
4. For those who have been trading in II for years, have you noticed a change (positive or negative) in your ability to get good trades over time? Is it better or worse today than in the past? Do you expect that trend (whatever it is) to continue?
#1 DON’T LISTEN TO THE SALES WEASELS! They’re using fear to sell you something. We made our first purchase in 1998 and they’ve been using that same old worn our line ever since.
#2 No clue then, no clue now what percentage is developer deposits vs owner deposits. My guess is developers have learned they can rent through various online outlets for better returns than deposit and try to get those exchangers 8nto the sales room.
#3 Developers have done a very good job of building “exclusive” internal exchange programs. Hilton and DVC have had that ball rolling for years. Marriott, Bluegreen, Wyndham, Sunterra/DRI, Welk, Hyatt/Westin/Vistana have done excellent jobs of building internal exchange/reservation systems, and, thereby, controlling their inventory. For owners in those systems, the “good” trades may be within the systems, especially since most new owners have been sold on the idea of internal rather than external “trades”
#4 I have to go back to #3 on this one. We own Marriott, Hilton, Spinnaker and Breckenridge Grand Vacations. We bag a with Hilton in 2002. We’ve exchanged that ownership exactly ONCE with RCI. I never plan on exchanging it again. We bought for specific use in that system and will keep within that system for the foreseeable future. Once MVC went to their points system, we’ve done the same. Since that time, we have not exchanged outside the Marriott family. The BGV and Spinnaker were purchased to use, not exchange. When we’re done using them, we’ll dispose of them.
We use to get great exchanges through II. Our first purchase was at Polo Towers. We’d lock off our unit and use the studio II t for instant exchanges to trade up in size. We still have an II account and I actually have a studio week deposited. Those upgrades are now significantly more expensive, but they’re still there. Maybe not as plentiful and the inventory has shifted, but I can still find acceptable trades, we just don’t need them. The only reason we even have the deposit is we couldn’t get the dates we wanted at our home MVC resort for our full unit, so we locked it off and I deposited the studio side, thinking maybe I might be able to use it for something. Prior to that special circumstance, our last exchange using our personal account was 2015. We’ll allow that account to expire by non-renewal when it’s due. So for us, II has gone from an integral part of timeshare ownership to a non-factor. Partially because of the well built internal exchange programs of Hilton and Marriott. Partly because II has become to expensive with to many extra fees to accomplish what we use to be able to do at what was once a great value.
IMHO, things have shifted, but they haven’t dried up. Things a have shifted since day one, will continue to shift and the sales weasels will use anything they can to scare you into buying something new.
As for us our personal use has shifted significantly. We use to make 3 or 4 exchanges per year through interval. Our last exchange through II was 2018 through our corporate Marriott account (Marriott to Marriott exchange) and 2020 through our personal account, and that exchange was due to a job change, forcing us to deposit our owner week or lose it. We deposited and exchanged back into our home resort when we could go, just to keep from losing usage.
