Westin St. John Villa

[kdorward]

We were looking at a 3BR villa for resale. Is there a ROFR with Westin. I asked the owner and they said no. I am pretty familair with Marriott and HGVC timeshare. I am new to Westin. Any help with buying and using a westinn resort would be appreciated. Do they have an internal exchange?

 

[DeniseM]

Yes the do have an internal exchange program, and they have ROFR, but they seldom use it. For lots of info. on Starwood and WSJ, come hang out on the TUG Hotel Based TS Board.

Also - click on ADVICE in the red bar, and scroll down to the Starwood Article.

 

[Westin5Star]

Only some resorts in Starwood have a FROR. I know that Kannapali has it and was told that Kierland doesn't. Marriott sometimes uses this but I have heard that Westin never does.

 

[pointsjunkie]

5*

do you have that much time off or do you rent,ot trade? my goal is to become 5* but it will have to happen slowly. did you buy them all from starwood? or some resales and did you requalify them. did you use the exploere program to get extra starpoints? so many questions.... have you stayed at the hotels and what kind of accomodations did they give you? did you use starpooints at standard rate and then got upgraded? so many more questions..... please tell me all you can. i think we want to do this for our retirement.6-8 weeks in someplace warm would be great. have 3 weeks so far. thanks in advance for all the info

 

[pointsjunkie]

fror

what does FROR stand for?

 

[m61376]

what does FROR stand for?

I think they mean ROFR: right of first refusal- the resort has the right to buy the property back at the agreed upon contract price

 

[Westin5Star]

FROR= First right of refusal AKA ROFR=Right of first refusal
Sorry for the confusion! The industry that I used to work in used the term FROR. I'm not an attorney; just got used to the terminolgy that was used.n I have only been reading on TUG for about a month and I will keep working to learn the lingo.

We bought Kannapali OF Deluxe on resale market (148,100 points)
We then requalified it with a Harborside 3BR PL direct (196,900 points)
We bought a Kierland 2BR PL on resale market (148,100 points)
We then requalified it with a Lagunamar 2BR PL direct (95,700 points)

I retired about 2 years ago so we have plenty of time to travel. That is why we have a house in Tahoe and SoCal that we travel between. My wife and I have a 1 & 3 year old so the villas (even the studios) are much better than a hotel or cruise ship room. We bought the weeks and locations that we did in order to use them. We use the resorts that we have bought but will consider trading them for other Starwood timeshares (St. John?) sometime in the future. I don't believe that trading for hotel points is a very good value from what I have looked at. I obviously have not stayed at the Lagunamar property as it is not open until next year but the other properties are awesome. I have been to Cancun several times and I am very familiar with the location Laguanamar and I am confident that we will love it.

5 Star Perks- The ones that I feel are a benefit to us.
The early checkin and late checkout are nice.
Autoupgrades are awesome and almost always happen (if possible).
In the future, we will likely use the function of reserving and then trying to trade.

I hope this helps.

 

[saluki]

Retired with a 1 & 3 year old?

Nicely done.

 

[johnmfaeth]

When I sold my WSJ studio last fall I was informed by Starwood that they did not have a ROFR, nor was the ROFR-style wording that Marriott uses at it's ROFR resorts in the deed.

 

[DavidnRobin]

When I sold my WSJ studio last fall I was informed by Starwood that they did not have a ROFR, nor was the ROFR-style wording that Marriott uses at it's ROFR resorts in the deed.

SVO has a ROFR for some - and not others. Perhaps they do not for WSJ, but they do for WKORV and WKORV-N

 

[Westin5Star]

David or Robin are correct. Westin has ROFR for my Kaanapali but not for my Kierland. I was told this but did not read it for myself as both were resale units and I got lazy because it didn't matter after I made the purchase. I am not sure specifically about St. John because I do not own there.