What do MVC owners think of Abound?

[timsi]

The other consideration is the numbers I included in the earlier post were from December 2016 when there were less than 400 million points in the Trust. Today, there may be as many as 600 million points in the Trust. So, if Maui weeks in the Trust have grown proportionally with the overall Trust, the roughly 21 million points in the two phases of Maui Ocean Club in 2016 may have grown to around 30 million today.

Marriott no longer reports the number of units in each resort in their annual 10-K report, but I went back to the 2017 when they did and the total MOC unit count was 458. So, some number of those 458 units are those making up the theoretical 30 million points I mention above. You would have to calculate the average election value of the unit mix at MOC to come up with the number of units that notional 30 million represents. That election value ranges from 2250 for Island View 1BR in the original towers to 10,225 for 3BR OF is the newer towers. So if the average were 5000, that would mean the 30 million Trust points represented 150 units. If the average is higher, then the resulting units will be lower. But if we use 150 units for arguments sake, that leaves roughly 400 units owned by weeks owners. Some of these are used by the owner, some are elected for Points and go into the Abound Exchange, some may go to II, and others are rented by owner. It's even possible some may be owned by MVW after ROFR and they haven't been conveyed to the Trust yet.

Those may be better numbers to use in the calculations you did in your earlier post.

Are the 1BR units standalone or part of lockoffs? Marriott did not report the smaller units separately. At Lagunamar they report 290 units even if they can be divided into 290 studios and 290 1BR (they are all identical). If that's the case, you may want to use a number significantly higher than 5000, especially if you include week 52.

Even if I use your denominator and use 52 weeks per year, I arrive at 115 units owned by the trust. I suspect it is more like 60 or 80 if you use a higher number. However, you do not have the complete image unless you know the units owned directly by the developer (look for "maintenance fees assessed to the seller" in the auditor's report)

 

[DanCali]

I scroll these comments and realize how much smarter people are than I. I do get good insight and feedback but most of the time feel like the Peanuts kids do when adults talk. That aside, for most part I remain pleased with MVC but am dreading the new program.

There really is no "new program". "Abound by Marriott" is just a rebranding of "Marriott Vacation Club Destinations" with a few additional affiliated resorts that were, and still are, part of Vistana. Quite similar to what Marriott hotels did with Marriott Rewards when it rebranded it as Bonvoy and included Starwood Preferred Guest and Ritz Rewards under one umbrella. If you are pleased with MVC you will likely be pleased with the "new" program too.

My personal feeling about the DC/Abound system is that the points exchange system is generally quite good, but the Trust points product they sell is pretty bad. I could go into a very long rant about this but suffice it to say that the upfront costs are too high, the maintenance fees are too high (compared to rental values), if you ever want to sell it you lose 80% of what you paid, and resale prices could be driven down further by MVC at any point just by increasing the junk fees. Even for those who are looking to buy from MVC to enroll resale weeks, they can often do much better by buying a weeks product from MVC, which they don't really advertise.

My biggest gripe about the points exchange system is lack of transparency with inventory and hidden booking restrictions. For those who look closely, you will often see high demand weeks where a shorter stay is not available (say 5 nights) but a longer stay (say 7 nights) is available. It's so unintuitive that most people who see no availability for the 5-night stay they want, won't even look for an overlapping 7-night stay. Those seem to me like cases of artificially limiting availability with unofficial restrictions and breaking the promise of "book 1+ nights".

 

[timsi]

My biggest gripe about the points exchange system is lack of transparency with inventory and hidden booking restrictions. For those who look closely, you will often see high demand weeks where a shorter stay is not available (say 5 nights) but a longer stay (say 7 nights) is available. It's so unintuitive that most people who see no availability for the 5-night stay they want, won't even look for an overlapping 7-night stay. Those seem to me like cases of artificially limiting availability with unofficial restrictions and breaking the promise of "book 1+ nights".

Maybe the 7-night stays originate from legacy week deposits, and it is possible they have to stay that way?

 

[JIMinNC]

Are the 1BR units standalone or part of lockoffs? Marriott did not report the smaller units separately. At Lagunamar they report 290 units even if they can be divided into 290 studios and 290 1BR (they are all identical). If that's the case, you may want to use a number significantly higher than 5000, especially if you include week 52.

Even if I use your denominator and use 52 weeks per year, I arrive at 115 units owned by the trust. I suspect it is more like 60 or 80 if you use a higher number. However, you do not have the complete image unless you know the units owned directly by the developer (look for "maintenance fees assessed to the seller" in the auditor's report)

Maui Ocean Club has dedicated 1BR units as well as 2BR lockoffs.

And you are right about the 115. Bad math on my part. That's what I get for rushing through the calcs right as my wife was calling me to come have a pre-dinner drink on our balcony! I'm going to go back and edit that post so as not to confuse anyone with bad math. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[SGould]

Similar to your quote from the Ko Olina documents, we can go to the pub tomorrow at 17:00, and other Tuggers can join us. This does not mean that those who are not Tuggers can’t come at the same time. We may even find guests at the pub who got there before 17:00.

Contrast this to the Vistana resorts where we talk about the exclusive right of the resort owners to book during the Home Resort Reservation Period and without competition from those who are not owners.
If the right of the owners could be assigned to the non-owners, the Lagunamar and the Vistana Home resort reservation period would be meaningless because just about ANYBODY and their mother could book; if that was the case they would not talk about exclusive rights and about article 13 at WLR that could only be changed with the vote of 90% of the members. To me, this is exactly what the rules wanted to prevent, whether you like it or not.

Thank you for confirming that the language used at the Marriott resorts was just not strong enough and that in 2010 MVC could take advantage of the lack of details; this is why they could start MVC bookings not only 12 but also 13 months before check in. This is what I suspected all along.

Are you able to reserve what you want today? Why do you keep your ownership? Based on all of the threads you have started/responded to it sounds like you own resale. You should be able to exit easily. I can’t imagine owning something I was so distrustful of.

 

[ocdb8r]

Thank you for confirming that the language used at the Marriott resorts was just not strong enough and that in 2010 MVC could take advantage of the lack of details; this is why they could start MVC bookings not only 12 but also 13 months before check in. This is what I suspected all along.

You're welcome. It accompanies my similar confirmation that the Lagunamar language is also not strong enough to restrict what you propose....but as usual you will ignore anything that doesn't advance your own agenda.

 

[timsi]

You're welcome. It accompanies my similar confirmation that the Lagunamar language is also not strong enough to restrict what you propose....but as usual you will ignore anything that doesn't advance your own agenda.

Oh yes, the explicit exclusive right of the WLR owners to book during the Home Resort Reservation Period, without competition from those who are not owners is the same in your mind with what you quoted from Ko Olina!!! If this is your thought process, it's testimony that you can't be taken seriously.

It should not come as a surprise if the Marriott team was taking a very serios look at this. Do you know what is telling me that they had vigorous internal discussions about this when they were drafting the procedures? They put in bold the last part of the "Exchange Members and VSN Members" that refers to transmitting your rights when you deposit because they wanted people to notice it. Of course, that does not make it enforceable in practice when it conflicts with other rules but that is all they could do. Virtually all other exchanges I looked at (RCI, Interval, SFX, 7Accross, Platinum Exchange etc.) have a very similar verbiage about transmitting your rights to the exchange when you deposit. Those exchanges do not put it in bold though, why did Abound have to emphasize it? Abound could not be specific about what rights they were referring to because they would be in conflict not only with our internal documents that specify who owns the VOIS, but also in conflict with public disclosures as a company.

In the end I believe they are a serious company (or they should be) and they do not want to deal with explicit rule conflicts because of the liability risk. They should thank those who pointed to the issue and not be mad at them. We are where we are but typically the most successful executives want to resolve issues when they come to their desk.

 

[timsi]

Are you able to reserve what you want today? Why do you keep your ownership? Based on all of the threads you have started/responded to it sounds like you own resale. You should be able to exit easily. I can’t imagine owning something I was so distrustful of.

Only the developer (the flipper would be more accurate in most cases) speaks about ability to book or access to as indication, in their view that they aren’t taking anything away from you. As an owner I see it from the prospective of preserving what I have. You wouldn’t be very happy if your neighbor put his truck in your driveway and claimed you still had access and you still had the ability to park your car. How ridiculous would that be?

 

[SueDonJ]

As a moderator I am also seeing all these posts that are supposedly singular to the Vistana Lagunamar resort all over both the Marriott and Vistana TUG forums, and it's time to end all the duplicate posts/threads. From this point forward please keep the topic to this one thread on the Vistana forum:

How strong is the exclusive right of the Lagunamar owners to compete for the entire inventory during the Home Resort Reservation Period?

It would take days to winnow out all of the related posts and move them to that one thread, so please just stop posting in any others and use that thread to continue the discussion if you're so inclined. In the interim I'll be deleting posts and/or locking threads on the Marriott forum if the topic continues to be raised in them, and I'm tagging @DeniseM in this post so that she can decide whether or not to do the same in the Vistana forum.

This thread is on time-out. Take the topic of Lagunamar's super-special rules to the thread where they belong, and then maybe we'll be able to reopen this one so that the people who want to talk about how the DC/Abound is actually working right now will be able to answer the question of what we think about it.