Shooting oneself in the foot hurts....
I got tired of reading that other thread. But here are a few more thoughts. If Marriott was to change the system and hurt resale buyers I would never buy another resale timeshare. In fact, I, like a lot of other Marriott resale owners, would never buy a timeshare direct from Marriott either because we feel they are way over priced. So that means I wouldn't be a timeshare owner.
So if they changed the system and there were no resale buyers at lower prices then who would be buying all the resales? I guess the resale prices on the open market would really drop and the only buyers would be those that didn't care about trading. In the end it would hurt Marriott's resale value tremendously.
In fact it would probably hurt prior buyers who purchased direct from Marriott greater than those that didn't purchase direct. Now isn't that ironic?
I can't see them doing that. Its all salesman's BS to make a sale. Don't believe it for a second.
Let’s say Marriott sells a Platinum ski week at Summit Watch for $45k – Marriott doesn’t haggle – if you want take their sales tour and want a Platinum week at SW then it will cost you $45k – period. At least direct from Marriott with the MRPs thrown in.
SW long ago sold out and you are buying a 15 year old resort that has a MF of $1,000 a year and has been remodeled many times.
Ok, you want a bargain so you see a Platinum SW on eBay with a “Buy it Now” of $10k – you want to buy it so bad you can’t sleep at night.
Question – will you click that “Buy it Now” button on eBay? The answer is, of course, NO since Marriott will gladly step in and yank the sale from you.
Now what? You contact the seller and inform him/her that Marriott has a ROFR and will take the sale from anyone who offers less than 60% of the current sales price of $45k or $27k. You up convince the seller to change the Buy it Now price to $25k and snap up the sale.
You then ask the seller to submit the transaction to the ROFR department at Marriott and sweat bullets for a week – then the good news – Marriott declined to snap it up. Woo Hoo.
This is exactly how a developer who is actively involved in the resale of their product acts and causes the resale prices to float to a higher level than if the developer ignores resales.
Marriott would have to do two stupid things to cause the resale market to implode:
1) Punish resales by excluding them from an internal exchange program
2) Stop exercising the ROFR or lower it to such a low point as to cause a crash of resales and then step in when resales are 15% of current sales
I don’t see Marriott doing either – resales account for just 7% of all timeshares sales in a year – why shoot themselves in the foot?
Again, I don’t think Marriott is nuts and isn’t about ready to join Wyndham in watching their customers die a horrible death in the resale market. Marriott is just too smart for this.
If anything Marriott will allow new resale owners to join in any new developer programs for an "upgrade fee" which could be $5k or whatever Marriott feels it wants to make on that resale that they did not participate in. Marriott knows how to make money; and killing your customer just isn't the way to do that.
Additional thought – just what proof do we have that the Platinum ski week at SW is really worth $45k? We have NO proof at all. ALL timeshare resales are based upon the prevailing developer’s price and if the developer is no longer selling the unit then resales are based upon NOTHING – zip. The next price the resale market picks is what the weakest seller is willing to unload their unit for – and that is probably $1 on eBay.
As you see a developer who sees resale timeshares as a revenue generator keeps the dream alive. I would not lose a second of sleep worrying about Marriott shooting itself in the foot.