Original Message:
Re: Marriott Destination Club Points transfer process and required fees (by Fred R.):
Hello everyone. My post is dated April 22, 2017. Sat through the presentation and today marriott owns the Starwood, Ritz and so forth. They now are offering ALL OWNERS WHO BOUGHT THEIR WEEKS IN 2010 OR EARLIER and on the 2ndary market, for $995.00, the ability of activate the 125,000 MRPs every other year and trade or not trade our weeks for points. There are five options, the first three WE ALL have already as owners. 1. Interval trading, 2). selling on REDWEEK.COM OR vrbo or whatever sale vehicle you choose, 3. using your week, 4. MR Points for hotels and/or air, (they offered me 125,000 per week EVERY OTHER YEAR expires every 12 months and you get a new 125,000 every 24 months). and 5). I OWN 2 weeks at M Desert Springs Villas1 so we get 3,225 points per week. We therefore have 6,450 points to be used for villas, tours, cruises, resorts whatever. It is an option to either do the 1st 3 or trade it to them for points. We are in the "Select" grouping and you need 7,000 points to have "Elite" or the immediate club "choosing" rather than the "60 day thing" we have all been reading about. They also offered $300 gratuity Marriott card or 50,000 MRPs and every year, if we pay for 4 nights at a M we get a 5th night for free. The fee is $185 per year and you get automatic membership to interval. We have the platinum with Interval for $600 every 5 years...I might be low on the price but I bought it for 5 years. . The reason we did not buy into all of this is because this is like a bitcoin operation in that it is a very closed system built on a hype by the Marriott brand, which is a very powerful brand. But when I asked about staying in a non M brand, they told me I had to go to Interval. So this is a purely Marriott hotel/inn/resort play. WE all need to truly understand the power of Interval PLUS Redweek and then you can realize that you get all that Marriott is offering today PLUS the rest of the world. They tell you that the new Marriotts resorts are not going into the pool of Interval availabilities...and yet those "new" owners are pitching them, just like you and I, on Redweek or whatever. I do not work for Marriott or Interval or redweek or VRBO, but the world is getting smaller because of the internet and the various sites that sell vacation weeks. It is my sincere opinion that you can do a lot more controlling OUR DEEDED weeks then giving them away to Marriott. As for valuation of the points, unless you can get into the Elite or platinum or whatever they call people with 7,000 points, you are INDEED hampered with 60 day prior to vacation status and though they claim there is no black out weeks, (the deeded people do have 1st priority over the points people...if it were the other way around and I found out about it, I would sue them immediately) I have heard that certain high usage weeks were not available for high demand location. We can spend sooooooooo much time reviewig or trying to better what we have. Keep your weeks, do NOT go on points and use Interval and Redweek and you can see how you just expanded the value of what you currently have tremendously. .