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Re: Marriott Vacation Club point system (by Brion S.):

Generally speaking the Marriott set-up is not bad when considering all other timeshare companies.

Currently I own 7 Marriott Legacy weeks 2 of my own and 5 that I just inherited from my parents. All of them are enrolled in the destination points program..

We always go to the "Owner Presentation" Mainly for the freebies but also to annoy the sales people a bit when you know more about the system than they do.

Some things to know. The Legacy owners who are enrolled actually have quite a bit of power and are generally in much better shape than those who just own points. If you are a deeded owner with high level properties and enrolled in the Destination Points program you are much better off than lower level properties.. ( 5 of the properties I have are High Level, 1 is moderate, and one is low) Generally speaking I can trade the high level properties for points and get more out of them using the destination points than I can by using them. The moderate can go either way and the low is a pretty much use it or trade it into interval.

Maintenance fees: Marriott can raise Maintenance fees whenever and by pretty much whatever, but, generally speaking these raises are given to owners via balance sheets in their yearly reports. So you can find out where your money is going and you can complain if you want (whether it does and good, don't know).

The Trusts maintenance fees are based on the combination of the costs to run the trust and the associated maintenance fees for all the weeks that are designated to the trust which includes Remaining unsold weeks for all Marriott Vacation Clubs when Marriott converted to Destination Points, New resorts that have been introduced to the Program (All go into the trust), Weeks that Marriott buys back. The Trust does have a set number of available points to sell or have been sold but that does increase with every new resort as new properties are put into the trust. Marriott cannot sell more inventory than it has and honestly probably never will sett all their inventory. As well Marriott must pay the maintenance fees (same as owners do) for every week that they own at a particular resort.

The Overall Maintenance fees per resort varies considerably. I have two resorts in my portfolio where the annual Deeded Maintenance fees are actually higher than the trust but the other 5 are at or lower. and this is the same way the Trust works averaging all the fees to come up with a per point basis.

The Unsold Marriott owned inventory of the Trust can be used in any way they see fit (just as we can use or rent or let it go) which is why we now see that Marriott actually rents rooms to the Vacation clubs on their normal Hotel website.

Now the question, would I but Trust Points when I have so many "Exchange Points", No and Yes, at the moment my answer would be NO as I have found that there is no current difference in using the points at any resort.. BUT that being said there IS a difference between the legacy "Exchange Points" and the "Trust Points". Currently MOST of Marriotts properties contain a combination of Enrolled Exchange points and Trust points as the resorts were built and sold prior to the Trust being created, however, Every resort the has come into the program AFTER this time is considered a completely TRUST point resort.. What this means is that if Marriott decides at some point in the future that CAN designate that the "Exchange points" can only be used at resorts where there are available "exchange points" availability. this would effectively exclude Trust resorts from Legacy owners and this would be the time where it is possible that I would buy some additional points. As of right now though Marriott places enough of their ownership into the general points pool where availability is there for all resorts.

Are the points a good buy well that depends on you.. You can play hardball and get the points lower in price (they will negotiate a bit). The maintenance fees were around $.55 per point for the trust not too long ago. Should you buy the Destination Points third party (mmm not so sure), Marriott has actually put in place some serious stuff to keep resale points from devaluing their sold points. The first is the enrollment They charge some decent costs to enroll points back into the system which I think is mentioned above at $500.00 for every 250 points with a minimum enrollment. This means that even if you purchase third party just to get them enrolled it will cost you $2.00 per point. If you do not enroll you can use your points but you are limited to making last minute reservations which of course means you are left with what is available.

When Marriott converted to the trust they also set in place some things that actually help owners. #1 is they internalized trading. This in turn actually limits how many weeks leave the Marriott system which means that Interval International actually receives less Marriott exchanges so they are actually harder to get for non owners.

It is fun to mess with the sales people as they always say a point is a point is a point.. but as I explained above not all Destination points are created equal and Marriott knows which are which. The also like to sell small packages of points and say you can Bank left/right/and center to get your vacation.. While this is true it is not exactly user friendly to do as you pay three years of maintenance fees to take one vacation every three years.. Trading points into Interval for other travel is NOT advantageous as Interval ranks your deposit by point level deposited which is not as good as resort level ranking (this is where having a DEEDED week is much better, especially at a GOOD resort). Cruises and other third party travel options really kind of suck in exchange rates, yea you can do it but it will probably cost you more than you can buy it for.

Generally speaking the Marriott system is good and is pretty transparent if you do your research. #1 rule DONT take the word of the Sales person.. They say Marriott is no pressure and for the most part they are less pressure but there are a few sales people that are VERY HIGH PRESSURE.. We actually called out the manager on one that was nice as can be until we said Nope not buying and then turned into a RUDE ***. We were like so that is how you treat owners huh.. or even someone who is there for the first time.. generally though Many of the sales people we have , Because I know more about the system, generally pick my brain about how it actually works. BTW I got most of my information in pieces from vacation advisors and supervisors along with all those documents that no one ever reads that are sent to owners.

Anyway what it all comes down to is that I do think the Marriott Point system is pretty transparent and not that bad, Second I would say Hiltons is OK (have a little experience with that through other friends) also have experience with a couple of the lower ones which are NOT good. Like I said as an Enrolled Legacy I will not buy more points until I need them to go to a "Trust Only" resort or I find them extremely cheap where the re-enrollment fees don't up the cost back to what Marriott is selling them for. It's all about knowing what you are getting and how to use it.. The problem with the Trust Destination Point system is that all points are now valued even like $ bills so unlike with the deeded properties there is no advantage to owning certain "properties". You are deeded a portion of the land trust but it is all located in Florida.