Starwood Vacation Ownership

myatlantisfamilyfun.com rents for you. no risks this way

yes you can trade using staroptions in the starwood vacation network with a resale. you need to upgrade with starwood to allow a resale to let u change starpoints which are for the hotels not the 1-3 bedroom units. they are not a great trade nyway. the value is in the actual timeshare not the use of their hotels. Generally, you get 3-4 nights in a one room in exchange for your week in a two-tree bedroom

Be aware that there is a letter circulating from Starwood that some of their resorts are low on cash due to foreclosures and owners not paying their maintenance fees and they are requesting that maintenance fees be paid in October 2009 instead of January 2010 .... I would imagine that those fees will skyrocket.

This is probably happening to many timeshare resorts in this economy.

Thanks for this post. If the maintenance fees go up too much, I am going to sell our timeshare on E-Bay.

I own three starwood weeks and have not received that letter.

The letters are coming around and have come out for about 5 resorts so far. They seem to be mainland resorts so far. Be careful with resale!!! You can only use staroptions at the MANDATORY resorts after resale. At Vistana Villages it is only CERTAIN SECTIONS of that resort that qualify.

The vistana resort was not always Starwood. It began arounf 30 or so years ago. Those old resorts where owned and not sold through starwood. So yes watch what you buy with the starwood name. it may be different for the few resorts that where not developed within the last 10 years/ The clue would e the price. You can get some older resorts on ebay for very little$.

I got the letter from my home property, the Westin Mission Hills in Palm Springs. The maintenance invoices will be coming to us in October. The letter speaks of a lot of deliquent owners and rising costs, and this is a stop gap to them implying some sort of hike or assessment. Sigh.....

no letter yet at harborside at atlantis. i guess the fees are high enough. Is Mission Hills one of the recent developments?

At harborside you can still rent for at least double maint fees so I am not too worried but it does suck to do this to people now. This will cause more forclosures.

The Westin Mission Hills Resorts is one of their original 12 internally exchangeable properties along with Atlantis. It's in Palm Springs, adjacent to the hotel. I'm guessing it's about 5-6 years old now. Since each property has it's own homeowners association and budgets, it's very likely this will be a property to property proposition.

I think that timeshares should have some regulation with regard to maintenece fees. In order to sell to the public that they have some idea in writing what the fees will be down the road. I am sure they can predict the profits of the future. They should quote a maint fee range for the future, and than be forced to stick to it. So they got what they desire because now people cannot afford the higher fees. I have bought and sold a few timeshares for personal reasons and notice a big mistake is they only thing of the cost of the purchase. People contacting me focus on the price of the timeshare in determining whether they can afford it but have to realize this is only a part of the ownership costs. I know this becuase they say things like" I cannot afford 11K

I completely agree that maintenance fees and taxes are very much underemphasized in the sales pitch. As a matter of research not too long ago, I contacted SVO a couple of times and with different folks high up in their organization, to ask if they would provide me a list of the maintenance charges for each of their resort properties. Each time I was denied, and told I could only get the fees for my home property. While I already know maintenance fees vary from property to property, I thought it would be an interesting excercise to possibly creating some benchmarks that I could have in my backpocket at the next association meeting. Not sure why it would be a secret, or withheld from a property owner.

All the MF are available on TUG in the stickies at the top of the Starwood board. You don't have to be a member to view any of the public forums. You can also calculate the Staroptiond per $ in MF and see whish resorts are more cost effective especially in the long run. Lets just say that as much as I love Hawaii I will never own there because the MF are twice what I pay, and St john and Harborside are even worse! If I were an owner at any of those resorts I would NEVER trade because why would I when I am paying 2.5-3x the MF???

Let me just say that TUG membership is WAY cheap and so worth it!!! The sightings board alone is worth the price, the other stuff is gravy but would be worth it on it's own as well. JMHO

We are owners at Starwood Vistana - we got a letter saying they were cutting out some of the initlal supplies (coffee, some toiletries, etc), not supplying cloth napkins and tablecloths to the units, and cutting some staff hours due to delinquent MFees. The letter did not say M.F. would be due early. IMHO, they could have cut out those things before and saved me some MF over the years!

You are correct, I own Harborside so that I can go there. It is not an easy trade out of the other properties. If I dont go I rent and pay for somewhere outside the network. If you want to trade around, definitely buy a lower cost unit!

I was just at Harborside to make note and the only thing I noticed is the "extra toilet paper" and other items had to be requested and not just left in the unit. When you ask you get it though.

We are owners at Diamond Resorts, for the last two years traded 7,000 Diamond Points into Interval for 2 dbroom lockoff at Westin Mission hills in Sept 2008 and Oct 2009. We went on their presentation. They are selling new units at Desert Willows 2 bdroom EYO Gold $18,500 or 2 bdroom everyyear $27,500. We told them no at this point but signed up for a hotel points program to return in the next 18 months stay at the hotel take another presentation and receive 50,000 starpoints good for hotel just for looking. Payment about $1,500 that is good toward new unit. Seems like Mission Hills is pretty available for trade on Interval during Oct. Also looking at resale finding Mission units yearly $5,000 to about $8,000 with maint fees around $1,500. Liked the idea of being able to trade out to other units. Is it very difficult to do that, also what are the real benefits of the hotels.

I am late to this discussion but to answer your question about hotels, the answer is it depends. Where do you want to go and how much room do you need?

If Starwood has hotels there it can be a great deal. For example we are traveling to Ireland for New Year's. Something I could never get with timeshare exchange. They have some of the most expensive hotels costs in the world (#4 highest I think). We have 5 nights that cost of 40,000 points, the same amount of points we get on our Desert Oasis unit. My annual maintenance fee is $908 (I think). To rent the hotel room is $3600. We have also done really well in New York City, Portland, OR, San Diego, Boston and Montreal.

We own 4 timeshares ( 1 EOY), 3 of which are not in the SVO network. Since 1997 we have only stayed at our home resorts 1 time. Two we have never even seen. However we have enjoyed our timeshares and traveled to places we had never even thought about. It all comes back to where you want to go and what you needs are. IMHO Starpoints are just another way to do what you want to do if versatility is what you want.

mer1 wrote:

Starpoints are really not the best use of your timeshare from a value point of view

It depends! It is generally not worth it in lower cost hotel. Keep it for very expansive one. I've done a month of vacation in Europe in only the most expansive hotel (on average 650 Euro per day or 900$ US per day). Westin Venice, Florence, Milan, Paris, Versaille and Meridien Monaco. If you are Gold, they upgrade you if available. We were lucky to have a suite in 80% of the cases. You have to figure out the cost based on your fee. Sometimes the best deal is half point half cash.