Marriott Vacation Club "Destinations" - What I Like and What I've Done

Kathy - I am not helping much, wish I could blame it on my iPhone.

EOY Weeks - I think you pay "half" of maint fee every year. No double-up.

Reservations are made just like owned wks thru Marriott Owner services.

Interval - When I go on Interval website I have two accounts and can flip back and forth between them. I did have to pay a small fee to enroll the new wk with interval - about $60 one time. Check with Interval, you may still have your old account as well as the new associated with Dest.

A privately purchased week is handled just like you did things before Destinations.

Anyone else have a great vacation idea to share????

Dennis

We are at the Custom House now. I am sure being here for the 4th would be great. The location is great, easy walk or subway to everything. Friendly and helpful staff. Great views from our 19th floor room. Glad we made the decision to take this vacation.

Phillip, I suspect you got the harbor view side on the 19th floor- it is incredible. I see postings about getting into Hawaii, Aruba, etc. and suspect that many just don't know about Custom House and some of the other great properties. I've only found one Marriott property that I didn't like, Grand Chateau in Las Vegas, and most people even disagree with me on that.

Owner Services - I was pretty discouraged this morning after failing to get my reservations (3 concurrent Newport Wks in July 2013 - no way) for a family reunion when I called at 6:00 a.m. Fortunately for me, a helpful Owner Services person suggested how to get this done by booking another week before, etc.

One must work pretty hard and plan well ahead to get desired reservations and relying on creative Owner Services personnel has always helped me. Many thanks to Owner Services for another miracle.

Dennis

I am very happy to see this forum. We just came home from the Grand Vista in Orlando last night. We decided to purchase points for the vacation club. My sister in laws both have 2 weeks each in the Legacy program as do some friends. I have read A LOT about the issues that many Legacy people are having...although I haven't heard any directly from my friends and family.

I am wondering if we made the right decision. My main concern is the availabilty of properities due to Legacy members not converting their weeks to Trust points.

PLEASE share your experiences with me.

Thank you!! Neala

Experience - I used over 12,000 Vacation Club Points in 2011 and will use the same number this year. Over the two years, I have never had any problem getting the requested reservation "using points". We own legacy weeks (convertible to points) and Trust points and have been happy with our participations. I also use discretion in the use of points to achieve fair value in relation to using owned weeks, depositing weeks for points, renting, etc.

I suggest that anyone buying into Vacation Club, commit to learning how to maximize the value and rely heavily on Owner Services. Owner Services personnel are a great resource.

Travel Insurance thru Vacation Club (CSA) - We had to cancel a trip to Custom House in Boston this weekend for medical reasons. We do have the CSA Travel Insurance thru Marriott and have initiated a claim. The question is whether anyone has found a travel insurance policy that extends beyond coverage for Marriott timeshare properties, exchange of Marriott timeshares thru Interval, and travel to and from such properties? Has anyone found a policy that covers multiple sources of travel/accommodation rather than being tied to a particular provider such as Vacation Club? Has anyone had any claims experience with the CSA travel policy?

Dennis

CSA Travel Insurance Claims Experience - I am hearing that if you have a non-refundable airline ticket and the airline gives you a credit, you are not reimbursed for the ticket until the credit expires - could be a year. I would like to have CSA take the credit and cash me out. Of course, the final answer will come as my claim is processed. Anybody had any experience with this specific issue in a CSA claim?

Hey Dennis, I'm sorry you had to cancel your Custom House trip; I know you like it there. I hope you/your family are OK. We missed a day in Aruba (bummer) once and CSA paid us for the day's value. We were happy and the claim came pretty quickly. We also have used the insurance through Interval, but luckily haven't had to use it, so I'm not sure what they cover. Hope this helps. Hope all is getting better. Jean in NH

We just get back from Maui and have taken a tour on the Marriott club Destinations presentation for the Marriott owners. To purchase a two bed room for non-prime time mountain garden view unit for one week is $53,010 for 4750 point, for prime time week is $61,380 for 5500 point. We have purchased a two bed room unit in gold season (Jan-May) when the project was just started before any building were built in Newport Coast, CA. and a two bed room unit in Palm Desert, CA in late 1987 in prime time including holidays, . The sales agent and manager told us, our Newport Coast 2 bed room unit converting to Marriott club point is only worth 2700 point which is not even good for a one bed room unit in Maui Island view and the Palm Desert unit is only worth 2900 point for a one bed room island view. He told us to buy more point so that we can get a two bed unit for 4750 to 5500 points. If you want an ocean front unit, it is 6500-7500 point. You can do your math, our prime location in Newport has the ocean view, and the Palm Desert prime time unit has down grade to a non-prime time one bed room unit in mountain garden view and the maintenance fee is more than double for what we paid as week owner in both 2 bed room units. We have no need to split our week into 3 or 4 days. We need at lease a week for vacation since air fare is high. He is using the strategic that the week owners will convert into point and less week owners to exchange. This is not true, we exchanged our Newport Coast 2 bed room unit to a Oahu Marriott 2 bed room unit several times, our last exchange was in Jan 2011 that would need 5000 club points. Also, I must point out that our week units are deed at that location and the club point is shared with all the owners in the Trust. Newport Coast property value is very high, we are not interested to convert into Marriott Club Vacation Destinations. Frankly, it is not fair that the week owners have made Marriott very rich and Marriott is running out units to sell and has created such method to sell more units in the point system. The Club Destinations conversion fee has increased to $2495 instead $595. I hope the week owners will study the exchange in detail before rush into the high pressure in sell presentation.

Edward, we own a 2 bedroom ocean view, EOY, at the Marriott Kauai Beach Club. We looked at converting, but we could not get enough points to rent our own place at the time of year we like to go!! So for us, it's not a good deal.

From a Legacy Owner's perspective:

In a simple case under Destinations, Vacation Club (VC) offers an existing Newport Plat week owner 3,475 pts for use of his week. The owner takes the offer and Vacation Club rents the week for 4,725 Dest Pts. Lost in all this is the fact that the renter had to buy 4,725 points (a $52,000 purchase at $11 per pt) to acquire the rental. VC acquired my 3,475 pts week (an equivalent $38,000 purchase) to provide the week to the user.

This is a great deal for Marriott Vacation Club, the seller of Dest Pts, as they make a 37% trading profit by using inventory acquired from legacy owners - not a bad commission for initiating the trade. And, this is the "gift that keeps on giving" as they can do this every year. Marriott Vacation Club does not need to develop new properties so long as legacy owners will provide the inventory.

What if the free market caused another entity to offer trades at more favorable exchange rates for legacy owners? I do not think this entity is Interval due to the cozy relationship with Vacation Club. Also, it seems that the introduction of Destinations has lessened inventory available for trade thru Interval. How can we free Interval to act in the interests of Legacy owners?

Any thoughts?

I like the way you're thinking, Dennis! We are Legacy Owners with 4 weeks, and did not buy any of the Destination Points, which as we all know, would then make us eligible for all the newer properties and turn our current DP's into 'trust' points. argh. We figured we had enough maintenance fees and are hopeful (hope we're not being naive) that Marriott will allow us access to the new properties. To this date, we haven't felt the need nor desire to even convert any of our properties into DP's. This may change in time, but so far, we're just carrying on as before.

Let's try to come up with something.

: ) Jean

Has anyone purchased the CSA travel insurance product? Any feedback? Taking first trip since joining the Vacation Club and it seemed reasonable for 1 year. The policy document is a bit ambiguous as to whether my whole family will be covered or just me for certain events like medical etc. Thanks.

CSA Insurance - I have a claim in right now and I'll let you know what happens. My biggest concern is whether they will refund my airfares now or make me wait a year. It seems that if you get a credit for future airfare, they are unwilling to take the credit and refund your money as they do not recognize a loss yet. I'm not too excited about waiting a year to see if I can use the airline credits. Let's see how they handle my claim. My claim is for airfares and maintenance fees on a unit we were unable to use.

Dennis

Update 1 7/27/12 - It appears that CSA is going to take the airfare credits and reimburse me now. It seems I got some bad info from my earlier conversation with CSA personnel. I'm delighted and will update this further.

Thanks Dennis....would be interested in your resolve...will also send feedback on my experience...Regards, Ed

I just returned from a Marriott owners member up date where they tried to tell me that I needed to purchase more Destination club points to enhance my ability to get into properties at prime times of the year. When I told him that we have 5 Marriott time shares that we exchange for a week at a time he said the destination club points would be better to swap into as we could vary the days rather than use a whole week. He also said Marriott is eventually going to opt out of Interval and use their own in house trading platform in the next few years. Much less inventory will be going to Interval. As with most things at Marriott, their interests are in making money for Marriott and not in reality the interests of the deeded legacy owners. I find their destination point deal to be a real looser for the buyer. Marriott says if you have enough points you can book 13 months out. When I tried, they told me "how can we book you when we don't know yet how many legacy holders will be giving up their weeks at properties that are sold out, so you can get into their weeks?" I feel we are as legacy holders, heading into a second class citizenship position with Marriott in the future. I love their properties, but have fallen out of love with their administration.

While Marriott could replace Interval with something inhouse, this actually might work to the benefit of legacy owners as we would then make the decision whether to deposit with Interval or with Marriott's new Interval equivalent. I suspect that many of us would continue to deposit with the old Interval which would cause Marriott heartburn as they would not have control over our deposited weeks. Unless Marriott Vacation Club wants to build new properties or buy our weeks, they must rely on Legacy owners to provide inventory needed for Destinations. Think about it, has Marriott Vacation Club announced the building of any new properties in the two years since Destinations started? They are "bundling vacation packages" from other sources, but I haven't seen any building of new resorts.

Quite frankly, I think Marriott Vacation Club needs legacy owners more than we need them. They should treat us quite well.

edd132 wrote:

Has anyone purchased the CSA travel insurance product? Any feedback? Taking first trip since joining the Vacation Club and it seemed reasonable for 1 year. The policy document is a bit ambiguous as to whether my whole family will be covered or just me for certain events like medical etc. Thanks.

Hello Ed, Yes, we have used CSA and had absolutely NO problems getting a refund for time missed because of a snowstorm that caused us to miss a day of vacation. We submitted a claim; they paid us for the day's value. Period. Simple. I don't know how cancellations would work. We've had not-so-good experiences with other travel policies, but we really like what CSA has done so far. Luckily we haven't had to use the policies but a couple of times. Hope this helps. Jean

Thanks Jean! Appreciate your feedback. (not a lot of money - just didn't want to get sold something that isn't worth the money and aggravation) Regards, Ed