Did Marriott Over Value Off Season in DC?

We just completed out our exchanges for 2011 through II. We trade almost exclusively for shoulder or off season weeks.

We locked off our 2BR 2011 Grande Vista week and kept our Harbour Lake as a full 2BR. We exchanged our Harbour Lake in to Maui for last October. The studio side of our Grande Vista was exchanged for a 2BR at Barrony in April and we just exchanged the 1BR side at Grande Vista for a 2BR at Ocean Pointe in October/November.

Marriott offers 4175 points for our two gold weeks. The trades we got would have cost us 12,025 points.

This leads me to believe that Marriott thinks that their off season (and possibly in season) weeks are worth far more than they really should be worth. At least as compared to our lowly Orlando weeks. Will Marriott end up with a glut of inventory? II already ends up with lots of broken weeks, even Marriotts. If Marriott is charging far more for those off season weeks, won't they end up with that much more breakage?

dioxide45 said:

We just completed out our exchanges for 2011 through II. We trade almost exclusively for shoulder or off season weeks.

We locked off our 2BR 2011 Grande Vista week and kept our Harbour Lake as a full 2BR. We exchanged our Harbour Lake in to Maui for last October. The studio side of our Grande Vista was exchanged for a 2BR at Barrony in April and we just exchanged the 1BR side at Grande Vista for a 2BR at Ocean Pointe in October/November.

Marriott offers 4175 points for our two gold weeks. The trades we got would have cost us 12,025 points.

This leads me to believe that Marriott thinks that their off season (and possibly in season) weeks are worth far more than they really should be worth. At least as compared to our lowly Orlando weeks. Will Marriott end up with a glut of inventory? II already ends up with lots of broken weeks, even Marriotts. If Marriott is charging far more for those off season weeks, won't they end up with that much more breakage?

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Dioxide,

I've thought about this too and find the points allocations in general to be very interesting. I've posted separately that I can often access shoulder inventory (currently, hopefully in the future too) using a lesser trader like Worldmark -- therefore why would someone ever use the precious DC points to get shoulder inventory?

Even with respect to Marriott trades, a lesser trader can often get that shoulder trade (but I still can't get MOC, making that Marriott preference critical).

But with respect to your original question, I think it's easy for Marriott to get the shoulder inventory (from II), and therefore if they can get a points owner to use their precious points on that simple shoulder reservation, then there are less points out there competing for the tough and valuable reservations.

Next, let's assume that there are a fair number of shoulder weeks in the Trust -- it's in Marriott's interest in inflate those points values, because they are selling those Trust Points. Therefore -- easy to get inventory (from II or the Trust) to fill the trade if some DC point owner wants the ressie -- and better for Marriott to overstate the value to have more points to sell.

I really hope enrolled owners think carefully about their reservations, and hope they use those precious points on difficult to obtain reservations.

By the way, those are outstanding trades, and you've clearly learned how to maximize the trading opportunities.

Interesting concept, thanks for starting the thread!

Greg

I should have also pointed out that the Barony and Ocean Pointe exchanges were essentially instant exchanges through II. For Barony we did have to place a request, but it was filled overnight. I subsequently canceled that exchange as they gave me the wrong check in date and was confirmed a few days later after their system upgrades. So II likely had the inventory sitting there.

For Ocean Pointe today, II had the week that we wanted sitting online this morning but when we checked this afternoon it was gone (we wanted 10/29 checkin and only 10/30 was left). We called II and they confirmed us for 10/20. So while this was a silver season exchange, the point cost was actually very high as the last Friday of our stay costs over 1000 points in DC for just the one night. More than half of what we would get for our entire Harbour Lake unit.

GregT said:

Next, let's assume that there are a fair number of shoulder weeks in the Trust -- it's in Marriott's interest in inflate those points values, because they are selling those Trust Points. Therefore -- easy to get inventory (from II or the Trust) to fill the trade if some DC point owner wants the ressie -- and better for Marriott to overstate the value to have more points to sell.

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This is interesting. It would make sense to value those shoulder weeks rather high if that is what most of the trust is made up of. I hadn't thought of it that way.

I think that the other thing to note is that it is in Marriott's best interest to have their timeshares FULL so that they can sell everything else they are offering.

By overinflating the Trust Points they will end up with units that nobody reserved and they will either 1) end up in II anyway, or 2) end up on Marriott.com

GregT said:

Dioxide,

I've thought about this too and find the points allocations in general to be very interesting. I've posted separately that I can often access shoulder inventory (currently, hopefully in the future too) using a lesser trader like Worldmark -- therefore why would someone ever use the precious DC points to get shoulder inventory?

Even with respect to Marriott trades, a lesser trader can often get that shoulder trade (but I still can't get MOC, making that Marriott preference critical).

But with respect to your original question, I think it's easy for Marriott to get the shoulder inventory (from II), and therefore if they can get a points owner to use their precious points on that simple shoulder reservation, then there are less points out there competing for the tough and valuable reservations.

Next, let's assume that there are a fair number of shoulder weeks in the Trust -- it's in Marriott's interest in inflate those points values, because they are selling those Trust Points. Therefore -- easy to get inventory (from II or the Trust) to fill the trade if some DC point owner wants the ressie -- and better for Marriott to overstate the value to have more points to sell.

I really hope enrolled owners think carefully about their reservations, and hope they use those precious points on difficult to obtain reservations.

By the way, those are outstanding trades, and you've clearly learned how to maximize the trading opportunities.

Interesting concept, thanks for starting the thread!

Greg

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Interesting and insightful post.

Curious as to what you might think about the difference between weekend and weekday nights, which seem (at least to me) to have an overstated disparity.

windje2000 said:

Interesting and insightful post.

Curious as to what you might think about the difference between weekend and weekday nights, which seem (at least to me) to have an overstated disparity.

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Thank you!

The points disparity on weekends doesn't bother me -- I'm accustomed to Hilton and Wyndham, where weekends are also at a premium, and was glad that Marriott didn't premium price Sunday (like Hilton does).

In HGVC, a Friday/Sat/Sun is worth 2X the cost of a Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs, so I was already expecting it.

Marriott's delta conversely is all over the map and the points grid appears to be very carefully constructed. To paraphrase your point in your other post (which I really like -- about the business model), every decision by Marriott in developing this system has a reason that we may not yet fully understand.

All the best,

Greg