The more I think about this and the problems they will have with what they sold certain Vistana weeks for and what they are really worth as compared to similar Marriott resorts in the same area, the more I think they will go with a conversion only for pure trust point owners. If us weeks owners want in, we have to buy in or perhaps trade in our weeks using "equity value" and buy in to one of the trusts. Marriott doesn't really owe any of us anything. Again though, it is all speculation and guessing or perhaps I just created their new program for them
This poses several bigger problems to MVC though:
1) the current SVN trusts don't have enough inventory to make this very attractive to current DC owners (would make SVN resorts very hard to access and certain resorts like Harborside, unaccessable completely);
2) this would theoretically make DC point "add-ons" only attractive to current SVN owners in one of the flexOption programs (which is a relatively small slice of the SVN customer base) as weeks owners have nothing to add on to; and
3) most important - this doesn't relieve them of the problem of the SVN point chart. The various flexOption trusts are based on the same point chart as the rest of SVN. That means if they go with an overall fixed ratio to exchange from flexOptions to DC points, the ratio back in will have to be similar (perhaps with some skim). The result is somehow Marriott is going to have to get (nearly) the same number of DC points for WKORV as they do for Westin Mission Hills or Dessert Willow (in high season). That doesn't nearly comport with the relative DC point values of similar MVC resorts in Maui and AZ/CA desert.
...just thinking a bit more as I write, what they could do is:
1) Use a different fixed exchange rate for each of the various flexOptions programs - say for Westin Flex you get 0.04 DC points for every Westin flexOption; for Sheraton Flex you get 0.03 DC points for every flexOption and for Westin Aventuras you get (who knows....perhaps 0.04, I have no idea how MVC will value Mexico). This doesn't solve the inherent mismatch between Maui and AZ/CA desert in the Westin flex...but that is the worst of the issues and perhaps with some sort of skim MVC can manage it. I think the mismatches between resort demand in the other trusts is much smaller.
2) for SVN weeks owners, they offer an option to enroll in the DC with your week being set at a fixed DC point value (completely unrelated to the SVN StarOptions value and based closer to similar MVC resort values), basically the same as what they did with MVC weeks owners when they launched the program. Yes, weeks owners will see a mismatch between the value ascribed compared to (1) above, but I think MVC could explain it away. Likely more in demand weeks/resorts (Maui. ski weeks...etc) will end up with a value higher than the fixed rate above and less in demand weeks/resorts (Orlando, mud weeks...etc) will end up with a value lower than the fixed rate above. For non-trust resorts, they don't have a true way to compare...and most of these are likely to be in demand resorts which would get a decent DC point value offered.
I think the most marginalized in the above approach would be Platinum desert week owners (both CA and AZ) who would likely not receive nearly the same rate of DC points as Platinum Maui week owners (where in SVN they are on par). However, this may be as good as can get and I suspect it marginalizes the smallest group of SVN owners. MVC had to contend with some of the same concerns when they launched the DC program as many low value week owners were regularly getting high value trades in II. While there was a lot of smoke the first year or so, over time things have settled down and most MVC owners have come to find value in the DC program.
Taken together, this approach also helps minimize the inherent mismatch in the SVN trusts. If they get enough weeks owners on board, the trusts stay a relatively small portion of the overall DC-SVN interaction and (2) above pulls the whole system closer to being on par with relative MVC resort DC point values.
This is where they have a problem with Vistana. Places like Westin Kierland Villas had a very high sales price as compared to Marriott resorts in the area. I think WKV Plat+ sold for close to $60K. The same is true for Lagunamar. That is much higher than Marriott sold Canyon Villas for. Vistana could command those higher prices because of how they setup their StarOption chart. A WKV Plat+ week could easily book in to a Hawaii week. So they were selling Hawaii in Scottsdale. Can they really give WKV week owners 5,000-6,000 DC points for their weeks when they would perhaps only charge 4,000 for the highest season week there? Not really because it would create a huge imbalance. People would convert to DC points and use those to book back in to WKV and have plenty of points leftover. Or they would book longer stays at WKV and people would effectively be locked out of booking back in because demand would be much higher than supply.
It will be intersting to see how they allocate these points and the vallues they assign to them along with how much they charge to book weeks at some of these properties.
I think the past is in the past and actual sales prices for weeks played very little into how DC point values were set at launch....and again, at worst this marginalizes the Platinum desert weeks owners which is a relatively small group when looking at SVN as a whole. No solution is going to make everyone happy, and I suspect this is the group that will lose out. As the systems mingle I don't think it's reasonable for WKV Platinum week owners to expect things will always stay on par and that their weeks will always be as valuable as a Maui week. I suspect they will continue to have SVN exchanges as an option to try to get those Maui weeks (but even there, this will become increasingly difficult over time if Maui week owners actually use DC points in any given year - thus taking the week out of the SVN pool that year).
ONE silver lining in all of this that I hope is in MVC's mind and may provide a tiny buffer. The one clear advantage SVN desert weeks (and most SVN mainland resort weeks) has over similarly situated MVC properties is that our properties lock-off into two 1-bedrooms. This should justify a bit of a premium in DC point value over MVC resorts and narrow the mismatch a bit.