The absence of Marriott availability has become alarming! Well, to me anyway.

[icutravel2 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close icutravel2]

Out of my three timeshares, each with a different company, my Marriott would seem to have just not kept up with the rest, it is like a dinosaur. It is most cumbersome.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Doug, good news may be coming out soon.

This person (Dan) visited the Maui Ocean Club in April and saw the new software on his salesman's computer screen that is coming out this summer. Here is his post about it.

Unfortuntely, this refers only to points reservations. It's good news if you consider good news being Marriott is giving their points owners excactly what every other points system has but, in reality, they're only catching up to everyone else.

My issue will remain the feeling that I've been shorted on my ownership whenever I convert to points. I purchased a season but, if I convert my week to points, I can only book FOUR weeks out of the season I own in the size and view unit I purchased direct from Marriott. The chances are I'll never get to use an online points reservation system due to this oversight by Marriott. It makes our DRI and HGVC that much more valuable to us than our Marriott weeks.

Fortunately, we purchsed out two weeks to use the master suite and exchange the lock-off portions. Unfortunately we've migrated away from yearly vacations to Vegas so, that unit also adds the master suite to the exchange pool.

Time will tell if weeks exchanges through Marriott will remain strong. I hope they do. So far, I really have no complaints. I've made one weeks based exchange and one points based exchange and had no problem getting those reservatoins.

I also have a deposit with a request pending right now. We've deposited our 1 bedroom Vegas lock-out (3 bedroom unit) and requested any May week at Custom House. We made this same request a couple of years ago and it took 2 or 3 weeks to be confirmed once the 12 month mark had passed for Custom House owners to reserve/deposit units. The only difference is that I had the previouse request made by March of that year and this time around, I waited until May before deciding we wanted to head back to Boston.

If the exchange doesn't come through in a couple of months, we'll probably go back to our original plan of using one of our owner weeks with a different resort company, then sit on that one bedroom deposit with plans to use it for 2013 or maybe a summer week in Colorado for 2012.

Under normal circumstances we have things planned out pretty well in advance but, due to a couple of canceled vacations, one which resulted in a short notice deposit with Interval, we're having to juggle things a bit in order to keep from losing the value of our two bedroom Master suite at the Grand Chateau. I can't decide if I want to reserve a July week in advance for 2012 or hold that short notice deposit and hope to get into Vail, CO.

I'm thinking our best bet for a good short notice exchange would be HHI for March of 2013 but, if I hold out that long I risk losing the week all together (expires 4/2014) and, if I can't find a Marriott HHI resort, we'll be left scrambling for a last minute exchange to a mystery destination.

I've been watching last minute flexchanges with I.I. and, right now I'm NOT encouraged. There's been a good selection of studio weeks, both Marriott and non-Marriott but, anything larger is few and far between. Neither of us will accept a studio week for a 7 night vacation. I guess if worse comes to worse, we might end up skipping a vacation and maybe just take a weekend trip somewhere using our Marriott rewards points for a hotel stay. Pehaps it would be a good time to visit the UK again or take a cruise on short notice.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

I went back and looked at our history in our Interval account. I deposited the MGC week and requested the exchange into Custom House, along with two or three other resorts, on our about Feb.27th. The confirmation for our May 8th 2009 arrival came through when we were at Baronly Beach Club before we departed on May 16th.

Of course there are many factors other than the DC that can come into play when making an exchange but, I am interested to see how this request stacks up against our previous request. The only resort we've request has been

[odaddy Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close odaddy]

I am noticing it as well.... could be so many people using the 800 points given for joining DC - knocks a full week out of the system.
It sucks....

I bet this is a lot of it, I used my 800 points and knocked out a week.

[mas Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close mas]

Marriott's new DC is going to take time to learn. Right now, there's a BIG learning curve for Marriott exchanges, even for Marriott owners.

...

3. Trust points and Legacy points don't have direct online access to Marriott inventory and must call an exchange coordinator to either make a reservation or request a reservation.

...

This is my biggest gripe with Marriott's new DC program. They (Marriott) sent me a couple of survey requests and I hammered them hard with low ratings and comments about how a large supposedly elite company such as they are could even think about rolling out a new program that is as 'half-baked' as the DC. Not having a fully functional online system is totally unacceptable.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Unfortuntely, this refers only to points reservations. It's good news if you consider good news being Marriott is giving their points owners excactly what every other points system has but, in reality, they're only catching up to everyone else.

My issue will remain the feeling that I've been shorted on my ownership whenever I convert to points. I purchased a season but, if I convert my week to points, I can only book FOUR weeks out of the season I own in the size and view unit I purchased direct from Marriott. The chances are I'll never get to use an online points reservation system due to this oversight by Marriott. It makes our DRI and HGVC that much more valuable to us than our Marriott weeks.

Fortunately, we purchsed out two weeks to use the master suite and exchange the lock-off portions. Unfortunately we've migrated away from yearly vacations to Vegas so, that unit also adds the master suite to the exchange pool.

Time will tell if weeks exchanges through Marriott will remain strong. I hope they do. So far, I really have no complaints. I've made one weeks based exchange and one points based exchange and had no problem getting those reservatoins.

I also have a deposit with a request pending right now. We've deposited our 1 bedroom Vegas lock-out (3 bedroom unit) and requested any May week at Custom House. We made this same request a couple of years ago and it took 2 or 3 weeks to be confirmed once the 12 month mark had passed for Custom House owners to reserve/deposit units. The only difference is that I had the previouse request made by March of that year and this time around, I waited until May before deciding we wanted to head back to Boston.

If the exchange doesn't come through in a couple of months, we'll probably go back to our original plan of using one of our owner weeks with a different resort company, then sit on that one bedroom deposit with plans to use it for 2013 or maybe a summer week in Colorado for 2012.

Under normal circumstances we have things planned out pretty well in advance but, due to a couple of canceled vacations, one which resulted in a short notice deposit with Interval, we're having to juggle things a bit in order to keep from losing the value of our two bedroom Master suite at the Grand Chateau. I can't decide if I want to reserve a July week in advance for 2012 or hold that short notice deposit and hope to get into Vail, CO.

I'm thinking our best bet for a good short notice exchange would be HHI for March of 2013 but, if I hold out that long I risk losing the week all together (expires 4/2014) and, if I can't find a Marriott HHI resort, we'll be left scrambling for a last minute exchange to a mystery destination.

I've been watching last minute flexchanges with I.I. and, right now I'm NOT encouraged. There's been a good selection of studio weeks, both Marriott and non-Marriott but, anything larger is few and far between. Neither of us will accept a studio week for a 7 night vacation. I guess if worse comes to worse, we might end up skipping a vacation and maybe just take a weekend trip somewhere using our Marriott rewards points for a hotel stay. Pehaps it would be a good time to visit the UK again or take a cruise on short notice.

Is this only for Trust point owners or also for Legacy week owners who decide to use points one year?

None of it is very clear to me so we may rent the week since we didn't even get our lock-off unit this year while Marriott was dumping 1 and 2 BR units in II during the last two weeks.

How can people make plans if they have to fly to that or any other location? They can't unless they are there already like our friends who took advantage of Flexchange and were able to stay in our tower in a 1 and 2 BR unit two weeks on a row. They only grabbed the first week. Good for them but bad for us who own there because weeks go so late in the II inventory.

More owners will start renting out their own weeks so that will result in less inventory yet.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

This is my biggest gripe with Marriott's new DC program. They (Marriott) sent me a couple of survey requests and I hammered them hard with low ratings and comments about how a large supposedly elite company such as they are could even think about rolling out a new program that is as 'half-baked' as the DC. Not having a fully functional online system is totally unacceptable.

From Emmy's link, it looks like Marriott will soon have online access for points reservations.

Is this only for Trust point owners or also for Legacy week owners who decide to use points one year?

None of it is very clear to me so we may rent the week since we didn't even get our lock-off unit this year while Marriott was dumping 1 and 2 BR units in II during the last two weeks.

How can people make plans if they have to fly to that or any other location? They can't unless they are there already like our friends who took advantage of Flexchange and were able to stay in our tower in a 1 and 2 BR unit two weeks on a row. They only grabbed the first week. Good for them but bad for us who own there because weeks go so late in the II inventory.

More owners will start renting out their own weeks so that will result in less inventory yet.

I believe it looks like a points reservations site. My assumption would be for both legacy and trust based points.

The problem as I see it is that Marriott makes a distinction between trust and legacy points. So I wonder how they'll set it up for those who own both types of points? There's likely to be a glitch in the system for owners who have 1,500 trust points and 3,500 legacy week points when they want to make a reservation requiring 5,000 points. Will the new as-yet-to-be-announced website automatically allow the combination of points or, will those types of transactions continue to require a phone call? If they require a phone call then the new website isn't going to be as usefull to combination owners as it should be.

In the long view, I'm not sure that many owners will rent their weeks out. Most are lucky to know how to make reservations and/or exchanges let alone go through the process/hassle of renting. I myself hate dealing with unrealistic people enough that I refuse to go through the process of attempting to rent out units. The last thing I need is someone demanding a refund because they didn't get the high/low floor they wanted or they were put in building X when they wanted building Y. Or maybe something happens in their life that they need to cancel the vacation and now are demanding their money back despite the fact they're contract states pay in advance and no refunds.

Now, if enough owners so actually decide to begin renting and, if they undercut Marriott's own pricing, Marriott will see a nasty unintended consequence to their new program. While I would find this amusing I just don't see it happening.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

We just received confirmation this AM for our Custom House vacation in Boston next May. According to my history, this was actually faster than our previous request. The exchange request was almost identical utlizing deposit first with our one bedroom lock-out Grand Chateau week. It was virtually the same week (week number shifts slightly to keep same TDI) for both the deposited unit and the exchange week.

On the other hand, online inventory seems to be on the decline. I was doing searches with this deposit and not seeing what I am accustomed to seeing online. In fact, about all I was seeing was studio units with the occasional one bedroom unit.

This concerns me to a point as we have been accustomed to shopping online and occasionally changing our vacation based upon spotting something different that we believe we'll like. It will take considerably more time to know whether this is just an anomally or the new reality.

So far, we have three exchanges/reservations made after joining the DC. One was a request first, one was a reservation using bonus points and this was a deposit first request. The one thing we have not done yet is make an instant online exchange and that's been because they haven't been there. However, the resorts we've exhanged into, the timeframe for the weeks we wanted and the fact we couldn't make a points reservation online have been a factor. Even outside the DC I would have expected the need to have an ongoing request for our two weeks exchange.

The one thing that has changed and that I believe will affect online availability is MVCI giving out bonus points for the DC as an incentive to buy rather than Marriott Rewards points. This means that, rather than giving away hotel inventory as an incentive to purchase, they're giving away MVCI inventory.

While this will have an overall affect on inventory for all MVCI members, I fear that the exchange manager will hold inventory away from online instant exchange availability to sort out the varying strenght of requests to see who gets what. This will have both positive and negatvie effects.

The positive effect will be more Marriott owners getting the Marriott to Marriott exchanges they want. The negative effect will be reduced availability online for instant exchanges. It also could have an effect on the size unit one can get, limiting Marriott owners to more like for like exchanges than in the past.

That would be bad news for us as we've become adept at trading up. It won't affect us so much for the one bedroom Grand Chateau lock-off but, it this is a new reality, it will effect our decision to deposit and exchange our Ocean Pointe studio. It will effectively end out trading of that unit as we have learned we do not like staying in studio units for any length of time.

This year, we're bringing a friend with us to Ocean Pointe and I haven't had that studio to use for searches. We haven't decided if we'll keep the entire unit for next year or lock-off the studio unit. Normally, I make this decision in May but, things are different this year than in the past and we may, once again, use the entire unit next year whether we have a guest with us or not.

Just like we don't like staying in a studio unit for a week, sometimes we don't even like having neighbors we don't know in that unit. The last couple of years at Ocean Pointe, our neighbors have decided that they like the smell of ocean air and leave their door open. This creates a wind tunnel affect under the lock-out door that's unpleasant for us and, it ticks me off because I can imagine (and see if I go outside) curtains flapping in the breeze. That's my MF dollars paying for the destruction of those curtains. So, we very well may just keep the entire unit yet again this year. In fact, I think I very well may have just talked myself into it.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

Is it harder to book back to back weeks at the same resort now?

Examples: Grande Ocean, Ocean Watch and Surf Watch.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Is it harder to book back to back weeks at the same resort now?

Examples: Grande Ocean, Ocean Watch and Surf Watch.

Based on the three reservations/exchanges I've made since joining the DC, I'd say it might be easier for DC members, assuming you have the exchange power. If your outside the DC or outside the Marriott system I can't say for certain. Since the DC has an "exchange coordinator" (at least as I understand it), exchanges may be easier as a DC member.

What I'm wondering is this: Does the DC exchange manager (assuming there is one) have first shot at anything deposited by Marriott owners? Can they make exchanges for DC members prior to non-DC members getting a shot?

So far, I've been mostly happy with our exchange experience after joining the DC. I can't say it's been an improvement but, it hasn't been a step backward as I was afraid it might be.

For me the big question right now is online availability and the possibility of trading up using our studio Ocean Pointe lock-off. In the past I've been able to do online searches and snag 1 bedroom units, mostly in shoulder season. Until I decide to deposit that studio unit, I won't have my answer. Right now I'm on the fence about whatI should do for 2012. I'm leaning towards reserving and using the entire 3 bedroom unit. If we do that, it will be some time before I know how that particular unit will fare.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

Doug26364 we have not join the new DC points system; thus we are not DC members. This maybe a factor why it is the harder to book back to back weeks at the same resort.

Looks like we are going to be force to join the DC programs this year.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Doug26364 we have not join the new DC points system; thus we are not DC members. This maybe a factor why it is the harder to book back to back weeks at the same resort.

Looks like we are going to be force to join the DC programs this year.

It very well could be a factor. As I've gone on I'm starting to make some assumptions but, it's going to take more experience to realize if these are false assumptions or the new reality.

What I believe I'm seeing is Marriott's exchange coordinator hanging onto deposited inventory in order to match exchanges for Marriott DC members. What I don't know, is if the exchange coordinator only looks out for DC members or if they handle all Marriott to Marriot requests whether or not an owner is in the DC. Right now, I'm leaning towards the exchange coordinator only handling requests for DC members.

I'm also not clear to how non-DC members deposits are being handled by I.I. It appears that even though an owner is not a member of the DC, the DC's exchange coordinator may have the right to hang onto that inventory and cull out what Marriott believes it will need for future DC member exchanges.

While this is similar to Marriott's 23 day preference in the past, it's also different in that the DC exchange coordinator can exchange for "future" anticipated needs of the DC. This could be keeping the most desirable direct deposits of non-DC members from ever getting to I.I.'s exchange pool.

In the end, I believe non-Marriott owners will see less inventory with I.I., especially for online instant exchanges. I believe this is the way Mariott wants it to be in order to establish the idea of exclusivity for Marriott owners. What I'm not 100% certain about is, will this affect non-DC Marriott owners in the same fashion. I know the salesmen would have us all believe this but, I still believe practicle experience will sort fact from fiction.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

Doug26364, I just read your post on the other web site and I believe you are right on target.

I am pedro47 on the other web site.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Just an FYI. Sales promotions like this could be drying up availability for non-Marriott owners attempting to trade in via I.I.

New Bonus Vacations with Purchase.
It’s a great time to add more incredible, affordable vacations to your current ownership. Now through June 15, 2011, purchase additional Vacation Club Points, and choose one of four bonus vacation experiences*:

With your ownership, enjoy:

Cruises, safaris and guided tours of exotic locales like Tuscany, China and more3
53 Marriott Vacation CLub resorts with studios, and 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom villas2
More than 3,500 hotels and resorts in the Marriott® family of brands5
More than 2,500 affiliated resorts worldwide4

Call 800-***-**** to learn more about ownership and to build your Personalized Vacation Plan today.

Enjoy 6 days and 5 nights in your choice of premier locations, including:

>Ski or summer in South Lake Tahoe, California in a 1-bedroom villa at Marriott’s Timber Lodge.

>Soak up the Caribbean sun in Palm Beach, Aruba in an oceanfront studio at Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club.

>Golf, shop and luxuriate in Palm Desert, California in a deluxe 2-bedroom villa at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Enclaves.

>Enjoy miles of beaches and legendary golf on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina in an oceanfront 2-bedroom villa at Marriott’s Grande Ocean.

For that matter, it could make things more difficult for Marriott owners to get the exchanges/reservations they want. Trading up based on over-supply could definately be affected if they feel those units are better used as bait to buy more points.

Of course, this offer doesn't tell us what season these extra vacations can be taken. Perhaps they're unloading bronze/silver season weeks as incentives.