Original Message:
Re: Ripoff - Marriott Vacation Club Destinations Program - New Point System (by Elise F.):
Legally, I don't think Marriott can force anyone to join the Destinations program. I think they are trying to get people to decide to join it by increasing the fee. They did announce right at the start that the introductory fee to enroll would go up. We thought at the time that the lower fee would be good for, say, a month or some other short time period. So we enrolled. But they kept it for a pretty long time. I read somewhere that only 25% of legacy week owners have enrolled, so we are one of those. Since we take one vacation per year, usually for a week, the primary benefit we get from it is simply that the $165 annual fee includes the II membership for the Marriott desk, the cost of trading for another Marriott property, and the cost of trading for Marriott Rewards Points (MRPs). One still pays II a fee if one trades for a non-Marriott property.
Since we did enroll, maybe someday in the future we will try what others have done/suggested by turning in our two weeks for Destination Points by Sept 30 and the following year take a 5 night (Sun-Fri) stay, use MRPs for a weekend stay en route to a second resort where we would take another 5 night stay (Sun-Fri). Sun-Fri stays use far fewer points than weekend stays, so this would be a way to go to 2 resorts that were within driving distance. Note that it doesn't have to be two resorts, they have added a few hotels in certain cities to the program. But we achieved that in Spain last year doing it a different way. I'll explain below.
One thing to be aware of is that turning in your legacy weeks for Destination Points is one bucket of points. Buying Trust Points from Marriott is a whole separate bucket of points. The two buckets, as I understand it, can't be combined and used together. Also, you can only save your points for one year and you can borrow from a future year (one year out). So your 2012 points can be added to your 2013 points and 2014 points can be borrowed to add to your 2013 points. But then you would only have one vacation in 3 years. If you don't use the past year's points in that 2-year time, you lose them.
A Marriott person told me that the maintenance fee on 5,000 legacy Points (which is what our 2 weeks are worth) is higher than the maintenance fee on our 2 Cyprus Harbour legacy weeks. So that is a specific thing to figure out--a comparison of the maintenance fees. It's one more factor to help you make a decision on what you want to do. Some people like to take several trips and figure out how to get more bang for their buck using the Points.
We can't afford all those trips every year, not in time or money. And when you have Points you have to use them or lose them, so it locks you into having to use them each year. If you can afford it, that's one thing. But we can't every year. Last year we did take roughly a 2 week vacation, which is rare for us. We stayed at an AC Hotel in Madrid for 5 nights (AC Hotels are now part of Marriott) and then we went to a Marriott resort on the coast of Spain for a week that we had traded one of our weeks for. We had a great time.
The benefit of this way is that there is no maintenance fee for those 5 days in Madrid in a hotel. We don't want to have to figure out how to use an additional resort week and pay maintenance fees (that are always rising, an average across the industry of 12% each year). We have limited funds for vacationing, so some years we just take the one week and that's it. So staying in a hotel using MRPs is the way we extend an occasional vacation to longer than a week.
I hope this gives some food for thought for you to make your own decision. No one can tell you what the "right" answer is since different people can afford different things, want different things, and can manage different scenarios. We may or may not ever trade our weeks for Destination Points for a particular year--just not sure. But we like the $165 annual fee that covers 3 of the 4 costs we incur. However, for our family, we know we will not be buying Trust Points since we feel we can vacation more economically in other ways. But others are very pleased with what the Trust Points can do for them--they seem to have more vacation dollars available than we do. Our philosophy is to live within our means, so vacationing is a pleasure and not a burden.