Original Message:
Re: Marriott Vacation Club New Policy - Can’t Do Rentals? No long can change the primary guest name for Ownership Week Reservation? (by Natalie Singer):
I have Vistana Westin Kaanapali and although they are now owned by Marriott we can still change the name of the guest I believe that's why I'm charged $250 a year so I can have more ways of using my points
taejoonk3 wrote:Hi, my family has a few Marriott Vacation Timeshare deeded weeks. Since we can’t goto our home resort every year, we have been renting out the unused weeks on Redweek for the past 7 years.Up until just recently, we were able to log onto Marriott.com to change the primary guest name for our guests. However, the system no longer allows us to do that from the website so we called Marriott Vacation Club Ownership Service and asked them to manually change it for us. To our surprise, the manager told us due to the new policy change, they no longer allow owners to change the primary guest name and asked us to goto myvacationclub.com to fill out a new guest change request form. He said, the guest name can only be added to the ‘additional guest’ section and the primary guest has to remain under owner’s name who made the original booking (also the linked account number can’t be removed). Additionally, we had to agree to all the terms including a clause saying, we (as owners) can’t use our week for ‘commercial’ purpose (like renting to a 3rd party for profit) and if Marriott were to find out, they have the right to cancel the reservation!! Is this true??
1. Owners can no longer change the primary guest name and can only add the guest name to the reservation.
Redweek requires us owners to change the primary guest name to the guest name….but with this new policy, how do we do that? I want to know if anyone experienced this for Marriott ownership week reservation (not points reservations / interval exchange bookings) and how did you solve this issue?
2. Owners cannot rent out their units for commercial purpose? If Marriott finds out we are renting out to a non-family (for example on Redweek), they have the right to cancel this booking? (Is this really enforced?? Has anyone ever had their bookings cancelled since it was deemed ‘commercial use’
When we purchased our deeded Marriott timeshare, the sales person assured us many times that we as the owners have the right to rent out the unused weeks to 3rd part to recoup some of high annual maintenance fee + tax. How can Marriott Vacation Club suddenly say, we can’t do that? Owners renting out their own units on Redweek is also considered ‘commerical use’? We feel like we got scammed by Marriott Vacation Club…
If you can share with us your own experience, any insights, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Update: I posted another thread on Tugs timeshare forum and someone told me there is a similar topic that’s been posted with more details (it seems like they are cracking down on points bookings / interval exchanged weeks more so than ownership weeks, but who’s to say they won’t do the same in the near future for ownership week bookings too? https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/arriving-guest-information-merged.351715/