Can't figure out the II thing....

My husband and I own a 2BR/2Bth timeshare at Marriott's Willow Ridge Lodge in Branson, Mo. It's a great resort and the kids love it, but this year we are in the mood for something different. We decided we'd like to take the kids to the beach. Because of my husbands work schedule and the kids sports, we are locked in to end of June (2013) travel. I contacted Marriott and they told us to deposit our Branson week with II, which we did. They led us to believe that the trading value would be very good, and we shouldn't have a problem finding a suitable replacement resort.

Well, that didn't happen. After we deposited the week they told us everything that was beachfront (Hilton Head, California, Myrtle Beach was booked). I'm pretty unhappy with them, and I'm wondering now if we should have just kept our end of June Branson week.

Ideally we'd like to get a Newport Coast Villas (Marriott) villa.

I'm totally new to this thing, and really not sure what would be the best way to achieve our goals.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Diane Vespa

diane1304 wrote:

My husband and I own a 2BR/2Bth timeshare at Marriott's Willow Ridge Lodge in Branson, Mo. It's a great resort and the kids love it, but this year we are in the mood for something different. We decided we'd like to take the kids to the beach. Because of my husbands work schedule and the kids sports, we are locked in to end of June (2013) travel. I contacted Marriott and they told us to deposit our Branson week with II, which we did. They led us to believe that the trading value would be very good, and we shouldn't have a problem finding a suitable replacement resort.

Well, that didn't happen. After we deposited the week they told us everything that was beachfront (Hilton Head, California, Myrtle Beach was booked). I'm pretty unhappy with them, and I'm wondering now if we should have just kept our end of June Branson week.

Ideally we'd like to get a Newport Coast Villas (Marriott) villa.

I'm totally new to this thing, and really not sure what would be the best way to achieve our goals.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Diane Vespa

June is summer and with kids out of school beach front timeshares are high in demand. Perhaps you should expand your beachfront to other locations than the 4 you chose. Also, have you requested from II an 'ongoing search' for beachfront timeshares.

As far as Newport Coast goes it's one of the most popular Marriott timeshares out there ..... summer would be a very hard trade to get into that resort, especially at just 3 months out.

One thing to remember when exchanging is that the earlier you deposit your week the more likely you'll get what you want in a trade. If you deposited your week this March (just 3 months out) then you'll only get leftover summer weeks.

Also, many owners don't deposit their beachfront timeshares in summer .... they use them.

Couple of questions. Did you lock off or deposit as a 2 bedroom unit? How far in advance did you deposit? For difficult locations you should request 1 year or more in advance so you might want to add summer 2014 to your request. Did you pick your Willow Ridge week to deposit or did you let Marriott pick the week? July weeks would have the most trading power.

As Jay Jay said, Newport Coast is a difficult summer exchange. Platinum owners at that resort have difficulty reserving prime summer weeks and often either use the weeks or rent them.

If you are set on someplace this year at this late date for requesting your best options with Marriott may be Orlando, Williamsburg and Park City.

I would have guess you had better chance dealing with Marriott's program! Not sure how much pull your resort has with Marriott. We have been with II for many years and never made deposit upfront to them. We always did request first for our Lake Tahoe unit and all but one year had one of our three choices. Only one year that we pulled our July 4th week back and used it. Even then within a week of pulling it back II came back with our first choice and we turned them down. Already made our plans for dinner/fireworks on the lake.

PHIL