I attended a MVCI timeshare sales presentation today. The sales representatives told me in no uncertain terms that I can cash in MR points for travel packages where I can pretty much get the Marriott hotel I want and airline tickets (Business Class or First Class with the proper points) as well. All I had to do was to have the Marrriott MVCI Vacation Ownership Advisor arrange for the hotel and airline tickets.

The sales rep claimed that Marriott has power with the airlines because they offer airlines rock bottom room rates for crews. So the award tickets issued actually are flexible and permit stopovers.

I travel enough and long enough to know this sounded too good to be true. It's tough to cash in International Business or First Class airline tickets. Everyone on the UA forum talks about using the ANA tool to find flights with *A award availability and then calling UA CSR to try to book those flights. But the MVCI sales rep was rather emphatic that their VOA had done a lot of these travel packages for MVCI owners.

MVCI is selling the MR point values if you trade your timeshare week for MR points. The travel packages with premium class airline tickets are real sales tools. If true, it definitely would increase the value of MVCI ownership.

I own one week in MVCI and have 600K MR points, and I have never heard of this kind of flexibility with the travel package. I now have no status with Marriott, so I don't think about cashing in my points anytime soon. I can get more value with my SPg and HH points with eilte status.

Are there MVCI owners that know anything about this?