jahason

At a preview tour in Spain I told my wife not to ask any open ended questions in order to keep it short. When asked if I would like to return to Spain I said I like to go to different places every year. I was told that's no problem Marriott has properties all over the world and I can swap my nights for hotel nights. And where am I planning to go next? I replied I've seen quite a lot of the world and next on my bucket list are Cuba, Iran and Syria. At which point she went quiet. Finally I asked the cost of maintenance charges and cost of swapping nights and any other charges. When I did the maths in front of her I told her it would be cheaper for me to just book nights at Marriott hotels directly. Plus I don't have to fork out initial cost for the timeshare. We then agreed to discontinue.

Xero

I gotta say that is awesome. I will remember this is if I ever find myself in a timeshare presentation; name some heavily sanctioned country.

I do have a question on the math. Were you factoring the cost of the timeshare, maintenance fees, and the cost to swap to a different hotel? And this added up to higher than the cost of just booking the hotel as a guest?

Thank you.

KRSW

Be careful -- There's a timeshare / vacation scam going on and the scammers will claim to be Marriott but aren't. https://news.marriott.com/news/2020/...nt-phone-calls

I believe it's RCI or someone related to RCI who is initiating these calls and we've received a ton of them at my office over the years. Same robocall woman's voice in every call, but Marriott, Hilton, even Costco was used by the robocall & subsequent operator. (If I'm filling out TPS reports, I'll happily take a spam call and see how long I can keep them on the phone. I hold the office record at 48 minutes) They stopped during the lockdowns but have restarted in the past month.

jahason

Yes exactly. Not initial cost of timeshare. Just cost to swap nights and maintenance cost. It came to about £100 a night. So then I said for about £100 I can just go om my Marriott app and simply book a hotel. OK maybe not in London or NYC but for this amount I can get very decent Marriott hotels in a lot of Asia, Eastern Europe and many other regions.

reggiekush

Am I the only one here who used the presentation to book a vacation? The rep I dealt with informed me that you can use your points at non-MB hotels. So I was going to a region sparse of MB hotels and we spent the entire time looking at the hotels I wanted to go to lol. Surprised me for sure but made the time fly by.

Johnny Rocket

Are there any locations in NYC that offer the presentations?

Claraj

I think the Manhattan Pulse location does.

jahason

Not at all. I had a great vacation without having any intention to purchase the timeshare. We asked for early morning presentation slot so that we had rest of the day for sightseeing.
Then I sent friends and family to enjoy the same vacation. Even my taxi driver.