You can buy at MVCI, 2 week platinum in european resort and you receive 600.000 MR.

Paolo

SDSearch, the OP is accumulating nights by having meetings at his local Courtyard. On another thread, he mentioned that he'll have 20 meetings this year. That gives him 200 nights, 125 of which will roll over. So over the course of 2 years, he will have accumulated 325 lifetime nights by hosting 20 meetings.
Where he will fall painfully short is on lifetime point accumulation. I suggested that he may want to consider buying a Marriott timeshare on the resale market in order to accumulate additional MR points. I don't know the mechanics of it but Paolo's post states that a purchase could give him 600,000 MR points. My question in this matter is whether or not it applies to buying a Marriott timeshare off of ebay. If so, I think that's the least expensive way for the OP to earn a ton of MR points.

How much would that approximately cost?

OK, I just called Marriott to confirm my lifetime point totals. It was 50,000 less points than I thought. So I started to look at buying a resale Marriott timeshare. I have concluded that, due to high maintenance fees (I can't find any under $1000/yr), it's not worth pursuing that path for points.

I may end up buying points to get to the 2M point level. I'll look at it closer in 2013.

On more thing: You need 2m lifetime poitns for lifetime Platinum, but only 1.5m lifetime points for lifetime Gold.

Most of the benefits of Platinum (breakfast, upgrades, internet, etc) are already also benefits of Gold. For most properties, these are the only three adidtional Platinum benefits, per the Marriott elite T&Cs site:
If you have relatively few lifetime points so far, just getting to lifetime Gold you'll end up with so many points, will it really be imporatnt to you if you earn a few hundred more bonus points per paid stay after that for being Plat compared to not earning those few hundred more bonus points per paid stay as Gold? How often do you need to "force" a reservation with 48-hour guarantee availability? (I think only a small fraction of people who have that benefit, in any program, use it.) Finally, if you're not in the US and Canada, you don't even get that special reservation number! But did you really need it???

Thus, I suggest you re-evaluate whether it's worth the cost of getting 0.5m (500,000) extra lifetime points to get lifetime Platinum, if for just 1.5m lifetime points you can get lifetime Gold.

(Also, keep in mind that, as the post above points out, if you're going to do 20 meetings this year, you're going to Platinum anyway for at least three years; this year and next year due to 200 nights earned this year, the year after that due to 125 nights rolling over to next year'searnings. So even if this is your last year of meetings at Courtyards, you won't have to worry about lifetime status until 2015! And for every additional year you do 10+ meetings, that extends it an additional year before you have to worry about lifetime status!)

I believe the requirement for lifetime Gold is 1.6m points. In any case, I think you're making a very valid point on the merits of lifetime Gold vs Platinum.

Your points are very valid. I believe Gold is good enough. And yet, it is still difficult to get 1.5 m points :)

In any case, IIRC, if you buy a resale timeshare, you may not get the ability to convert your week to points. In addition, the 600K bonus mentioned is for those who purchase directly from MVCI, not through resale.

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

How many lifetime points, lifetime nights, and years do you currently have?

I find it hard to believe that you only just recently switch to earning nights via meetings, yet are far along the way for your lifetime nights count, yet have zero (0) lifetime points. I don't see how this is possible unless you always earned miles on every single stay (before the stay credits from meetings started to accumulate recently).

The whole lifetime program is structured on the assumption that you earn many (if not most) of your nights with stays (and only a fraction of them in other ways, including meetings), and in turn that you don't choose to earn miles on every single stay.

Getting points without earning a good chunk of them on (paid) "natural" stays is difficult to make cost-effective (at least for those outside the US who cannot earn points through the credit card).

[QUOTE=iflyjetz;18412914]I don't know if this will work, but I think that you can buy a Marriott timeshare and convert your interest in the property to Marriott Rewards points. There are resale timeshares available on ebay for low prices. I'll let someone else more familiar with this to comment; I may be giving you bad information.

MVCI (Marriott) Timeshares ownerships are convertible to MR points under limited circumstances. The owner either had to purchase directly from Marriott (which is no longer possible as Marriott has gotten out of the business of selling tangible fractional/weeks ownerships and now sells only intangible 'points') or you could purchase a week on the resale market (FSBO/broker offered). However, these resale weeks are also only eligible for conversion to MR points under 2 conditions. First, you must have purchased the resale week before a date in June of 2010 AND you must pay a fee to MVCI (Marriott) to 'enroll' that resale week in their new Destination Club 'points' program. The enrollment fee will be spiking dramatically next month, but that's another conversation entirely.

In a nutshell, if the OP doesn't already own a timeshare week bought directly from Marriott (when Marriott was still selling weeks) or own a resale week purchased before a particular day in June of 2010 (I forget the exact day); they will be unable to convert a Marriott timeshare week to MR points (at least until such time as Marriott changes the rules (which they never do, except when they do.)

Sidenote - The conversion of a timeshare week to MRPs is a significant benefit of owning this Marriott product, IMHO. I am able to do this with one of my Marriott timeshare weeks. I can convert it to MR points every other year, and receive 125,000 MR points each time I do.

Last time I checked (not too long ago), some of the MVCI properties (in Spain among others) were still selling weeks (and it is still not possible to switch from the week system to the points system at those properties)

Cheers,

GenevaFlyer

Also for those of us required to use Corp cards for business travel.

You people kill me. You so vastly over-value hotel points. It's not even funny. Spend half the amount of effort on your job and you would double your income! My god people!

FYI, I don't think buying re-sale Marriott timeshares works for the points if purchased post June 1, 2010 (when they switched their system around). Thus you would have to buy direct from Marriott which is the biggest rip off known to man. However, as much as people over-value their Marriott points I am sure some morons buy the timeshares for the points.

Dude, chillax.
 

The OP asked a question. I took a little spare time to investigate the timeshare angle; partially because I need a few points for LT plat. I determined it wasn't worth the cost.
I spend some of my free time here for entertainment and have no desire to work 24/7. To me, this website is entertainment.

As to value of points, I use 1 cent/point as a ballpark. I always beat that number by a bit when I use them but it's close enough when one decides to use points.
Of course that value (1 cent/pt) doesn't factor in the value of achieving LT gold/plat once you stop traveling for business. Lounge access, free internet, etc when one's paying their own dime for hotel rooms is a very nice perk and has value to me - your mileage may vary.

To emphasize and clarify the option of converting MVCI timeshare into MR points, it is not possible for any Marriott timeshare purchased second hand, regardless of when it was purchased. Although timeshares purchased on the resale market before June 2010 have the option of being converted to the new Destination Club points system, this has nothing to do with MR. The option to convert a timeshare to points is an incentive available to those that purchase from Marriott and was not transferable.

Those who convert a second hand timeshare to Destination Points never had the option to convert to MR points and do not get to do so just because they convert.