I agree that MVCI room awards can be a great use of points, especially since a number of those properties get full use of a Marriott Resort that is next to it. In the past I have used a number of my points for those awards. The problem with those awards though is that they can be hard to virtually impossible to get in a lot of properties. I do understand why that is, but it doesn't change the fact that quite often they can be hard to come by.

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?

That IS a super deal! Wow! Off-peak?

I used 250k AA miles for a 3-night stay at the Grand Wailea. Apples to apples...

I am amazed how many Timeshare owners give up their week for 50,000 or even 75,000 points - unless you will absolutely loose the week I dont see the comparable value.

Remember that these are salespeople telling you this information. The spin about MVCI VOA having leverage is marketing at best, and your intuition of "too good to be true" is much closer to reality IMO.

See the thread at this link for some additional insight: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=758020

BTW, anyone with the right amount of points can do this; it is not restricted to MVCI members.

You'll have to excuse my ignorance here, as I'm not at all familiar with the MR scheme, but I'm asking on behalf of an even more unfamiliar friend...

My friend accumulated 500k MR points through a lot of stays a few years back. His account has been dormant for some time, but he has checked and the points are still showing online. He's not particularly well travelled (no FF membership, for example) and as he knows I travel a lot (and have varying elite status with BA and Priority Club), he's asked me the best way to use these points.

He's based in London and wants to travel somewhere with his wife. I've read here about these Travel Packages - are these 250k points awards (for 100 BA miles + 7 nights Cat 7 hotel) the cost for one person, or for a couple? Will he have to sign-up to a FF scheme to do this? Also, is there anyway to get to Perth, Australia, or is that just too far?

Even better, could anyone actually suggest a couple of different ways to redeem these 500k points so I can at least sow the seeds of a few ideas and get him to dig deeper on his preferred options?

Thanks in advance

First off, there are no Marriott properties in Perth, Australia so that won't work.

To answer your other questions: the 250K points would give the person whose MR account it is 1) 100K miles in BA or 70K miles in Qantas FF programs. He would have to be a member of the FF program to which the miles are being transferred. He cannot have the miles deposited in his wife, SO, or other person's FF account, 2) an e-certificate for 7 nights in a Marriott category 7 hotel; occupancy of which would only be limited by the max occupancy of the room at the particular hotel. If 100K BA miles or 70K Qantas miles are enough miles for 2 r/t tickets or 2 r/t upgrades then your friend would b e good to go. If on the other hand he needs more miles he may have to cash in a bigger package (270K points for 120K BA miles or 85K Qantas miles) -OR- 2 travel packages and get 2 rooms for the same week (and invite you to join them) or 2 consecutive weeks and take a 2 week holiday instead of 1 week.

He should start by finding a destination that has a Marriott property he wishes to visit. Then check on availability to see if standard hotel awards are available for the week(s) he has in mind. Hotels like Sydney Marriotts and those properties in Thailand only require Category 5 or 6 awards so no sense wasting points on Category 7 awards if they are not needed. He can check this online, but should actually book it through a CSR since he will be using a travel package. He also should check on the availability of award airline tickets and/or upgrades as these are very difficult to come by, especially on the SYD-LHR route.

I do not know BA or QA FF programs so you, or your friend, will need to do due diligence on those. For some reason I thought you could only join BAEC (is that the right acronym?) if you had flown on a full or premium fare ticket on BA. I know QA awards are easier to come by with QA FF miles than partner FF miles.

He doesn't have to do travel packages, he could always use the points for hotel stays closer to home. 500K would get him 3-4 weeks depending on the category.

Actually, I think there is a way to do this. Because Marriott has an official policy of allowing spouses (or unofficially anyone else's account) to "combine" points when ordering the award, have the points be "combined" into his wife's account for the award. (If she doesn't have an account, that should be easy enough to fix.) AFAIK, there is no rule that stipulates which account the points have to be pooled together in. And I have been able to combine points even when I already had the needed number of points in my account, so that shouldn't be a problem either.

I was talking about FF MILES, not MR points. The FF account into which the travel package miles are being deposited has to be in the same name as the MR account from which the travel package award is claimed.

There was no mention by Worthing Scottish of a Spouse or SO having a MR account that needed topping off or points combined, so I was not addressing any sort fo MR to MR transfer at all in my previous post. My apologies if somehow that was conveyed by my post as that was not my intent.

No problems, all I was addressing was your point that Marriott points converted to miles could not be deposited into someone else's account. Since Marriott allows people to combine points for an award, essentially airline miles can be added to anyone's FF account rather than just your own.

So if Worthing Scottish's friend wanted to put some FF miles into Worthing Scottish's account, then it might actually be possible to do so using some of those 500K Marriott points.

Many thanks for the responses so far. My friend's wife has no FF account either, although BA have recently relaxed the "qualifying flight" condition on joining their Exec Club. I'll point him in that direction.

When the MVCI sales rep and his senior sales rep (the closer they send in if you're being difficult) described the travel packages, they insisted that Marriott had bargaining power with airlines due to the fact that Marriott puts up tens of thousands of airline crew at rock bottom room rates. In return the airlines allow Marriott VOA to redeem premium class tickets with little or no restrictions.

When I said the deal sounded too good to be true, the sales rep retrieved a folder with specific travel packages MVCI VOA supposedly had arranged for MVCI owners that included QA First Class tickets LAX-SYD, and others.

But, I think your examples in the attached thread clearly show how this really works. I'm going to send an email to my MVCI VOA and inquire about the claims made by the Newport Coast Marriott VC sales reps.

That is absolute BS. They just dump miles to your FF account (if you redeem travel packages) and then you are on your own to find suitable flights.

I believe this has been addressed several times and the answer has always been ... no.

Yes, you can combine Marriott points with you and your spouse (or anyone, actually), but the miles have to go into your account.

But the question is who is the "you" in this case? The "you" is the account that the points are moved into and the two persons have the choice of which account that would be. So if you want the miles, combine the points into your account. If you want your spouse to have the miles, combine them in there instead.