Vistana Signature Experiences / Westin Vacation Club.
 

I got an email offer from SPG for 5 nights at a Hawaii Westin for $650. Seemed like a decent deal, since we were considering Hawaii anyway. But the fine print reveals I have to sit through a 90-minute vacation club presentation.

Has anyone sat through this? How hard is the sell?

If you show absolutely NO interest and ask NO questions and appear to be bored, the presentation is not going to last more than an hour.

Worth doing in Hawaii. In Florida, well, I have stories about amazingly clueless sales people. It is a good deal and personally, I'd do it.

As others have noted, don't show interest unless you are really interested. Polite interest will extend the time past 90 minutes.

Done! Booking went pretty smooth. Now to prepare my bored-uninterested face to get out of the presentation as fast as possible without being suckered into $$$.

Having just done two of these in the past year (both in Maui), I came across this post as I was browsing FT to see if anyone had purchased into the Timeshare/Vacation Club (both times I have opted NOT to). I do see your OP is back from May of this year but have you taken your trip yet? If not, I can provide a run-down of what to expect and how they'll try to present it.

what to expect? paying upfront anywhere from 10-100k$ (or taking a mortgage with credit card levels of interest) for the right to pay yearly maintenance fees that are on par with what you could get a room int he same property paying in cash.

Who cares how they present it. it's a turd. a dressed up turd is still a turd.

Reason I asked OP was because when my wife and I attended last year (the first time), we were strongly considering opting in from the initial presentation, as initially the math looked "good" the way they presented it (of course that's "selling"). The one last year was also the first time my wife and I had ever attended a timeshare/vacation club buy-in presentation. I don't know if this is/was/will be OP's first one as well. Fortunately, despite all the incentives to buy-in then and there on the spot after the presentation, we said we wanted at least a night to think it over and talk it over and run our own numbers as well as the fact that we're not the kind of people to make a $30K-$40K decision "on the spot" (which of course turns into more than that with the MX fees and such). We ran our numbers, including rising MX fees based on even the low-end of what they said they expect the MX fees to raise by year to year and we realized that their math didn't compute, along with, as you point out, the maintenance fees were as much per year as what you could get a room at the place for with no buy-in when we tried some dummy bookings at the same resort and rooms were available well below the rate per night that they quoted as the price per night in the presentation. We also discussed the risks regarding the MX fees and that they could raise the rate to whatever they wanted once we had bought in and we would have no recourse. My wife and I also found plenty of websites with people renting their timeshare week at the hotels for less than the Maintenance Fee as well, as well as plenty of people trying to offload their timeshare or vacation club buy-in for well below the buy-in fee

The other "funny math" which I also realized AFTER the presentation, because I didn't think about it during the presentation, but part of what they try to sell you as part of the buy-in with the StarOptions is they make it seem like by buying in, you won't have to pay for hotel rooms anymore if your average travel doesn't change, which is part of why my wife and I were initially considering opting in - because of how they presented the math and the flexibility of the StarOptions to SPG Points. We ran our own numbers afterward though and saw that it doesn't compute the way they presented it in the meeting, and they really stretch just how much you can do with the SPG Points your StarOptions would convert to. Fortunately my wife and I did some research on that as well overnight and realized the "funny math" there too with how they presented it versus reality.

OP also asked how hard the sell is. In both cases they pushed fairly hard. The first time at least they were more friendly and kept focusing on the value and trying to sell that perceived value but we ultimately didn't see the value. The second time around it was more of the guilt trip/stupidity approach with the "well it's your money if you want to keep wasting it" (by not buying in). They also used the "the train is leaving the station" approach, trying the "if this is something you're considering you better buy-in now or you'll lose your chance forever!"