Review of our invitation to the Marriott Vacation Club presentation

It all starts with our check-in at the Marriott Vacation Club “Grand Chateau” hotel in Las Vegas. We’re handed a voucher for a gift to pick up from the hotel concierge.

Since we’re Gold members (thanks to our card American Expresswe regularly get a little treat upon arrival in our room: a snack, a handwritten welcome card, … but it’s the first time we’ve been given a mysterious voucher like this.

We don’t have high expectations, we predict a voucher for a drink at the bar.

We go see the concierge. After showing us a card that offers discounts at several restaurants in the city, he gets down to business.

He offers us the chance to attend a presentation about Marriott Vacation Club offers.

It’s not a short presentation, it lasts 90 minutes!

In exchange (“your time is precious”) we can choose from three rewards:

• A $200 prepaid Visa card that we can use to buy whatever we want
• $350 in vouchers for vegas.com to book shows (it’s actually on this site that we’d already booked ours)
• 40,000 Marriott Bonvoy points (roughly equivalent to €200)

The concierge likely gets a commission if we agree, so he implies it’s easy money.

We’re not completely naive, we sense there’s a catch. We make sure to confirm that we won’t have to pay anything during this presentation.

We’re both curious about the process, interested in the 40,000 points, and have nothing planned the next morning (except sleeping in, but we’re weak, we can trade that for 40,000 points).

We sign an “invitation” after carefully reading everything to ensure we’re not committing to anything other than our presence.

Back in our room (after picking up our laundry—even in Las Vegas, you’ve got to manage your laundry!), we do some Google research to make sure we’re not walking into a trap (spoiler: it could be!).

The next morning: the phone rings at 8 AM, reminding us we’re expected at 8:30 AM. Even though our appointment is at 9 AM, great, they stole 30 minutes of sleep from us!

We show up at 9 AM, with the firm intention not to commit to anything and curiosity about what we’re in for. We’re offered a hot drink, and a consultant arrives a bit late. Surprise: she’s Moroccan, so we’ll be able to speak French. I wondered about it, but I think it’s a coincidence.

We expected a slick American sales pitch, but we were left wanting. The consultant was a bit scattered in her presentation. Good thing we’d done some research the night before; we’d have been slow to understand what she was talking about! She starts by using an example of a stay at a Ritz Carlton in the Caribbean at $5,000 per night, which is completely out of our context.

Even if she certainly wasn’t the most talented consultant, we’d understand a bit later that if she was a little late, it was because she was finalizing a sale worth tens of thousands of dollars!

Enough suspense, what’s it all about?

We’re offered the chance to become “owners.”

The principle? You pay “one shot” a certain amount that gives you points every year, for life (and even beyond; your descendants can enjoy them after you’re gone).

You can exchange these points for nights at any hotel in the program, knowing that Marriott alone manages over 9,000 hotels worldwide.

The idea is inspired by the “timeshare” system, which seems very popular in the US. The principle is to become the owner of one week, two weeks, three weeks per year at a given hotel. The difference in our case is that we’re not buying into a specific hotel; we can use it at any hotel in the program based on our travel desires.

Several advantages are highlighted:

• You pay once to enjoy nights for life
• The number of points needed per night varies by hotel, but it remains fixed. It doesn’t suffer from inflation (which is a great argument in the current inflationary period)
• If you don’t use points one year, they’re not lost

A point is currently purchased for $17.20. That amount increases every quarter, so we’d better subscribe now!

For example, one night at the hotel we’re currently staying at is worth 160 points. Let’s say we want to stay 14 nights a year at a hotel of this type, so we’d need to buy 2,240 points.

That’s $38,528.

That’s a hefty sum! But in principle, why not. One night at this hotel is worth about $260. It would take 148 nights to break even on the initial investment. That’s just over 10 years. Actually, it would be even less to reach the breakeven point, since I’m not accounting for inflation over the next 10 years.

After those 10 years, you’ll enjoy free nights, for eternity.

Our consultant didn’t present it that well, but we can easily imagine that with the right arguments, a well-rehearsed sales pitch can be incredibly effective.

What they don’t tell you, or you really have to dig for, is that:

• Every year, you’ll have to pay annual maintenance fees of $0.78 per point. That’s still more than 1,700 euros a year in our example.
• This maintenance fee isn’t fixed; it can go up each year.
• They don’t give you the list of hotels and their “points per night” value, which would let us assess whether the program is worthwhile for our travel style. During the appointment, they show us examples, but it’s impossible to study in detail.
• On the face of it, the “points vs. cash price” ratios are attractive for Marriott Vacation Club properties, but much less so for “non-club” hotels.
• Hotel availability isn’t guaranteed; there’s a small quota of rooms for “owners,” with priority given to guests who “pay cash for their night.”
• …

After about an hour of discussion (we were genuinely playing along, listening to what they proposed to see if it could interest us), we started asking specific questions about how the fees work and the need for the catalog to assess whether it was worth it for us, …

I think at that point, the advisor realized we wouldn’t fall for it, and the tone abruptly changed:

– “Are you ready to sign with us today?”

– “Of course not. You invited us to a presentation. We’ll take the time to study your proposal before deciding, especially for such an amount.”

– “Then why are we here? You’re wasting your time and mine. We’re interested in people ready to sign today.”

At least they’re honest, but what nerve!

The exchange ended quickly after that, fortunately, because it was getting rather unpleasant.

The advisor went to brief her manager. I whispered to Anh: “You’ll see, they’ll pull the manager trick, coming back with an incredible offer.”

I was half right; we had another brief exchange with another person, very friendly. She said it was perfectly normal to need time to think. She offered us something else at a much more reasonable price (prepaying for a stay in the US, to be used within 18 months with a discount). It was easy to refuse: we don’t plan to return to the US within 18 months.

Then the person gave us the coupon validating our gift of 40,000 points, and it was over. The whole thing lasted 90 minutes, as promised!

What’s quite frightening is that in just 90 minutes, alone in a room, we still witnessed, by chance, two people signing contracts.

So you have people who woke up this morning without a clear idea of what they’d be shown. After a short presentation, they’re ready to write a check for tens of thousands of dollars without taking time to think it over.

Either these people are very wealthy, or they’re reckless with their money, or the sales tactics are formidable.

Probably a bit of all three.

I don’t know the rules in the US regarding the right of withdrawal, but you just have to Google the program’s name to find hundreds of testimonials from people crying scam: the program’s reality is far from the magical presentation they were given.

Another thing that surprised me: even though we remained potential customers (who simply needed to think), we were given no documentation, no “when can I contact you?”, no “here’s my card with my details if you have questions”, no “here’s the order form to send back when you’ve decided”, … nothing! They’re really in a strategy: “They must sign today, in 90 minutes, otherwise the customer will investigate and it’ll be too late.”

Finally, I find it quite mind-boggling that Marriott, one of the largest hotel chains in the world, takes advantage of its guests’ stays to send them to the slaughterhouse like that.

In the end, we’re pretty happy with the experience: we discovered a world we didn’t know, even though we’d have liked a more skilled advisor, and we walk away with 40,000 points that will get us one or two nights at Marriott hotels 100% free, without even paying maintenance fees!