Up until I recently changed careers, for the past 15 years I was traveling quite extensively for my job. I made the decision early on that Marriott was going to be my hotel chain of choice. Back in the late 90's, early 00's, you could always find some Marriott property (Courtyard, Residence Inn, etc.) in any town, even if there was no full service Marriott. At that time, other chains like Hyatt and Hilton did not offer lower cost alternatives as they do today.
At it's highest, my Marriott Rewards account held well over a million points (almost felt like George Clooney in the movie "Up in the Air"), and maintained Preferred Platinum status for several consecutive years. As a result, we would frequently receive offers for discounted vacations to some really nice properties through Marriott.
Our first experience with the timeshare presentation was at a Marriott property in Kauai , HI. My wife and I were there on a promotion where we received 7 nights, plus rental car, plus a hotel credit for $700. All we had to do was attend the 90 minute time share presentation. We had the option of buying into one of several properties in the islands, but the location that I was most interested in was in Ko Olina, just outside of Honolulu (coincidentally, right next door to where the new DVC Aulani is being built). The $30K price tag quickly scared us off and we told our hostess "Thanks, but no thanks.". Talk about a change in temperature at that point. She cooled on us right away (but in a nice way, just in case we came back).
While we knew this wasn't the right deal for us, it did plant the seeds of doing something like this eventually. Fast forward a few years later and my wife and I (no kids yet, but that would quickly change) found ourselves in Orlando on a deal we received from Sheraton to stay at the Vistana Villages for $200 for 4 nights. Part of the deal was that we would receive a $100 resort credit, but they also gave us the option of taking it in cash (which we did). We weren't even required to take in the presentation, but if we did, we would get another $100 cash, basically making our stay free.
We liked the resort, so we signed up for an early morning presentation. I think our host was fresh from Used Car Salesman University. Lots of pressure, multiple incentives that would go away if we did not make a decision on the spot, bad mouthing the competition, plus a guilt trip for depriving our future children of years of enjoying vacations at their wonderful property. Needless to say we got out of there as soon as our 90 minutes was up.
After our 4 days at the Vistana Villages, we moved over to the Marriott Courtyard near Walt Disney World for the remainder of our stay. When we got to the hotel around lunchtime, we found our room would not be ready for another 3 hours. Did I mention it was pouring down rain (and continued to do so for the remainder of the day)? We didn't have any plans for the afternoon (we had tickets for an Astros/Braves spring training game that night, which ended up as a rain out). The hotel concierge offered us two free tickets to Epcot for the next day if we were willing to tour one of their vacation properties that afternoon. Since this beat sitting around the hotel lobby for several hours, we took him up on his offer.
The Marriott Vacation Club sent a van for us shortly, and we met up with our host and were taken to their Horizons property. We knew right away that this wasn't for us. To me it just had a cheap feel about it. Our host sensed this right away and quickly called an audible and had the van driver take us to one of their other nearby properties that they were still selling. The name of this property now escapes me, but it had a very Mediterranean look and feel. My wife and I really liked the property and the vacation units were very nice.
Once we got back to the Marriott Vacation Club offices, they started to put the hard sale to us. To their credit, they weren't of the same used car salesman ilk as the Sheraton guy, but they were still very persistent with their incentives that were only available if we signed on the dotted line right then and there. They even brought in a closer to try and seal the deal, but we managed to escape unscathed, and with two tickets to Epcot in my pocket, which would be put to good use the next day.
Little did we know, but at this point, we were about 48 hours away from becoming DVC members. Tune in same bat time/same bat channel tomorrow for the rest of the story...
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