Starwood implementation of Interval International  ( I. I. ) (Interval) exchange:

 

Written by: Fred Messreni - TUG Member (updated 8/5/2009)

 

Preface: 

The Starwood system is different from others as it relates to an owners relationship with Interval . This is significant. You should be aware of the issues involved.

If a member of Starwood Vacation Network (SVN) you are subject to the SVN Member Rules, and Starwood's administration of SVN inventory. A SVN member deposit can be from any resort in the system, not necessarily the owners home resort. It can also be a deposit of any season, irrespective of the season owned.

If not an SVN member, Starwood does not have the latitude to deposit any week from any network resort. The owner retains control of the week deposited. It is, therefore,  possible for a Platinum Season owner at Westin Kierland, for example, to have a Silver season at another resort deposited to represent their trade request. Meanwhile, a non SVN Platinum Season resale owner at Westin Mission Hills, will have a Mission Hills Platinum Season week deposited to represent their trade request.

The reason for this difference lies in the SVN Member Rules which in part state that a member may not have an independent relationship with an external exchange organization for the purpose of transacting a trade of the owners use-week. Exchange requests are made directly to Starwood, who in turn assigns a deposited week to the owners exchange request as currency for the exchange request.

An owner that is not an SVN member must have an independent membership account with I.I. in order to trade.
Exchange requests are made directly to I.I., not Starwood. Further, the deposit will be represented by what is owned.

The first step is to secure a reservation at your home resort. Reservations may be made up to 12 months in advance.
For reasons explained later, the reservation should be made as close to the 12 month mark as possible.
Once confirmed, the reservation is available for deposit directly to Interval.
Experience suggests that an on-line transaction is the preferred method for making the deposit to your I.I. account.

Current information regarding opening an independent I.I. account, member dues, exchange fees, on-line deposit instructions, etc., is available here:   http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showpost.php?p=672349&postcount=2

The real world problem of separating Starwood policy from what is actually enacted at a point in time has caused some frustration. Strict consistency is not always adhered to. Consequently, I have tried to reflect what Starwood states as its policy, or ownership documents stipulate.Individual experiences may be different.

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I.I.'s model for comparable exchange is based on several factors. The precise formulas are closely guarded trade secrets. Something like the formula for Coca Cola:

- Unit size (measured by private sleeping capacity) A 2 bedroom villa sleeps 6 privately, although it will    accommodate a total of 8. A Studio sleeps 2 privately, although can accommodate 4. A 1 bedroom sleeps a total of 4, privately.

- Quality of the resort deposited.

- Demand for the week deposited. Typically, Platinum (prime season) draws more demand than Silver (low season). However, this is not always so. Actual week numbers matters . There are weeks in Platinum season that are in higher demand than others. Sometimes referred to as bright Red or Pink. Conversely, certain Gold or Silver weeks may (rarely) have a higher demand than the lowest demand Platinum weeks.

I.I. publishes a helpful tool to assist members in determining general demand. It is geography, not resort, based.

Called the Travel Demand Index (TDI), it provides a historical demand for every week of the year, for each geographic region of the world. It is, therefore, possible to broadly assess the demand component of your trade request both in terms of the demand for your deposit, and the demand for the dates you are requesting in your exchange request. The TDI is located at the beginning of the geographic region in the I.I. Resort Directory.

TDI is a scale from 50 to 150. 100 represents Market Average, Above 100 is greater demand. Below 100 is greater availability. Note that below 100 is not lesser demand, but greater availability. The demand component of exchange is not determined by pure demand, it is measured against supply. High demand , low supply, is what creates a blockbuster exchange chip. High demand with an excess of supply results in weak demand as it relates to the demand value of your deposit. Got it? The TDI is best used as a tool to assess the time periods that an exchange request is most likely to be confirmed.

- Deposit lead time. More on this later. Suffice to say that a reservation deposited 10 months in advance of the reservation date is worth more to I.I. than the same reservation deposited 5 months in advance.

- Wild Card (my term): Included in the evaluation of deposit quality is a pre-filter which sits in front of the above criteria. It is established by I.I. members who have exchanged into the resort you are depositing. I.I. performs surveys of these exchangers (not owners) to determine a satisfaction/quality rating for the resort. Trades available to owners are based on this filter. The owners of the resort suffer in the exchange universe if exchangers do not rate the resort experience highly.

 

Exchange Request Methods:  

DEPOSIT FIRST: is by far the most common method of executing an exchange because it is the least confining and requires no firm decisions or commitment at the time of deposit. All that is required of you is to decide that you do not want to occupy the week at your home resort. You may not yet be clear about what you do want. Simply take the use-week and "put it in the Bank". You may then later request an exchange anywhere in the I.I. system.

Once the use week at your resort is deposited, you may as well forget about it. All you care about is the date you must travel by for the deposit to remain available for your use. The time frame is two years after the reserved week you deposited. Example: The reserved week deposited is November 24, 2007. You deposited it December, 2006. You must conclude your travel for that deposited week by the end of November in 2009. I.I. will maintain timetable records and report them to you periodically. No need to create a bookkeeping system for this. Keep it simple and easy. Decide where you wish to exchange, and when. Get it confirmed, and have fun.

Deposits to the bank are irrevocable. Once you have made the deposit of a reserved week, you may not change your mind and cancel the deposit. If that were allowed, the entire structure of the exchange network would collapse.. So, in the bank it stays until you decide where you want to travel, perhaps accruing the time with a future years use for extended travel.

Reciprocity is not required for your exchange request to be filled and confirmed. No one has to request the reservation you deposited for the system to work. The requirement for your exchange request is the deposit, period. That is the currency that buys your request. The rest is I. I ’s problem.

Borrowing. In addition to banking the current year for use in the future, you may borrow next year’s use for a vacation this year. You can borrow only from the following year. Homeowner Association dues must be paid in full at the time the borrow is requested.

REQUEST FIRST : You are promising to relinquish the use of your reservation to Interval International if, and only if, they can confirm a reservation to what you want, where and when you want it.

Note: this option should be used when you are willing to occupy your reserved week at your home resort if I.I. cannot fulfill your exchange request. Why? You are not making a deposit in this instance. So, there is no irrevocable commitment on your part.. Therefore, the reservation you have made for the year is really yours for occupancy. Further, I.I. is not required to accept what you are offering for an exchange. Each of the parties has an opportunity to evaluate what the other is offering, and decide if it is desirable to them. You initiate the dialog because you are the one with the exchange request.

As mentioned, specific week selection is not under an SVN members control within the Starwood system, when depositing to I.I. This has another implication with Request First. As the SVN owner does not know specifically what week will be assigned in advance of a deposit, one must be proactive. It is necessary that the owner first confirm a specific reservation if Request First is desired. The owner must have a specific week to offer I. I. for their consideration. It should be a reserved week that the owner would otherwise occupy if the request is not fulfilled. If this is not likely to occur, Deposit First is the appropriate exchange election.

Interval states that, all other things being equal, the Deposit First method takes precedence over Request First in fulfilling an exchange request.

 

Terms of Deposit: 

If you deposit your week at least 60 days before its reservation date, your deposit is valid for an “unrestricted” exchange request for two years from that reservation date. Do keep in mind that the earlier a deposit is made, the more valuable it is to the exchange . Although a 60+ day deposit is “unrestricted” for purposes of your requested exchange, its exchange value decreases as the reservation date becomes closer. A deposit 12 months in advance of the reservation date is valued more highly than the same reservation deposited 5 months in advance.

If you deposit your week 14 to 59 days before your reservation date, your deposit is considered a Late Deposit, or Flex Deposit. The deposit is still usable for two years, as above, BUT, you are restricted to making reservation requests to those resorts. You must wait until 59 or less days to your desired occupancy to make a reservation request. You are bound by the same limitation you gave the exchange by depositing your week so late in the cycle.

If you deposit your week 7 to 13 days before the reservation date, your deposit is considered a Late/Late Deposit. (Indeed!!). It is also usable for two years, but the above restriction shortens to a 30 day reservation request window. You are getting more leeway than you gave the exchange.

 

Placing a Pending Request:

OK. You now know the rules for exchange time frames. Make an Exchange Request as soon as you know what you wish to do with the use-week.

Any exchange request that is not confirmed at the time the request is made is called “Pending Request”.

Here are the rules and considerations for your Pending Request:

The more alternatives you provide, the higher the likelihood your request will be promptly confirmed. Combinations of resort and / or time frames. You may use up to 64 combinations per request. You should supply at least 3 alternatives. Any combination of resorts and dates. This deserves further discussion. Although it is possible that your desired exchange will be available when the exchange is requested, it is not likely. You are expecting too much to think so. Likewise, a review of availability at any moment in time is not likely to produce a desired availability. Think about it. Availability occurs only when an owner at another resort desires to themselves exchange , and places their reservation on deposit. Statistically, this occurs most often within the 8 to 5 month window. It is not at all unusual for a request to be confirmed 60 or more days after the trade is requested.

Logistical issue you must be aware of: Your requests are not prioritized. You will be confirmed into the resort / time frame the system locates first. Therefore, it is our opinion that you will be better served by making requests one at a time, in the order of your preference, to avoid the possibility of not receiving a confirmation for your first preference, even if it is at that moment available.

When specifying a resort, use the Resort Code in the Resort Directory. It is the three letters in bold type next to resort picture in the Directory. It can also be found in the index. Exchange fees will be billed at the time you place your request, per week.

Only a full week can be deposited with Interval International. You can lock your unit off and deposit either, or both, suites. The request system is based on “comparable value”. Do not expect size upgrades unless you are within the 60 day reservation window. This is the “Flex Change” period. Any deposit will draw anything available irrespective of the unit size you deposit. A Guest Suite will pull a 2 bedroom if it’s available. Pending Requests cannot be made in this window. Simply call and ask for availability. If you like it, take it.

It has been our experience that availability is not identically reflected on the I.I. website and by phone. Telephone requests do seem to have access to inventory that is not reflected on the website. Of course, SVN members are speaking with a Starwood representative, not I.I. How they represent your requests is one of those "black box" issues a Starwood owner must resign themselves to.

 

 Starwood 72 hour Exclusive: 

 For the first three days of a Starwood owners deposit, its availability is masked from the rest of the Interval International membership. Only a Starwood owner has visibility to another owners deposit. It may be selected without contention from the rest of the timeshare world. If unclaimed within 72 hours, it is made available. to the I.I. general membership. If a Pending Request is active for one of these deposits, it will be filled without it ever seeing daylight. The deposited week must otherwise be of "comparable value" for this to occur. One cannot expect a Silver Season studio to pull a 2 bedroom Platinum Season. 

 

Trade Testing: 

Many Starwood owners are reluctant to surrender their home resort week without knowing in advance the outcome of their desired trade. Understandable. Starwood has made this difficult  because of their policy concerning bulk depositing.  This is best resolved by use of the Request First method. 

However, there is some probability to the exercise. Keep in mind that one of the reasons to deposit with the exchange is that the only thing you are certain of is that you do not wish to visit your home resort in a given year. A decision does not have to be made about what you do wish to do.

Having said this, trade testing can be performed to determine what is available, and when. It is hypothetical as you do are not actually executing a trade., and conditions will not be identical at the moment you do. Keep in mind that trade testing will only reflect that inventory that is available at the moment tested. As previously stated, the likelihood of your desired trade being available at a moment in time is low. In this respect, trade testing is a interesting game, but not to be relied upon as a mirror of what you can expect to occur. Placing a Pending Request puts you in position to have your order filled, if and when it does become available.

The best way to determine what will likely occur is to team with owners who have different reservations, of various sizes and resort locations. At the same time, each queries the available inventory for the week being used. By comparing the results of each query, it is somewhat possible to determine availability and what may be required to obtain it. As stated, this is more a game than a strategy.  Nothing assures that conditions will be similar enough at a point of actual execution to produce the tested result. It is a way to test relative exchange clout, in a general sense, for insight to the workings of the exchange system. That is all. 

Finally, Its a big world. I.I. has over 2,200 resorts in almost every corner of the world. They are a great resource for Starwood owners. Starwood has some great properties, highly prized by owners of other resorts/systems. In most cases, your trade requests will bear good fruit. However, the key to success is FLEXIBILITY. If you are not receptive to accepting different locations, or different dates, than your single highest preference, you will often be disappointed. It is a matter of odds. The more answers you will find acceptable, the more likely you will be successful.

As highly regarded as most Starwood resorts are, when exposed to the wide universe of other timeshare owners competing for the same resource, you should not be surprised to discover that there are many resorts/weeks that compare on a superior footing. Prime ski weeks at world class destinations are particularly prized. Not only are they in very high demand, they are relatively few in number. Four Seasons, Hyatt, Marriott, and other quality tier companies have resorts at locations that draw exceptional demand when compared to availability. FLEXIBILITY is the key to successful trading on a routine basis. 

I have tried to cover the basics here. Undoubtedly, I have overlooked something of relevance. Hopefully, I have not erred in what has been covered. That is also possible. This is a working draft for Starwood owners. I will update and correct as needed. Your experiences and insight are welcome.  

Do not overlook the other sources of exchange information available on TUG. The exchange machinery is still Interval International.