It’s been 2 weeks since Abound by Marriott became available to Marriott and Vistana Owners. There was a flurry of reservations going on that first day grabbing up the prestine resorts that were initially available. Even the above resort Westin St. John had availabilities!! Also the Westin Lagunamar, Westin Nanea, and other highly requested resorts had a number of availabilities for various dates. But that was two weeks ago. I just spent about an hour going through the most popular resorts trying to find availabilities for next year, and only found two availabilities for the Westin Resort and Spa in Cancun — one in May 2023, and one in July 2023 — both would be for a 2-bedroom villa using 3150 Club Points. All others were “no availability” over and over again.
Years ago — and I’m talking BEFORE Club Points came into the picture — owners could search availabilities by a DATE range, not just by LOCATION. That would be a WONDERFUL tool for all the Abound Owners to have. If you need to take a break from an especially stressful month of work — just go out and see where there are availabilities. Instead of spending a big chunk of time trying to figure out where you can go next March, simply indicate what time frame you would like to travel and have Marriott provide YOU with a list of all availabilities. Even if there is NOTHING available, it is a much more positive experience finding that out, than spending a great deal of time searching for resorts and getting the messages “no availability” over and over and over again.
I remember trying to find somewhere that my sister and I could travel together back when searching by date was an option. We were thinking of California, or even Boston. There was no availabilities there, but there was in Arizona — that wasn’t even on our radar — and YES, we could make that work. I would have never searched for availability in Arizona, but by Marriott showing me that we could go there, we made it work and were excited about our option!
It doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do. Perhaps if Marriott realized that we as Owners would appreciate such a feature, they would work hard to make it happen. I mean — there are over 90 resorts! Help us find availabilities at places that we wouldn’t think to search, but would be willing to try!!
This would definitely be a great option! I have been in the same situation several times, calling a rep and having to look up each resort for a specific timeframe, only to find nothing available and have to start over again.
YES! YES! YES!!! You are so right! I have spent countless hours on Marriott’s really poor website searching and searching and becoming mega frustrated between “no availability” and the most recent “Error Logs”, that I give up. I find it especially humorous that their system can peg a late payment (for maintenance fees) and charge us $25 immediately, but we can’t book a property by seeing real time availability.
Hopefully, Marriott’s “powers that could be” read your wonderful site and take notice of your common sense suggestions. When I read your experiences, I am reassured that “it’s not just me”!!
Merry Christmas!
As a longtime Chairman’sClub MVC owner and web/database programmer , I have brought this up at EVERY owners meeting we’ve been to. It is sooo simple to do, no matter what language or database you are coding in
I am completely ignorant of how web sites work so reading your comment makes me even angrier at the Marriott brass. Since they already have our money, is there any hope for us owners to have a responsive web product in this lifetime?!
I’m also in IT and echo what you said. Adding such a query couldn’t possibly be rocket surgery. But there has to be a will to do it, and you know how that goes.
While I too would welcome such a feature, let me remind you all of the early days of the program, circa 2012, when we had no ability to search for availability by the property itself. We have come a long way, but still have a long way to go.
That was a great feature and I also would like to see it come back. What would be the best way to contact MVC to encourage the searchability by date? Do you have any email or phone number we could use?
You can call 800-845-4226 or email at owner.services@vacationclub.com.