Interval Hotel Exchange

[CPNY]

anyone have success with interval hotel exchanges for Gold/Platinum memberships? After doing math, I’d lose my week and all the maint fees that go with it, plus have to pay more money than what I could book it directly with Marriott. Was wondering if anyone found this feature beneficial.

Exchange my one bedroom (lost week and maint fee) + pay additional $2,100 for Westin Cayman Islands

Same room and dates on marriott website is $2,035.

[Saintsfanfl]

I have used it once and that is because 1) I used bargain high trading power units so the true cost was better than booking direct and 2) I had way too many deposits.

I haven’t found any situation where it was favorable to use high maintenance units like any Marriott. You need a really low maintenance fee combined with good trading power. Even then it is really hard to find good value due to the lack of flexibility in the reservation.

[CPNY]

Any suggestions on high trade power with low maint fee unit?

[travelhacker]

In some instances it could make sense with point trades (like Hyatt). For example, if you have a 2200 point unit, and your MF’s are 1400, you’re looking at about .63 per point. The minimum point trade is 260. I found several hotels that I could book for about $110 per night, so for 3 nights my cost would be:

.63 * 260 = about 164

There is a $69 exchange fee, so the total cost would be $233 vs about $330 to book using cash.

I don’t know that I’d use it, but there are a few scenarios where it could make sense.

[CPNY]

I’ll have to do more research. It seemed the few tests I ran, it didn’t seem that great to do. Especially when the “copay” was more than the hotel room was online booking direct with the hotel.

[tschwa2]

The hotel deals rarely are good. A good is close to a break even. I find that your best bet is to keep reducing the nights until you get to just over $0 in additional fees. So if 3 nights are $0 copay and 4 nights are $68 copay stop there and then compare that with using the best price you can find for the remaining days.

[tschwa2]

I believe the II hotel exchange fee is something like $159. When they first introduced it, it was at an introductory rate of $79. So you need to keep that in mind when determining costs.

[CPNY]

It may be good when you cannot find anything to exchange to and you’re about to lose the deposited week or need to do something with the week before losing it then the extra cost may be better than losing the week completely.

[Author]

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