Has anyone done this? We are at the Westin Maui villas this week and did their sales presentation yesterday. I really liked the flexibility of the package, but I am not one to make a quick decision which they require (they offer you a 150,000 SPG points if you buy before leaving the presentation that day and the option to buy up to ~300k more SPG points). Also they finance it at 15.9% interest so refinancing it at a lower rate would be imperitive. Anyone with experience doing this?

I would be curious to hear feedback from current owners for what you like/dislike about it, how often do the non-home resort deals fill up before your 8 month window, etc.

We have done it with Marriott. Very similar deal. It is OK now. We think that once we retire we will be able to take more advantage of it. But if we had it to do over again, don't know if we would do it.

I have been to a number of these with different hospitality flags including Marriott, Hilton and Starwood.

I am a huge Starwood fan and they are the most flexible with their reward points.

However, in speaking with a great friend of mine who is one of the preeminant hospitality consultants in the US and Central and South America he said that if he was going to take part in one of the programs he would choose Marriott because they are the biggest and have the most options. He admitted that he doesnt know all of the details with all of the programs but those were his thoughts.

Look for purchasing these cheaper online (eBay/craigslist). There are many companies that sell timeshares.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Starwood-Vacation-Ownership-Worldwide-Use-/120740418476?pt=Timeshares&hash=item1c1cb093ac#ht_500wt_1156

we go to the Westin Maui every President's Day Week with friends who are Starwood Vacation Members. They use it to reserve that same week at the Westin Maui every year.

If you were going to do that route, going to the same place yearly, then I could see that being a good thing. That said, I am not sure how easy it would be to make sure you got the same resort at the same time every year.

Marriott just changed their program where it is now much easier to stay at vacation clubs other than where we purchased our week. I think Marriott was behind the times until this change was made.

We purchase our week at their vacation club in Vegas and when we did not use that we traded it in for Marriott points so we would stay at Marriott's for free. With this new change we will start staying in Colorado duing July/August for 1-2 weeks every 2-3 years. That, too, will be for "free". We have also saved enough Marriott points to where we can go to Europe--for "Free"--for 8-10 nights.

If you buy from craiglist/ebay you will not get a lot of the same programs for points or offers. They are only for those that buy from Marriott.

MooseHerd is right about that.