Report Abuse - 90101

Marriott gets units to rent out a number of ways. Everytime an owner converts his/her unit to hotel points, marriott gets the unit in exchange. Marriott then keeps 100% of whatever they get when they rent it out. Marriott owns and pays MF on unsold inventory. Some of this they use for discounted packages to get people to Aruba and then give them the sale pitch. If they don't "rent" it out this way, that inventory also goes into the Marriott.com inventory. Just like you can rent out your unit and keep whatever you get. Marriott does the same. They do in both these cases have to pay from their rental income for the daily housekeeping if they rent out on a nightly basis and include daily housekeeping. A third way that Marriott gets inventory to rent out, is if owners convert to destination points on a particular year and then use the destination points for airfare, cruise or other non timeshare stay. Marriott provides the alternate use for the timeshare and in return takes ownership of the week for the year. Marriott also at some resorts rent out inventory for guests at there request. I don't know if they do this in Aruba. Years and years ago they did this by having an owner reserve a unit and then if Marriott rented it out the owner would get the amount minus a 30% commission and any additional fees that went to housekeeping for the daily clean. Marriott might only rent out a night or two or they might rent the whole week. Sometimes owners made more than their MF's, sometime just covered them and sometimes only received $100-$200 for giving Marriott their whole week. My understanding is this is the way rentals are still done in Europe. In 'the US, for the last several years, an owner would not make a reservation just ask Marriott for a quote of how much they would get if they gave Marriott the week to rent out. My experience is if you owned a gold or lower week your offer was usually less than the MF for the week. So on a $1200 unit you might be offered $950. Your choice take it or leave it. Platinum weeks usually were offered close to MF and if you had an ocean front unit or holiday ski weeks, you might be offered $200-$300 over MF and for ocean view platinum weeks you might be offered $100-$200 over MF. In either case if you accepted the offer, you were paid right away and Marriott then controlled the week and kept 100% of whatever they made on the rental minus paying the extra housekeeping. The only inventory that Marriott rents out that they would need to compensate the HOA for is if the HOA has inventory that an owner does not pay MF and therefore can't reserve the week for the year. In that case the HOA gives the week to Marriott to "rent" out on the owners behalf. Marriott like most developers charge a 30-40% commission to rent it out off of the top of the rental fee they charge. Next the daily housekeeping charges come out of the rental income. The remaining goes to the HOA to help defray the cost for the non paying owner. In some cases it covers the while amount that owner owed and in some cases it does not. There might be one more type of rental that Marriott would need to compensate the HOA for and that would be on the same terms as the non paying owner. If an owner cancels last minute and is not entitled to reserve another week or deposit in an exchange company, the HOA could give the week to Marriott to rent. Timeshare owners always point to commercial renting by the developer to "prove" that the developer is cheating by taking inventory that belongs to the timeshare owners without understanding the variety of ways that the developer gets inventory that they can do with as they want to.