How to rent out your Marriott week or points

For Marriott Vacation Club owners with a week or points they won’t use this year: you can rent them out yourself on a site like Vrbo or RedWeek, or let a rental company do the work. With us, a guest books your dates, the guest goes onto the reservation through Marriott’s Guest of Owner form, you sign a payment agreement, and we pay you the same day by e-check, check or Venmo. There is no listing fee.

I sold Marriott Vacation Club ownership from February 1999, first in Orlando and then for over a decade at Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club, and since 2012 my company, Travelscowt, has rented out the weeks and points that owners can’t use. I make my living from the rentals described below.

Are you allowed to rent out your Marriott week?

Yes. Renting is a right of ownership, and when I was a Marriott salesman we were trained to present five benefits of owning: Use, Exchange, Rent, Gift and Will. To be fair to Marriott, the legacy weeks sold before Club Points are more clearly pro-rental than points are, and the exchange rules that govern Club Points are more conservative about rentals on paper than any sales presentation I ever sat through. Marriott also now asks for the guest’s name, address, phone and email through an online form before the stay. I don’t believe any of this is designed to stop the average owner from renting some of their inventory to help with the maintenance fees, and that is the owner we work with. If you want certainty about your own contract, read your ownership documents or ask an attorney, because I am not one.

Marriott’s Frenchman’s CoveSaint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands8 guests · 2 bedroomsFrom $414 a night

Should you rent it yourself?

You certainly can, and plenty of owners do. Vrbo gives you the best-looking listing and strong placement on Google, and charges for it with a 12% commission on every rental. RedWeek is the marketplace where timeshare renters and brokers go looking for Marriott weeks, it costs a fraction of Vrbo, and your week becomes a line in a long list. Craigslist costs nothing and draws every wire-transfer bandit on the internet, so if you use it, speak to the renter on the phone before you send anyone a reservation. Whichever you choose, you answer the inquiries, collect the money, put the guest on the reservation and field the calls up to check-in. If you don’t want a second job managing your timeshare, that is where we come in (shameless plug, I know).

How does renting a week through us work?

1: You tell us the resort, the unit type and the dates you hold, or that you hold points. We tell you plainly whether those dates rent. Last December an owner asked us about an April week at Marriott’s Newport Coast Villas when 21 listings for that week already sat on RedWeek alone, and we said so.

2: When a guest books your dates, we send you a payment agreement to sign online and the guest’s name and contact details.

3: You add the guest with the Guest of Owner form on marriottvacationclub.com, and at the top of the form you select “I do not intend to stay”. That button lists the guest as the primary guest on the reservation, which is best practice for a rental, and our team writes it in capital letters in every one of these emails.

4: Once the agreement is signed, we send your payment the same day: an e-check you print and cash like any other check, a paper check, or Venmo. When a guest books months ahead and pays in two parts, you are paid in two parts as well, the first shortly after booking and the balance later.

5: The guest checks in under their own name. Their questions come to us, not to you, and one of our team calls the resort about a week before arrival to make sure the reservation is still current and correct.

How does renting your points work?

With points there is no fixed week to start from, so we do the reserving. We make reservations with your Club Points at the resorts and dates guests ask us for, including your banked points where that makes sense, and we pay attention to which points expire first, because Marriott does not always apply them in that order (I learned that one the hard way, from an owner who asked me why I hadn’t used their banked points). Toward the end of each year we review the account with you and ask how many of your remaining points you would like earmarked for rentals, so you keep what you want for your own vacations. We never cancel and rebook a reservation to chase a better rate, because we would never want to put a guest’s reservation at risk. For points you won’t use this year, I have written a separate post on the banking deadlines and what else you can do with them.

What will you be paid?

I won’t put a figure on this page, because there isn’t one. The payout depends on the resort, the season, the unit type and how many other owners are listing the same dates, and a summer week at Newport Coast pays very differently from a crowded April week at the same resort. We name the figure for your dates before you sign anything, and the payout in the agreement is what you receive: no listing fee and nothing deducted from it. We earn our keep on the rate the guest pays. The yardstick I use with my owners is the maintenance fee you already pay for those points, and I measure a rental, a cruise or a hotel stay against it the same way.

What are the drawbacks?

• Not every week rents. A week that twenty other owners are listing may not rent at a price worth taking.
• Points that are still unbooked late in the year are hard to rent, because the weeks guests want are long gone by then.
• The Guest of Owner step has to be done right, with “I do not intend to stay” selected, and it is your account, so it is your form to fill.
• Marriott’s rental rules may tighten, and if they do we will tell you what changes.

If you want to talk through a week or a points account, read how we work with owners or send us a note with the resort and the dates. And if your points expire this December, write this month rather than the week before Christmas; I get that call every year, and by then there is very little anyone can do.

Marriott’s Frenchman’s CoveSaint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands8 guests · 2 bedroomsFrom $414 a night