Suppose you own a Marriott Vacation Club week and plan to go to another Marriott Vacation Club resort or even a resort outside the Marriott system. In that case, Interval International can provide you with some of the best values for your exchange. Once you have chosen to deposit your week into Interval International, you must decide between an Owner Deposit or a Marriott Deposit. I’ll explain these options in this article and what may work best for your situation.
Interval International Exchange vs. Abound Club Points
Week owners enrolled in the Abound program can use Club Points, but trading week for week can often get you exchanges that the elected number of Club Points you get for your week won’t provide you. This is when many Marriott Vacation Club owners turn to Interval International for exchange. If your Marriott Vacation Club weeks are enrolled in Abound by Marriott Vacations, you also benefit from $0 exchange fees when trading into Marriott, Westin, or Sheraton Vacation Club resorts.
Depositing Your Week Into Interval International (II)
Exchanging through Interval International can be of great value. Still, you need to understand where to start to ensure you are doing everything correctly, getting the most trade power from your ownership, and providing yourself with the most flexibility.
To make a deposit into Interval International, you first need to have a reservation or tell Marriott Vacation Club to deposit your ownership. We personally prefer having a reservation.
Making your own reservation for deposit allows you to select the week and make a reservation to deposit. Marriott Vacation Club calls this Owner Deposit. If you prefer Marriott Vacation Club to choose something to deposit, they refer to it as Marriott Deposit. There are important differences that can affect how easy or hard it is to get the exchange into the resort and dates you want through Interval International. Let’s explore the differences between these two options.
II Exchange – Marriott Deposit
- Marriott selects a week to deposit, and it will later appear in your Interval International account automatically.
- Marriott may select a peak-season week or a low-season week at your home resort to deposit into Interval International.
- The deposited week will be in the owned season, though certain weeks within a season may be more in demand than others.
- You don’t control what they deposit.
- Low season weeks have lower trade power and won’t be as good for trading into higher-demand resorts and dates.
- The checkout date of the week Marriott Vacation Club selects determines the expiration of the expiration date of the deposit. This can result in a shorter time frame to travel than if you reserve a week yourself for a deposit.
- Marriott controls the deposit’s expiration date, which is two years after the checkout date of the week deposited. However, Marriott may pick a week earlier in the year or even prior to the date an owner is depositing the week.
II Exchange – Owner Deposit
- Owner selects a check-in date for the week and is provided with a Marriott Bonvoy confirmation number.
- This option allows the owner to select a higher-demand week instead of leaving its fate to Marriott Vacation Club.
- The owner will then take the confirmation number to the Interval International website and deposit the week.
- You can also complete the deposit by calling Interval International.
- Owner controls the expiration date of the deposit. The owner determines the deposit expiration date since the owner selects the check-in and checkout dates. This can be important if the owner doesn’t have immediate travel plans and wants to extend expiration as long as possible.
How To Select Usage Options on the Marriott Vacation Club Owner Website
The Marriott Vacation Club owner’s website screenshot shows the reservation options.
On the Marriott Vacation Club owner website, you are presented with several options when you select Reserve Weeks:
- Occupy
- II Exchange – Owner Deposit
- II Exchange Marriott Deposit
Occupy
The first Occupy option is obvious. You would select that to make a reservation for a week when you are planning to go to your home resort. If you change your mind, though, don’t worry. You can still deposit a week that you selected to Occupy into Interval International later.
II Exchange – Owner Deposit
This option allows the owner to select the check-in and check-out dates of the week they deposit.
II Exchange Marriott Deposit
This option allows Marriott to deposit a week of their choosing, which can affect trading power and the deposit’s expiration date.
Why Should You Select An Owner Deposit?
While it may seem easier to just let Marriott do all the thinking and select the week for deposit using the II Exchange – Marriott Deposit option, it certainly isn’t the better option. Let’s dig a little deeper to find out why.
Trading Power
Interval International grades every week deposited based on trading power. Trading power can define whether you are able to confirm any given exchange or not. Exchanges into higher-demand resorts, like Hawaii or the Caribbean, or even for higher-demand weeks like holidays and when school is out may be easier to confirm with a deposit of higher trading power.
Deposits of lower demand weeks could harm your ability to confirm an exchange.
If you’d like to learn more about maximizing trading power and how Interval International’s Travel Demand Index (TDI) works, check out this article: How To Maximize Your Exchange with Interval International: Expert Tips & Tricks.
Deposit Expiration
There is also the deposit expiration, which may or may not be important to your situation but could be a determining factor.
More Control
By allowing Marriott to select the week for deposit, you give up a lot of control. This allows Marriott to pick something other owners didn’t want to reserve for their home resort stays or didn’t want to reserve for deposit. This can lead to less desirable weeks being deposited. So, take control of your own destiny and don’t leave the selection up to Marriott’s whim.
The Benefits of Selecting Your Own Week to Deposit
Many may not think it’s important, but we recommend choosing your own week for deposit using the Owner Deposit option in all cases. When selecting II Exchange Owner Deposit, the reservation system will present you with the usual calendar to select a check-in date. After you complete it, you will be given a confirmation number. You can use that confirmation number with Interval International to complete the deposit.
