Marriott Homes & Villas isn’t a real homesharing service. You are just renting out your room for the weekend, not an entire property with guests staying in other bedrooms and enjoying amenities. This is what I learned when trying to redeem cheaper than normal rates at Marriott hotels in Asia Pacific by using this site.,
Marriott Homes & Villas Isn’t A Real Homesharing Service (And How To Redeem Cheaper) is a travel blog post about how to find cheaper homesharing options.
Marriott Homes & Villas Isn’t a True Homesharing Platform (And How To Redeem Cheaper)
on November 19, 2021 by Gary Leff
Marriott wants you to believe that Homes & Villas By Marriott is an Airbnb rival and that they are in the homesharing industry. Despite the tagline, “Private Homes With Marriott’s Assurances,” this is not the case.
Marriott Homes & Villas isn’t technically an Airbnb rival. It is not, in reality, a homesharing site. It’s a booking platform that promotes residences that are already listed elsewhere for a fee. It’s more akin to a third-party travel agency or reseller than an affiliate marketing website.
This is particularly amusing considering Marriott’s and other hotel corporations’ recent campaign to encourage guests to book directly. The issues that arise when a third party stands between a visitor and the real booking site arise with vacation rentals as well.
For example, Marriott’s website claims that all of its listings offer free WiFi, yet it shows hotels that do not — as noted on the underlying listing.
On the Marriott website, there’s a property called Arcadian Gardens in Sequim, Washington. It should have wifi since it is featured on the Marriott website, which says that all of the places listed on their site have.
However, this property is derived from Vacasa, and there is no mention of wifi in the underlying listing.
When I inquired about this property in particular, Marriott said that Vacasa had withdrawn the amenity owing to signal quality concerns, and that Marriott had deleted the property as a consequence. According to a representative,
WiFi was available at the property you visited. Vacasa has just deleted the facility from its website due to poor signal quality. When this occurs, property management firms report non-compliant properties to us, and we remove them from our site. This property is no longer available.
However, the internet problem isn’t restricted to this one property, and I anticipate that any that I flag will be addressed soon, maybe even before you read this. Here’s a home on Vacasa that doesn’t have internet but is still advertised by Marriott, and here’s another neighboring property on Vacasa that is provided by Marriott Homes & Villas.
It’s not difficult to find houses on the Vacasa website even if you don’t have access to the internet. You may turn on and off the amenity and see the qualities that vanish. Then go to the Marriott Homes & Villas website and look for those homes. Marriott, like hotels that fail to regulate their rooms sold via Airbnb, seems to be paying little attention to or performing quality control on the site’s featured listings.
It’s not only the internet either. Marriott Homes & Villas claims to provide cable television. They don’t indicate what that service entails, but I’m guessing it entails cable TV or a streaming subscription, not simply a coat hanger as an antenna. Here’s an example of a Marriott hotel with a TV but no cable. There are a slew of others like it.
The third-party management business is “expected to notify guests before arrival if such amenity is no longer accessible and work with the visitor to rectify the situation,” according to a Marriott representative. To put it another way, if anything goes wrong with your Marriott-booked stay, it’s not Marriott’s responsibility to fix it.
The option to earn and burn points is one incentive to book via Marriott.
- The properties accessible via Marriott have either been less appealing at the same price range as others in the same complex (e.g. near the beach rather being right on the beach) or more expensive for a similar property compared to Airbnb in the times I’ve looked. Your results may vary.
- Marriott’s redemptions are revenue-based and were discounted to $0.006 each point during the epidemic.
In fact, for many Marriott Homes & Villas properties, Wyndham points are typically a better bargain than Marriott redemptions. Marriott Homes & Villas obtains properties from a variety of sources, including Vacasa. In most situations, Vacasa works with Wyndham Rewards, which costs only 15,000 points per night per bedroom. The better the bargain Wyndham points are in most circumstances, the more costly the property (that’s the entire point system!).
Perhaps ‘Homes & Villas’ is simply another Marriott brand that consumers can purchase. Brand guidelines are generally included with Marriott brands. But are they enforced at Homes & Villas in the same way as exclusive privileges are at their other properties?
More From the Wing’s Perspective
Marriott Homes & Villas is an online home sharing service that is not a real homesharing service. It has been reported that the cheapest way to redeem the cheaper price is by contacting Marriott directly. Reference: marriott homes and villas contact number.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Marriott own homes and Villas?
A: Yes. Marriott owns and manages full-service hotels, extended stay hotels, resorts, vacation properties and residential communities around the world.
Does Marriott own Airbnb?
Do Marriott homes and Villas count as elite nights?
A: Marriott Homes and Villas are elite, but they are not counted towards your total number of nights.
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