Caution: Promotions Don’t Always Save You Money

Owning a timeshare in a resort has many benefits. One of my favorite upsides is the freedom provided by having our own kitchen. As much as I enjoy eating out, I also love waking up and being able to make breakfast without having to head out.

It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-social in the morning, (although waking up and having to spend my breakfast time with 200 other vacationers isn’t really my idea of fun), on vacation I have an expensive scuba diving habit, so I’ve never been too comfortable with just how much it costs to have a simple breakfast at a resort. A croissant, a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee can easily set you back $15-$20 at a mid-range resort – and that’s when you get up and serve yourself! For a family on vacation for a week, this can get very expensive, very quickly. (And could easily fund a dive or two!)

This is the reason why Marriott’s ‘Hot Deals’ page caught my eye: “Experience Dining YOUR way at Marriott Villas in Hawaii”. In honour of the Hawaiian Film Festival, Marriott is offering packages which give you a daily food and beverage credit that can be used at their Hawaiian Vacation Club properties. The promotion details are below and it runs through December 2014.

“Experience dining YOUR way with Marriott Vacation Club® in Hawaii! Enjoy a nightly food and beverage credit of up to $75 to spend on-site during your stay!
Escape to the Hawaiian islands for a spectacular villa vacation and let us provide you with some spending money for your stay.”

“Enjoy a nightly dining credit to use at select on-site food and beverage locations as well as The MarketPlace. Grab a coffee, some snacks, breakfast, lunch, ice cream, a tropical drink by the pool and more…our treat!”

“The credit is:
• $60 per night at our resorts on Kauai and
Maui
• $75 per night at our resort on Oahu”

“Enhance your villa vacation with $60-$75 per night to spend during your stay. Book today and experience dining YOUR way!“

I should point out that this is an offer for those purchasing a stay at one of Marriott’s Hawaii timeshare resorts directly from Marriott and not for those renting from owners or staying at their own resort so it already involves paying over the odds for the accommodation.

Nevertheless, I found it interesting. We’ll occasionally book a night or two directly from Marriott if we want to stay somewhere a little longer than just the weeks we own, so the opportunity to get some F&B credit could come in useful.

To check prices at the participating resorts you add the code “EAT” to your search and Marriott’s online search engine does the rest. I picked an arbitrary week in November, at Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club Napili & Lahaina Villas, to see what I’d be offered:

The cheapest rate offered with the $60/day F&B credit was $524/night (plus taxes) for a 1-bedroom villa with a “garden view”. This seemed expensive so I thought I’d see just how much a unit would cost if I took out the promotional code:

Suddenly I was offered the exact same unit for $399/night (plus taxes). It turns out that the $60 F&B credit was actually costing an extra $125 per night! Sure, the more expensive rate allowed me to cancel right up until 14 days before check-in, whereas the cheaper rate required full payment up front, but even so!

In this case, it may make sense for someone who was going to book a ‘semi-flexible rate’ to consider this F&B package, but even then the deal isn’t as good as it first seems. The same room with the same cancellation policy for the same dates, just without the F&B credit, was listed at $499/night (plus taxes). That makes the advertized $60 F&B credit really only worth $35 per night and that’s hardly a massive ‘promotion’ is it?

The moral of the story is this:

If you’re thinking of booking a ‘promotional rate’, make sure you understand exactly how much it’s costing you, compared to the regular rate. Hotels rarely give away much for free, so somehow they are getting their money back for whatever ‘extras’ they throw in – it’s up to you, as the educated consumer, to find out how they’re doing it.