Between the Marriot Vacation Club and the Marriott Grand Residence Club, Marriott has more than 50 timeshares available in their system. International resorts include one of the only timeshares located in London at the Park Street Grand Residence Club, and there are also resorts in France, Spain, Thailand and the US Virgin Islands.

In the US, Marriott Vacation Club has properties all over – with multiple properties in Hawaii, Florida, California, Colorado and South Carolina.

One extremely attractive advantage of Marriott timeshares is that they have a few metropolitan timeshares, such as the Custom House in Boston. There is also the Marriott’s Villas at Doral, close to Miami and Miami Beach, as well as the Canyon Villas in Phoenix. And then there is my personal favorite, Marriott’s Grand Chateau in Las Vegas, located half a block from the famous Las Vegas Strip.

If island life is more your travel style, then you will love the Marriot Vacation Club resorts in St Kitts, St Thomas, and Arubu.

For exchanges, Marriott trades with Interval International and they also have an internal trading advantage. So if you decide not to stay at your home resort for your next vacation, then you can deposit it with Interval International and book into another available Marriott resort without too many problems because Marriott owners are the only ones who can access Vacation Club properties when they are initially deposited into II.

Of course, Marriott resorts aren’t your only option. Interval International has access to many top resorts and as a Marriott owner it should be quite easy to travel to whatever destination and resort you desire to visit, as your resort will be a desirable destination in its own right, so it should mean easy trades for you as an owner.

When you plan on staying at your own resort, you get a priority booking window to make sure that you can book when the dates you need. This is 122 months at your home resort. If you own multiple weeks, this gets extended out to 13 months if you plan on booking those weeks consecutively.

There’s some flexibility built into vacation dates and length of stay as well. For example, you aren’t limited to checking in and out on Sundays. You can check-in on any weekend day, including Friday. You can also split your week up so if you want to have a weekend away someplace, you don’t waste your other nights. You can use those for a short stay someplace else or a second trip back to your home resort.

While Marriott is very pricey at developer’s costs, with resort ownership costing sometimes more than $80K, there are frequently great deals available if you want to find a Marriott Vacation Club resale. Marriott does have a right of first refusal option on any resales, so you aren’t likely to see any super bargains at giveaway prices, but in the long run that is better for you as an owner as well as it helps keep the price of resale timeshares higher.

Here’s my final tip for buying Marriott timeshares — consider purchasing a lock-off. With a lock-off unit, you can lock off one half of the unit to use yourself for a week and either rent out the other half, deposit it for exchange or use it to get an additional week’s vacation. It basically doubles the use and value of the unit so I think lock-off units are always your best bet when they are available.