Marriott Vacations Worldwide reviews

As I write this portion of the review I will refrain from mentioning any names as I believe this is to be a constructive review and not a bashful one. The Training Marriott Vacation Worldwide has to be one of the worse timeshare sales training I’ve ever participated in. The training is bland and vague. Nothing special and all done online through a zoom call. It is the type of training you would buy from Udemy and complain about it even thought you knew it might be bad since it cost you $13.99. The training was so poorly structured that within the class people would message each confused as to how Marriott actually had this in placed for reps to be successful. The trainers favorite line was “ Marriott is such a high end place to work in this industry you guys have to be the best of the best already so I don’t need to teach you anything…I’ll just give you pointers” That is just not how you train people for success when learning an entirely new product and business model. I give the training a 1 out of 10. Management Very one sided. This became clear to me very early on. This is primarily an Inhouse site for those of you who know the business. I was hired as a Frontline rep and that was my mistake. You cannot make any real money at this site as a Frontline rep because the structure of this site has always been designed to be a blended line. Without the opportunity to see owner tours your income will stay stagnant or near zero. Management knows this and they choose to power their inhouse machine because they have recruited the best of the best inhouse reps in all south Florida for their inhouse operation which makes millions a month. For that reason alone and since they are way over budget they could care less what happens to their frontline department. Meaning as long frontline hits their minimum VPG required, they will not move another stone and if that means only one or two reps are making money in frontline, then so be it. This went on for months while I was there and I was told it has been this way for years. Tour Flow In any typical day for the Frontline reps there won’t be sufficient clients. In fact I myself had an entire week where I drove an 1hr 1/2 to work which was my regular commute and never saw a tour. I was told it was their slow season, which being a seasoned timeshare rep I understood this, but things kept being fishy, specially when their inhouse department never slowed down the entire time I was there. So it because obvious we were not the focus and the tour flow would be light year round. I was told multiple times “It will pick up in a month” that turned into 2 months, then 3, then 4, then 5 and so on. It never got “busier” it was a consistent 6-10 tours at most for 11 reps. There was always someone who drove to work to stare at a wall. With this type of tour flow as a sales person for those who are in the business you know very well is hard to get any type of momentum to hit a bonus or to keep your VPG at a desirable state. So as VPGs started to dwindle many of my coworkers were put on performance including myself. While not only having to worry about making sales to feed our families, you also have the pressure of being let go because of your poor performance. Working at Marriott Frontline with their inconsistent tour flow is like trying to walk up a sand mountain and constantly sinking as you take your next step. Inhouse Runs the Show Many times I had clients that wanted to commit because they were referred by friends to do a presentation but were afraid of what might happen once they became owners. One of the couples who I would of closed a $45,000 deal making me around $5,000 in commission told me that they would only buy if I could answer them the following question…”How come my fiends who are owners with you guys for over 20 years have to pay back the company $150,000 due to the Hawaii fires?” This was obviously to me a pitch some inhouse rep had used to get someone to upgrade their ownership and had now created mistrust in the practices with not only my clients but their long time Marriott owner friends. As a Frontline rep one could not blow their cover as you would mostly be fired that day. So I was stuck smiling awkwardly and simply saying “that’s above my pay grade unfortunately, but anyways did you still want to spend $45,000 with me today?” This was just one example, the reality is the majority of the business this site writes is based on confusing elderly people who have owned this product for years and with made up pitches they get them to pour more money into their Marriott ownership. Pitches range from the promise of no maintenance fees, to renting out their points for a profit, to completely eliminating any potential fees associated with the service in the future if they just buy more… and while that works for a while, the majority of the people being manipulated out of their money will realize it at some point in the next 12-24 months and management will have to deal with these unfortunate practices that were used. The worse part is that management is aware, but since the are always over budget and receiving recognition for their “success” you can see why some people in management might turn a blind eye to these particular sales practices. We had inhouse reps making $100,000 in commissions some months due to these false pitches. I’ve been in the industry for almost 10 years now and I had never seen that type of performance, but it didn’t take me too long to realize what was really going on. Unfortunately as long as corporate doesn’t get involved, this type of illegal activity will continue to go on because the clientele is older and are not aware they are being exploited.