I'm exploring Interval and trying to see what might be available. Is it possible to see exchange availability before depositing points to Interval? If anyone has steps of how to do that, that would be awesome!
Yes. I also thought I was doing something wrong because there is so little available via exchange in the areas I selected for the search. You also have to put date dates in by your keypad and not the calendar shown or it keeps going back to todays date.
On a brighter note when I selected getaways there seemed to be some good values in the Myrtle beach area where I can rent a 2BR oceanfront for around1000-1200 . I would only need to rent about 80ish points for this.
My understanding is what you see currently available are "leftovers". It sounds like a lot of exchanges are filled through ongoing searches so you never see them. You can do a Request First (no need to deposit points up front) and your points are taken if you get a match and confirm.
To your first question: Yes. As for the "how to ... " read on below?
Reaching the Interval International Portal for DVC:
Log into your DVC account
From the Menu Bar, navigate to Destinations > Interval International Vacations
Scroll down to find and click the [Book with Interval Online] button
Read Pop-Up dialog titled "Redirecting to Interval International" and click the [Continue] button.
The dialog gives outline of important steps -- but these do not match my experience; perhaps because I've already been hunting in Interval??
The Interval International page for DVC members has a tabbed interface. At present, these tabs are:
Exchange - Reservations requiring the exchange of your DVC points; offers both weekly exchanges and short-stay exchanges
Getaways - Reservations booked on Cash but not DVC points; offers both both weekly and short-stay reservations
Benefits - documents outlining the benefits
Resort Directory - self explanatory?
Starting your Search
Each of the Exchange and Getaway options are different searches. From here, my notes will continue through a Weekly Exchange process of "all destinations" for "all time periods."
From the Exchange Tab, click on Vacation Exchange
From the radio button control, choose "Search All Destinations"
In the date controls, select your earliest travel date (even tomorrow?) and pick the farthest end date available (2 years out). For my search today, my dates are 1/11/2022 through 1/10/2024
Choose how many people will travel. (FWIW, I ignore this field ... the results generally show you all units of all sizes ... so why bother?)
Click the [Continue] button
On the "My Units" page, click the [Vacation Exchange] button
JACK POT! The next page is your list of resulting destinations.
The top of this page indicates the number of points DVC thinks you have available to complete the exchange. This number is likely shaping the results; if you have very few points your choices will be fewer than someone searching with a higher number of available points. (?)
The results are chunked by region. Select a region of interest to see which resort destinations, dates and unit sizes are available! Now to explore those results!
My interests are generally close to home ... drive to destinations so I'll start with USA>California>San Diego to find 3 resorts (two Welk in Escondido; one destination in Ramona) with a variety of check-in dates and unit types. For any given line item, I can see the number of DVC points required to book that exchange. I'm currently seeing 1BR units at 120 DVC points; 2BR units at 180 DVC points and one 2BR unit at 230 DVC points.
To explore another area, click the "All Available Destinations" link shown just above the results. This will bring you back to the page of all results ... ready to dive into another region.
