@RonDon Just to clarify, it is not Hilton Hotels doing the purchase, it is Hilton Grand Vacations. HGV was a division of Hilton Hotels at one time, but it became a separate, publicly-traded company in January 2017. It does have a 99-year marketing rights agreement with Hilton for use of the brand name and some other privileges.

I am an HGVC (Hilton Grand Vacations Club) owner. I can convert my HGVC points into HH points at a multiple, but the opposite does not apply. You can sometimes find excess inventory of HGVC units on the Hilton Hotels website for booking. You can pay cash or use HH points, or a combination of the two, just as with any Hilton-listed property, but you can't book directly into the HGVC system as only a Hilton Honors member.

I hope this change will be good for both HGVC and DRI owners. I also hope it will eventually make it easier for us to access some of the DRI resorts, and vice versa, instead of going through RCI. I would be especially interested in the Embarc portfolio, since it has properties in Canada, which HGVC does not. Embarc (formerly Club Intrawest) used to be affiliated with HGVC until DRI bought them out about 5 years ago. However, as I understand it, even under DRI there are no reciprocal arrangements currently between Embarc members and regular DRI members, so who knows?

I suspect it will be at least a couple of years before there are any real changes in terms of bookings for either DRI or HGVC owners, especially in terms of any reciprocal access. Marriott is still trying to make sense of its acquisition of Vistana and Hyatt vacation systems, after it bought out Starwood. In the short term, it just means the HGV executive team will take over the overall management and supervision of the DRI owned and/or managed resorts and the timeshare sales teams.