Advice on holding points

[schoen]

I have 38 points in holding. I am planning a May trip, I am interested in a 2 bedroom at Old Key West that is coming up as 144 points. Right now there is full availability, but I assume that will change. The holding points are banked 2022 points, and we have a June Use Year. We have all 300 of our 2023 points available, but I am wondering if there is ANY way to use these holding points for the May reservation.

I often apply my Hilton head points to reservations at 7 months, which gives me back my OKW points. I feel like that isn’t possible in this situation though, because even if I *could* apply the points at 60 days it would just free up 2023 OKW points that needed to be banked in January of 2024.

Does anyone have experience using holding points that could give me some insight?

TIA!

 

[drusba]

You are correct that the point exchange you could get will probably not make a difference. Absent contacting MS and begging for and getting an exception from the rules (unlikely), those holding points cannot possibly be used in any reservation until 60 days out from date of arrival. If you make your May 2024 reservation now using regular June 2023 points, you could then do a modification of that reservation in March 2024 that replaces June 2023 points with the holding points, but then those June 2023 points removed from the reservation would have to be used by end of May 2024.