DVC Club Level and Home Resort Survey

[ljmiii]

I would, for example, enjoy having VB in the trust because it means my dues at VB would be lower, and typically it has not proven to be as popular a resort. So, as someone who loves staying there, this would perhaps be a "discount" over what I would otherwise have.

However, I would hate having VGF in the trust. My dues there are substantially lower than what I would have to pay if we were including VDH, RIV, AUL, and other resorts into the mix.

That's not how trusts and dues work. The trust would own VB points just like you do and would pay it's fair share of the total just like you do. The same is true for VGF and any other resorts the trust would own.

The only slight change is that dues for the points in the Trust would never be in arrears nor would the points go into default and so a resort with a substantial portion of its points in the Trust might see a slight decrease in dues increases.

 

[Sandisw]

I would replace "points" with "room nights." DVC would have to ensure that the distribution is somewhat equitable. If 10% of Riviera points are in the Trust, then 10% of all nights / room types would also be set aside for Trustees. It's basically two separate buckets--deeded vs Trust--with some crossover likely happening at 7 months.

In theory, yes it would be harder to get a Riviera room than if one is deeded at the single resort. Due to the increased competition. But Trust members are getting a booking advantage at multiple resorts. The question is whether they feel they can make that work in their favor.

I do not think they can take rooms and do that, at least not at the current resorts and the way the units were declared.

Right now, once declared, all owners have 100% access to all rooms each day…DVD has to follow the same rules to use their points as the rest of us.

So, if the trust has 10% of the resort, they don’t get to take 10% of the rooms each day away from deeded owners to offer to the trust..

Now, I think they can set new resorts and newly declared units differently…and amend the POS to account for it.

For example…they amend RIV POS that all new units declared moving forward will be sold as part of a trust and not deeded…then those can be there

I am not convinced they get to keep separate inventory that has already been declared and sold with deeded interests away from deeded owners.

 

[ljmiii]

I do not think they can take rooms and do that, at least not at the current resorts and the way the units were declared. Right now, once declared, all owners have 100% access to all rooms each day…DVD has to follow the same rules to use their points as the rest of us....

I am not convinced they get to keep separate inventory that has already been declared and sold with deeded interests away from deeded owners.

Exactly.

 

[tjkraz]

I do not think they can take rooms and do that, at least not at the current resorts and the way the units were declared.

Right now, once declared, all owners have 100% access to all rooms each day…DVD has to follow the same rules to use their points as the rest of us.

So, if the trust has 10% of the resort, they don’t get to take 10% of the rooms each day away from deeded owners to offer to the trust..

They can if they "buy" fixed weeks for the Trust.

Now, I think they can set new resorts and newly declared units differently…and amend the POS to account for it.

For example…they amend RIV POS that all new units declared moving forward will be sold as part of a trust and not deeded…then those can be there

I am not convinced they get to keep separate inventory that has already been declared and sold with deeded interests away from deeded owners.

The obvious place to start is the unsold resorts, where millions of points can still be declared. Riviera, Poly, Cabins, Aulani and VDH is a good combination with broad appeal. It remains to be seen if they even do anything with the older resorts. Frankly, if they make the questionable decision to add a few thousand points from the likes of BLT and VGF for marketing purposes, it won't matter much where the room inventory comes from.

 

[Sandisw]

They can if they "buy" fixed weeks for the Trust.


The obvious place to start is the unsold resorts, where millions of points can still be declared. Riviera, Poly, Cabins, Aulani and VDH is a good combination with broad appeal. It remains to be seen if they even do anything with the older resorts. Frankly, if they make the questionable decision to add a few thousand points from the likes of BLT and VGF for marketing purposes, it won't matter much where the room inventory comes from.

Thats true…they can sell the trust those… but then they need to offer them as fixed weeks to the trust members. They can’t sell the trust a fixed week and then allow it to be booked differently.

 

[mort1331]

Not only that, but if a resort never had fixed weeks, not sure they can up and change that. They make you purchase +10% to cover the possible of change in points. With older resorts,,kind of hard to do that if you cant add to the total points.

 

[tjkraz]

Thats true…they can sell the trust those… but then they need to offer them as fixed weeks to the trust members. They can’t sell the trust a fixed week and then allow it to be booked differently.

Fair point. We'll see. I'll be very surprised if there aren't some mechanisms in place to at least moderate the availability across the calendar. The Trust isn't going to be viable if availability at a given resort is used up within the first few months of the year or first week of each month.

 

[Sandisw]

Not only that, but if a resort never had fixed weeks, not sure they can up and change that. They make you purchase +10% to cover the possible of change in points. With older resorts,,kind of hard to do that if you cant add to the total points.

Which is why I just have a hard time believing they are going to even worry about adding points from the older resorts….starting with the 5 they can easily start with…it’s going to be a big carrot.

 

[walt34]

Which is why I just have a hard time believing they are going to even worry about adding points from the older resorts….starting with the 5 they can easily start with…it’s going to be a big carrot.

Unless they want to offer an upgrade (or downgrade) path for existing owners. This would leave them with points that have to go somewhere.

 

[Sandisw]

Fair point. We'll see. I'll be very surprised if there aren't some mechanisms in place to at least moderate the availability across the calendar. The Trust isn't going to be viable if availability at a given resort is used up within the first few months of the year or first week of each month.

Oh, I imagine that they will parse out their points to trust members so that their will always be something at the start from the resorts.

My issue will be the units that are already declared into the condo associations and being sold as deeded interest.

That is why I have said I see it best to just start with the five and then over time, when they can reacquire more and more of certain resorts that end in 2042, “enhance” the trust to give access to more resorts at 11 months vs 7 months.

Ideally, as a deeded owner, what would make me feel it’s meshing is rhat for the current sold out resorts, or units declared already under the current POS at RIV, AUL, and VDH, the trust holds back access to its points for those units until 10 months, so that at 11 months, deeded owners get their one month promised. It would be pretty easy to do if they want since there will be enough inventory for the new units that go straight to the trust to mask it.

 

[Sandisw]

Unless they want to offer an upgrade (or downgrade) path for existing owners. This would leave them with points that have to go somewhere.

Even if they offer a deeded owner to sell back to DVd their ownership interest snd now be part of the trust, it doesn’t change the nature of those units being declared as sold they way they did.

Again, it’s not points that go to the trust…they just represent the share of unit owned…but the rooms are all part of the condo association so no matter who owns, they still fsll under the same guidelines.

So, if I have a fractional share of Unit 11 and sell my share back to DVD, it just means they take over my ownership…but all rooms that make up part Unit 11 are still there.

 

[Bo1203]

If the current deeded system allowed for 11 month booking at any resort, my chances of getting a RIV standard studio would probably be zero. I’d probably be forced to stay at SSR. How will the trust avoid this?

 

[walt34]

Even if they offer a deeded owner to sell back to DVd their ownership interest snd now be part of the trust, it doesn’t change the nature of those units being declared as sold they way they did.

Do we know this from other timeshares that went the trust route that they cannot just offer those points to trust members to use?

I understand that this would be preferable for us legacy owners, but I don't see that they cannot do this from the contracts I've signed. It would basically be a large scale renting model, which is only prohibited for us mere mortals - not DVD.

And for DVD it would make it a much smoother process to 'upsell' legacy owners into the trust and directly integrate their points into the program.

 

[Nabas]

Cash is looking better and better with each passing day - book what you want, when you want, cancel what you want and when you want. Decide to go to WDW this year, decide to go somewhere else this year.

Including my original purchase price, I just paid $126 per night to stay in a Standard View Studio at the Boardwalk Villas.

Considering the cash rack rate price (tax included) for a similar Boardwalk Inn room for the same nights is $762 per night, I’m not sure that cash is looking better.

 

[Littlelulu01]

I do not think they can take rooms and do that, at least not at the current resorts and the way the units were declared.

Right now, once declared, all owners have 100% access to all rooms each day…DVD has to follow the same rules to use their points as the rest of us.

So, if the trust has 10% of the resort, they don’t get to take 10% of the rooms each day away from deeded owners to offer to the trust..

Now, I think they can set new resorts and newly declared units differently…and amend the POS to account for it.

For example…they amend RIV POS that all new units declared moving forward will be sold as part of a trust and not deeded…then those can be there

I am not convinced they get to keep separate inventory that has already been declared and sold with deeded interests away from deeded owners.

I’m not sure this is true I practice. You should try looking at Aulani 3 bedroom standard view. It is not available ever. I’ve been watching it for the last few years and it used to be available to book right at 11 months and also had a decent amount of dates pop up for booking. When it disappeared from inventory I first thought it was being refurbished. But it never came back into inventory. It is only available to book on cash. On the dvc side it’s taken out of inventory every day x forward booking dates. They did this with akv values a couple years back but members caught on to it and the rooms came back into the system very quickly. 3 bedroom standard is a great deal on points but the ocean view is not.

 

[MerlinandtheMouse]

Ideally, as a deeded owner, what would make me feel it’s meshing is rhat for the current sold out resorts, or units declared already under the current POS at RIV, AUL, and VDH, the trust holds back access to its points for those units until 10 months, so that at 11 months, deeded owners get their one month promised. It would be pretty easy to do if they want since there will be enough inventory for the new units that go straight to the trust to mask it.

I’m not sure why they would have to do this though. I don’t know if they have to make it 2 separate pools of pts/units, ever. Maybe I’m over simplifying it so I can understand better so I’m probably wrong here, but if the trust is just like you or I who gets to purchase X points through DVD then they should have 11mo access to whatever resorts are in their portfolio. And so, whoever “rents” or buys trust points from them also gets 11mo access to whatever resorts are in their portfolio. The only difference is if the trust owns 1000 RIV pts, 2000 VDH pts, 2000 AUL pts, 3000 CFW pts, 3000 Poly pts, 100 VGF pts and 100 BCV pts then trust purchasers only have that pool of points to work with at 11mo, right?

I also think as people buy into the trust, aka the trust buys more deeded pts from undeclared resorts, the more that ultimately is declared for all of DVD (Including for us deeded owners) because that’s what would happen if there was a lot of purchases by deeded random/individual owners at the resorts.

The question still remains that when someone purchases from the trust, and therefore the trust can purchase more deeded points for itself, how does the trust allocates the purchase of its points amongst the resorts in its portfolio. I guess the simplest answer would be to distribute it equally amongst the undeclared units in the portfolio. So if someone purchases 100 trust pts and the portfolio of active resorts includes RIV, VDH, CFW, AUL, and Poly2, then the trust in turn purchases 20pts at each resort, until the resorts are fully declared and sold out.

Of course, it’s very different for sold out resorts but I still think this works but only as the trust picks up more and more resale pts at sold out resorts. I think they’ll likely start ROFRing a lot of pts over the course of the next few years and once they have a good amount of resale pts at the legacy resorts then it will add them to the trust portfolio. I agree I think it would be a bad idea to add sold out resorts from the onset so they’ll probably wait.

If the trust spreads its pts evenly throughout the year and actually sticks to only the amount of pts it owns at each resort then I don’t think it’ll add too much more competition for deeded owners but make it very difficult for trust owners. If they don’t distribute their pts over the year and let trust owner book all of the 1000 RIV pts at once then it might make already hard to get times/rooms a bit more difficult but once the amount of pts owned by the trust are finished then they have no more pts to use until 7mo where trust owners will be left with few choices. Idk seems like a bit of a lose/lose for trust owners but I’m sure I’m missing something.

Is my understanding wrong here? As long as they keep it like this I’d be ok with it, I probably still wouldn't buy into it, but ultimately, I think DVD is going to try to make the trust more appealing so they probably won’t follow these rules so that’s where we deeded owners will have to be more vigilant in making sure whatever has been promised to us isn’t compromised.

 

[zavandor]

Fair point. We'll see. I'll be very surprised if there aren't some mechanisms in place to at least moderate the availability across the calendar. The Trust isn't going to be viable if availability at a given resort is used up within the first few months of the year or first week of each month.

I've read in a previous post that other trusts allow each month to use 1/12 of the points owned at that resort.

I also think if they declare in the trust units in a resort that sells also deeded points, they have to set aside a percentage of nights for each unit type to be booked.
If they allow free for all at 8am and 100k trust owners compete with a few hundreds deeds owners for the high demand rooms (think Poly duo studios), most of those will go to trust owners just by sheer power of numbers.
Instead, if the trust owns 20% of points at Poly, they can set aside 20% of nights for duo studios, deluxe studios at the tower, 1BR, 2BR, bungalows and longhouse studios spread evenly over the year.
It goes against the most restrictive interpretation of the existing POS, but it's difficult to argue it's unfair for anyone.
Other systems have enrolled existing resorts into their trusts and they've resisted legal challenge. That creates a precedent. It's hard to think DVC will give up on free money created out of thin air (upwelling existing owners into the trust). If they ask, for example $25-100pp to enroll, it's potentially billions of almost pure profit.

 

[tjkraz]

If the current deeded system allowed for 11 month booking at any resort, my chances of getting a RIV standard studio would probably be zero.

Trust owners would have 11 month booking rights to multiple resorts. It's basically impossible to predict trends. But not every owner in the Trust is looking to book the same resort / room type / view / dates.

Besides, someone would have to be in that room. Why not you?

I’d probably be forced to stay at SSR. How will the trust avoid this?

They will need to have some sort of controls in place to balance things out. If the trust owns 10% of Riviera, its collective members can only book 10% of all availability. The deeded owners holding 90% of the points have access to 90% of availability.

Exactly how rooms would be doled out is unknown. But the Trust's 11-month reservations would be hard capped at its total ownership level. It makes sense for the Trust to limit how owners collectively spend points on a daily basis. It could be something as simple as allowing 1/365th of the points to be used to book Riviera accommodations each day.

Riviera represents 6.74 million DVC points. If 10% are placed in the trust that's about 674,000 points. Hypothetically, DVC could allow Trust owners to book about 1835 points worth of Riviera accommodations per Use Day at 11 months on a first-come, first-served basis. Annualized that would add up to the 670k. Or, if permitted, DVC could set aside a certain number of rooms for Trust participants to book. But over the course of the year, those rooms could NOT exceed 670k points.

Whatever the case, Trust owners could NOT collectively book more than 670k worth of Riviera accommodations at 11 months. Deeded owners would be holding the other 6.066 million Riviera points, and have 11 month access to 6.066 million points worth of rooms.

 

[Bo1203]

Besides, someone would have to be in that room. Why not you?

I'm picturing Moonlight Magic like registration ques to book a studio at RIV/DH/Poly as a trust owner.

IMO a trust model subsidizes poorly selling, expensive to maintain resorts by bundling them with popular better selling resorts. Hope I'm wrong and there's some creative solution for trust owners who own millions of AUL points with no intentions of buying airfare.

 

[tjkraz]

I'm picturing Moonlight Magic like registration ques to book a studio at RIV/DH/Poly as a trust owner.

Yes, some things will be difficult as a Trust owner.

IMO a trust model subsidizes poorly selling, expensive to maintain resorts by bundling them with popular better selling resorts. Hope I'm wrong and there's some creative solution for trust owners who own millions of AUL points with no intentions of buying airfare.

I agree that's true. Other Trusts seem to have greater problems with members not wanting to even stay at undesirable resorts.

However, DVC is a little different in that every resort is appealing to guests. It's more an issue of people not wanting to buy at non-park locations. Aulani reservations can be very difficult to come by. Same is true of both Hilton Head and Vero--especially during summer and holiday periods.

The problem with those DVC locations is that few people see the value in owning. They'd prefer to own a WDW or DL resort and "take their chances" at 7 months.

I think we're all assuming there will be some 7 month crossover between the two systems. So whatever Aulani rooms Trust owners don't book will be gobbled up by others. And Trustees can book BLT, AKV, SSR or whatever they wish.