Did DVC "Create" points at PVB?

[ziravan]

IMO the best was to use the fixed week is to get ahead by a year so one can reserve the week using points and take points on the next year. That way you potentially have both the extra points and the week you need. Worst case scenario is you don't get what you want on points and you keep the fixed week.

2014 points weren't available to be fixed, obviously, because Poly wasn't open in Nov, 2014. I've broken my fixed week for both 2015 and 2016 and taken points.

I will almost certainly break 2017 and 2018 as well. The fixed week isn't needed so long as percent of resort sold lags behind percent of inventory released, and that will be the case until sell out.

If having a fixed week is necessary at all, it will be after sell out. If it becomes necessary for a prime booking, then it will be an extremely valuable asset, especially considering that only something like 2% of contracts are fixed weeks.

If it turns out that a fixed week isn't necessary to routinely secure my week, I'll just break the fix and take the extra points each year for the next 50 years. It's no more difficult to do than to borrow points. It takes a call to MS to break the fix, or, you can do it online in conjunction with borrowing. The act of borrowing points from your fixed year breaks the fixed use.

I bought 168 points for a week that costs 153. If I break the fixed use, I have 168 points. It only costs me that extra 15 points to keep the fixed use and I would only do so if keeping it is necessary to the reservation.

If DVC decides to raise the Maximum Reallocation Amount, then it will be an even better deal (and that is the topic of this thread, a future reallocation to reduce bungalows points by increasing elsewhere). If the MRA were raised by a point, then the spread would be 168 vs 160. If they decide to raise the MRA by 2, then there would be almost no spread: 168 vs 167. If DVC did the unthinkable and raised the Lake View MRA by 3, fixed week for my week would be cheaper, 168 vs 174.

(In the last case, unused points from other fixed weeks would have to offset the need for DVC to supply points to make the fixed week reservation. If fixed weeks were more prevalent, that might be a problem, but they aren't. There are something like 50 fixed week Lake views sold and Poly is nearing 25% sold. At the same rate of sell, maybe 200 total fixed week Lake views would be sold. If every one of them used their week because an MRA increase of 3 made it cheaper, DVC would have to come up with 1,200 points to make those reservation. That would be annoying for DVC but certainly doable.)

(If the MRA for bungalows is 147 and the fixed week is 10% more at 162, then dropping the MRA to 122 like my example above would create a 40 points a night gap in regular vs fixed, or, 280 points for the week. 280 points just to use the fixed week would make me very unhappy if I were a Fixed Week Bungalow owner. There are only about 10 of those contracts now, but DVC would almost certainly have to offer them a better deal.)

If you bought a VGF studio, would it be worth 15 points to guarantee a studio every December?

It really is win-win. I only have to spend the extra points if that's necessary to secure the reservation. And, if it becomes necessary, the those points make the whole reservation possible. Those points will make the whole contract more valuable.

 

[ziravan]

If DVC created a third studio view, I think they'd have to offer all studio fixed weeks an opportunity to change the view of their contracts.

For Lake Views, most would keep current contracts I'd think. It's possible though, that someone purchased a Lake View studio with the intent to always request first floor.

If DVC follows standard nomenclature, the parking lot views would be the new standard view. That means current standard view fixed weeks should be given the opportunity to upgrade their fixed weeks to Garden/Pool.

If view doesn't matter to current standard fixed week owner, then keeping the parking lot view as fixed would be the cheapest stay AND best use of fixed points, as that new, small category will be like BWV standard and AKV value regarding booking patterns. Having a fixed week there would be ideal - and at only 38 rooms, only 13 fixed contracts per particular week could be sold. And they would likely sell during the first two weeks of Dec, meaning there would only be 25 rooms available to book at 11 months.

My guess is that these kinds of problems make the idea of purposely padding the bungalow numbers to be less likely. The fix will be messy.

(I'm sorry if this is dry. I was just thinking through the fallout if DVC reallocates, as the OP post predicts).