Booking Window Thought

[Larryct]

Just a thought, if Member Services could take your reservation on your check in day instead of your check out day, regardless of your length of stay, wouldn't this cut down on the number of calls to Member Services? i.e., calling every day to book one day at a time. Would all members have the same advantage?

 

[Hilary]

If the check-in day was used as the bench mark for the 11 or 7 months then I imagine there would be a lot of 'extended' vacations booked which are then cut down to fewer days later on!

For instance, if I wanted to reserve December 23 - 27 (and if I had enough points to play with), I could make an initial reservation from December 13 - 27, later cutting back the first 10 days I didn't really want but getting a 10 day steal on anyone else wanting Dec 23rd onwards.

 

[DebbieB]

I think they should leave it the way it is. It is a level playing field for people trying to get popular dates. I call day by day for BWV standard for early December, it would be possible that some of my nights would be already gone if people who arrived earlier already booked them.

 

[Richyams]

Hilary is exactly right.

This is the only way it could work.

 

[Doctor P]

The problem Hilary refers to occurs all the time at the state park lodges in Illinois. People book an extended vacation well before the holiday dates begin and then cut it back to the holiday dates after the few days pass to bring those high demand dates within the window for making reservations. It gives them a jump on the field.

 

[Dean]

To me the issue is with getting an entire stay booked. I agree with the potential for abuse but feel there are ways around it. Rules like having to cancel the entire reservation if a reseravation is made this way. Another options would be to require full week increaments OR no more than a week at a time. You could also ensure that a certain percentage of rooms are reserved, say no more than 50%. I do feel it is reasonable to ensure one can make their entire reservation rather than having to call one day at a time.

At the present time there are certain rules and we must follow those to be successful in booking. It's a fact that it's not convenient for many to call at 9 am every morning for a week. That's the current rules and if someone cannot do so, it's their responsbility. A change however would mean that person could arrange one day to do so rather than 5 or 6 over a week which is unlikely to be workable for them.

Marriott does this in a way. If you own more than one week you can book 13 months out instead of 12 as long as your booking concurrent or consecutive weeks. That's the main reason I bought a second Grande Ocean week. It worked great as we booked 2 units the same week next year July 5-12. They will only reserve up to 50% of the rooms.

The advantage to DVC would be that they will have far less phone calls. It also might encourage members to buy more points, especially if you made it where you could only use current points. I would agree that there are some negatives making it much harder and more difficult to implement for a points system where you can reserve day by day. This makes it unlikely to happen.

 

[sparkspeak]

Perhaps Member Services could note your desired length of stay on the initial call and temporarily "hold" (until noon?) that unit each following day until they receive your day by day calls. I'm fairly new at this but it seems that missing Wednesday out of a 7 day vacation would be very disappointing. I guess I was lucky to get 12/8-12/13/02 with one call on the 13th.

Is this a common problem or is it just for a few popular periods?