The key thing here is that they haven't declared the inventory
yet. Future inventory increases are essentially pre-declarations, where they demonstrate an intent to declare additional inventory at that future date, rather than declaring it today.
Max inventory on any given date-of-stay is roughly equal to what is declared at that time. What's available to book in the future is a projection of what will be declared in the future.
I'll try to help with a visualization. Here's a chart of a hypothetical resort's points sold over time vs. declarations vs. max inventory:
View attachment 801901
A breakdown:
- The green line for "Declared Units (in points)" must always be greater than the blue line. Must.
- The blue sales line represents actual sales by X date.
- DVC's MO is not to have 'inventory dumps' where they add a bunch of inventory to all bookable dates due to a declaration. They've demonstrated they'd rather provide that inventory somewhat invisibly at the 11m booking window.
- I suspect this is because it makes booking easier for owners during the sales period and reduces complaints about how hard it is to book at an on-sale resort. There's also 'fairness' complaints if someone couldn't book something at 11m as an owner but it becomes readily available for anyone at 3m due to declarations. It also reduces unused rooms.
- Because of this, they must forecast the blue line and then plan the declarations (green line) to always be above the forecasted sales.
- They must do this at least a year in advance so that they can then make Max Posted Inventory (yellow) available for owners at 11m.
- What I do is monitor the yellow line, which is information provided via the booking tool, and is roughly inline with planned declarations (there is some wiggle room with breakage, buybacks, etc.).
- This gives me a glimpse into what they expect in the future
- It's also useful for everyone to know how much is currently bookable at 11m, in my opinion
- Plus I also monitor OCRW for actual declaration paperwork, but that happens on X date, not before it needs to happen