Commerical Use Policy Update - New Thread!

[Mouseforward]

Interesting ... the national park service was plagued by "walkers" (who knew it existed outside of our little world) and they instituted a policy to stop it.

Why Does the Waiting Period for Modifications and Cancellations Exist?​

The Waiting Period for Modifications and Cancellations prevents those customers who have confirmed reservations from continuously extending their reservations before other customers have a chance to book the newly available sites. It ensures that newly released campsites are available to everyone before an existing reservation can “slide” into it. This rule is necessary to ensure fairness to all campers to have a chance at securing a campsite at highly coveted locations.

For reservations that include dates beyond the end of the available booking window, you are not able to make changes or cancel your reservation until four days after the site is available to the general public. For more information, please read the No Modification Rule for Reserved Nights Beyond the Booking Window Help Center article.

Walking is, to me, a separate issue with a separate solution like you posted.

I would never walk a room if no one else walked a room. Who want's the extra work? But since it is left unchecked, I will walk since I am at a disadvantage at getting a room if I don't. The only way to stop the cycle is as you posted above.

Putting this rule in place like the Parks would not realistically hinder anyone. I think we would all be happier.

 

[Sandisw]

Everyone keeps bringing up lost hotel revenue, assuming Disney corporate is somehow competing with DVC renters. But that’s not really how it works.

If Disney truly saw DVC rentals as competition with its own hotel bookings, properties like Big Pine Key (BPK) or Poly Island Tower (PIT) would never have happened—they would have remained hotels, or reopened, as traditional cash-only hotels.

BPK is the best example: Walt Disney World’s hotel division effectively said, “We can’t reliably book these rooms at profitable rates, so it’s better to lease them to Disney Vacation Development (DVD) for the next 40 years.” In doing so, WDW Hotels got an upfront lease payment for the property, and the DVD division earned revenue selling decades’ worth of reservations through DVC points.

As long as the points for those rooms are sold, DVD has already been paid for renting out that room for 40 years in advance. And since both DVD and WDW Hotels are under the same corporate umbrella, the Walt Disney Company benefits either way.

Some argue Disney could earn $1,000 per night from cash guests in those rooms—but the economic reality is they weren’t getting that consistently before converting properties like BPK to DVC. Instead, Disney secured, say, $30,000 upfront for renting the same room for the same week each year over 40 years, plus they effectively offloaded staffing and maintenance costs to DVC owners through dues.

And if the rooms sit empty, it’s Walt Disney World’s parks and restaurants that care more, since DVC members or renters are highly likely to visit the parks and dine on property—generating revenue elsewhere.

Does Disney care whether it’s a DVC owner or a renter occupying the room? Not really. The room was already sold for the next 40 years, and Disney’s profit came when the points were originally purchased. As long as a park going, restaurant eating ,warm body is in the room they make the same money.

Considering Disney keeps building new DVC properties and converting existing hotels into timeshares, it’s clear they prefer this model.

Contrast that with Universal, which partners with Loews Hotels to build and manage its signature resorts. Neither company aggressively pursues luxury hotel cash rentals as a primary revenue driver the way people often assume Disney does.

Add CFW to this! And now LSL is being built for DVC.

So, you are right…and Disney learned during COVID that it could keep its own resorts shuttered for longer because DVCs had to open, saving them from having to run so many resorts mostly empty.

The other thing is that Disney is very strategic in offering cash guests upgrades to unsold rooms at the mods and deluxes, so then can sell more of the values that may have been sold out.

 

[Mouseforward]

Add CFW to this! And now LSL is being built for DVC.

So, you are right…and Disney learned during COVID that it could keep its own resorts shuttered for longer because DVCs had to open, saving them from having to run so many resorts mostly empty.

The other thing is that Disney is very strategic in offering cash guests upgrades to unsold rooms at the mods and deluxes, so then can sell more of the values that may have been sold out.

There is no way a publicly traded corporation who thought they were actually losing revenue due to renting would hold off since 2011 updating a policy. They live and die quarter by quarter every year.. They also hire some of the best business analysts in the country who would’ve figured this out decades ago.

This is not being driven by hotel or WDW revenue.

I think the only driver to this is member satisfaction and Ihearing our complaints. That is the only thing that would make sense considering how slow they’re implementing these changes.

It makes sense with new resorts opening up that member satisfaction is coming up to the forefront and that they would now start to implement changes. I think this is all about selling Lakeside, and possibly pressure from the sales team to address a complaint they get.

If there there’s a business loss for renting, it may be the sales team that sees a loss from. “I don’t need to buy points because I can just rent. “

 

[TCRAIG]

I called MS today and unfortunately, had one of the worse agents I’ve ever had…the purpose of the call was to combine 4 of my reservations made under the same membership, resort, room type, etc where I was able to add a day and also to be sure that any of my reservations that used different member numbers were marked as ‘continuing stay’. I ask him about renting and how that would work going forward and he said that no renting was allowed at all ever…(sigh)…I told him that wasn’t true - that we were allowed to rent but that we could not engage in commercial renting. He asked if I wanted him to get clarification from a supervisor and I agreed. Thirty minutes later all he could say was to go to My Docs and read up on renting…he really was no help at all!

 

[Mouseforward]

(including by refusing to by BWV for my personal use and always booking VGC and BCV at 11mo)

I took a slightly different approach and just paid a ridiculous per point sum to buy 15 points at BW. It was the coincidence of my arguing in this thread that we are not promised SV and a tiny contract offered in my use year that made me do it.

Basically I purchased BW first , before I learned about DVC and thought I could " get my week" on 100 points. I now know that in many resorts there are not enough SV rooms ( BLT , BW , even RIV) and you may not get one at 11 months. So I adapted.

 

[TCRAIG]

I took a slightly different approach and just paid a ridiculous per point sum to buy 15 points at BW. It was the coincidence of my arguing in this thread that we are not promised SV and a tiny contract offered in my use year that made me do it.

Basically I purchased BW first , before I learned about DVC and thought I could " get my week" on 100 points. I now know that in many resorts there are not enough SV rooms ( BLT , BW , even RIV) and you may not get one at 11 months. So I adapted.

I eyeballed those mini-point BW resale contracts but since I needed 50 points more for BW, I just couldn’t justify multiple closing costs in addition to the high price…I was able to grab a great deal on a 50 pointer last week so it all worked out…
Something else to remember, DVC can and has rebalanced the points charts over time so the points that were enough to book only the cheapest views at the cheapest times…may not enough in the future…

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

Interesting ... the national park service was plagued by "walkers" (who knew it existed outside of our little world) and they instituted a policy to stop it.

This is the kind of solution I think would be liveable (though not ideally for me personally) but only if implemented AFTER finding a way to get rid of spec renting and bots/scripts that can snag reservations at 8:00:01. If they implemented it before, it would actually be hideously terrible for your average DVC member who doesn't have 200k worth of points, because the big commercial owners could book the dates they actually want and 7 days ahead of it, then just wait until 4 days have passed to drop or add points...and probably have enough points to cascade rolling reservations that can be combined after that 4 day freeze ends. I understand and accept that members with 1000 points in a single UY should have some advantages over those who split between different years (or don't have many points), but they should not be able to use those advantages to maximize profitability of rental bookings at peak times.

If Disney truly saw DVC rentals as competition with its own hotel bookings, properties like Big Pine Key (BPK) or Poly Island Tower (PIT) would never have happened—they would have remained hotels, or reopened, as traditional cash-only hotels.

BPK is the best example: Walt Disney World’s hotel division effectively said, “We can’t reliably book these rooms at profitable rates, so it’s better to lease them to Disney Vacation Development (DVD) for the next 40 years.” In doing so, WDW Hotels got an upfront lease payment for the property, and the DVD division earned revenue selling decades’ worth of reservations through DVC points.

Respectfully, I think the BPK conversion makes the opposite point you are intending. Disney had a certain total number of rooms at VGF, they decided they couldn't price it the way they wanted and fill 100% of those rooms so they spun of BPK into a timeshare unit, for personal use of owners... if 100% of owners are renting, they would be back in the same situation, unable to fill their other rooms at pricing they are expecting.

The PIT and LSL add ons are a bit more complicated, but Disney did not care about filling rooms as much when PIT and LSL were greenlit because WDW was growing and attracting record guest levels and not having trouble filling their hotel rooms (absent the COVID period) for much of the past decade. I think Disney was potentially asleep at the wheel and not realizing how much renting had increased and didn't even care to find out until they had to start releasing deep discount after discount to fill rooms. The fact that member services keeps telling people they can't rent or are only allowed to use points for themselves, their friends, and family suggests that Disney also thinks rentals are hurting their bottom line-- if they were just trying to stop the most egregious commercial renting, there'd be no reason to push that narrative out to members with 200 points or less when they called to change names on reservations.

 

[AstroBlasters]

The more I think about this, the more pissed off I become. I’ll be sending daily emails to member services about this.

I’ll now be pushing for all renting to be eliminated. I will be pursuing a vote, and campaigning for the rank and file to vote to put a halt to all renting.

So…. maybe just don’t think about it and save yourself hours of pointless stress and frustration…. or just sell your contracts….

 

[Mouseforward]

Respectfully, I think the BPK conversion makes the opposite point you are intending. Disney had a certain total number of rooms at VGF, they decided they couldn't price it the way they wanted and fill 100% of those rooms so they spun of BPK into a timeshare unit, for personal use of owners... if 100% of owners are renting, they would be back in the same situation, unable to fill their other rooms at pricing they are expecting.

The PIT and LSL add ons are a bit more complicated, but Disney did not care about filling rooms as much when PIT and LSL were greenlit because WDW was growing and attracting record guest levels and not having trouble filling their hotel rooms (absent the COVID period) for much of the past decade. I think Disney was potentially asleep at the wheel and not realizing how much renting had increased and didn't even care to find out until they had to start releasing deep discount after discount to fill rooms. The fact that member services keeps telling people they can't rent or are only allowed to use points for themselves, their friends, and family suggests that Disney also thinks rentals are hurting their bottom line-- if they were just trying to stop the most egregious commercial renting, there'd be no reason to push that narrative out to members with 200 points or less when they called to change names on reservations.

Disney has built how many new deluxe hotel rooms in the 24 years? - Zero
In fact they have reduced their Deluxe hotel rooms by carving out Jambo house , BPK , and Copper Creek.
They have abandoned any plans in the deluxe or upscale market, as they can not fill rooms.

Rentals have no effect on this, as no one is renting at rates close to the cash room rate they need to get to make the deluxe resorts profitable. A significant portion of the Deluxe occupancy consists of discounted upsell from value and moderate rooms.

If 100% of owners are renting , Disney does not care because the owners money for that room is already in their bank account. The people renting already made the choice not to pay Disney's rates. The simple economic reality is that hotel rooms are only worth what the market will pay, and they will not pay the rates Disney is asking for deluxe. No one would rent a DVC studio and give up the daily Housekeeping, and Disneys liberal cancelation policy, assume the 3rd party risk unless the rooms were so overpriced at the hotel, providing such limited value for the dollar, that it forced them to look somewhere else.

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

Disney has built how many new deluxe hotel rooms in the 24 years? - Zero

So you’re saying Disney knows it doesn’t need more deluxe room capacity, right?

In fact they have reduced their Deluxe hotel rooms by carving out Jambo house , BPK , and Copper Creek.
They have abandoned any plans in the deluxe or upscale market, as they can not fill rooms.

Again, commercial renters add back these rooms.

Rentals have no effect on this, as no one is renting at rates close to the cash room rate they need to get to make the deluxe resorts profitable. A significant portion of the Deluxe occupancy consists of discounted upsell from value and moderate rooms.

This is wrong. There are plenty of people (including myself) who first check if a rental is available at their preferred resort(s) and if they cannot get one, proceed to pay much higher cash rates to stay on the hotel side (or get the villa direct from Disney).
Additionally, as has been mentioned repeatedly on the prior thread, Disney’s cash rates (with various promotional sales) are now sometimes converging with what spec renters charge for desirable studios. If travel to U.S. generally and WDW specifically keeps declining, we will see both Disney hotels and spec rentals decline—but if travel to WDW (demand) increases faster than rental availability, prices of hotel rooms will rise.
Again, you personally may only be willing/able to afford Disney Deluxe hotels at DVC rates, but there are many regular visitors who could pay Disney’s asking rate (and would if there was no alternative) but prefer to save 20-40% by renting. For those who can’t/won’t pay it, many will can stay at moderate or value rooms.

If 100% of owners are renting , Disney does not care because the owners money for that room is already in their bank account. The people renting already made the choice not to pay Disney's rates. The simple economic reality is that hotel rooms are only worth what the market will pay, and they will not pay the rates Disney is asking for deluxe.

I think our conversation would be more productive if you studied the dynamics of supply and demand, and then applied them to the present discussion.

No one would rent a DVC studio and give up the daily Housekeeping, and Disneys liberal cancelation policy, assume the 3rd party risk unless the rooms were so overpriced at the hotel, providing such limited value for the dollar, that it forced them to look somewhere else.

This is your opinion being stated as fact. Disney could drop their prices to current rental prices and if commercial renters then discounted another 10-25%, plenty of people would keep renting to save the difference, because they don’t care about daily housekeeping (or actively dislike it) and don’t want the cancellation flexibility more than savings. BWV studio rentals and BWI hotel rooms are the same basic product with a 20-30% price gap, which is roughly what the market values the differences you point out above—but it doesn’t mean Disney hotels are overpriced, rather that Disney can only price them so much more than the competing rental businesses offering the same product in bulk.

What is your theory as to why Disney used to be able to routinely sell out its hotels on Crescent Lake for over $650 and is now discounting them below $500 on a regular basis (and also doing stealth upsales from moderates)? Are you suggesting that BWI and BCH somehow have less value than they did two years ago? That WDW visitors are getting poorer?

 

[Mouseforward]

So you’re saying Disney knows it doesn’t need more deluxe room capacity, right?

I am saying they know can't fill any more at the rates they need to charge to be profitable.

Again, commercial renters add back these rooms.

No, no convoluted logic adds back the room. They leased the rooms to DVC and were paid for them. The renters passed on cash rooms and looked elsewhere. The assumption that most people check DVC rental sites before Disneys site is not very logical to me.

This is wrong. There are plenty of people (including myself) who first check if a rental is available at their preferred resort(s) and if they cannot get one, proceed to pay much higher cash rates to stay on the hotel side (or get the villa direct from Disney).
Additionally, as has been mentioned repeatedly on the prior thread, Disney’s cash rates (with various promotional sales) are now sometimes converging with what spec renters charge for desirable studios. If travel to U.S. generally and WDW specifically keeps declining, we will see both Disney hotels and spec rentals decline—but if travel to WDW (demand) increases faster than rental availability, prices of hotel rooms will rise.
Again, you personally may only be willing/able to afford Disney Deluxe hotels at DVC rates, but there are many regular visitors who could pay Disney’s asking rate (and would if there was no alternative) but prefer to save 20-40% by renting. For those who can’t/won’t pay it, many will can stay at moderate or value rooms.

I am personally getting a cash room this labor day @BC only because the AP rate is more in line with the quality of the room and slightly above what I would have to pay a from the board sponsor @27 / point. I would not pay the same money for more risk and less benefits and that is a safe assumption for most consumers. A room at the Swan with a balcony and guaranteed view is only $25 less so that would have been my next choice before renting but it is an inferior good to a WDW resort. For me I need about a $50 a night difference to consider renting or going to a S/D. All consumers make value and risk judgments.

DVC owners are not typical , most tourists don't check rental sites , and when they do they don't understand the process and don't like the perceived risk and need to pay upfront. You get the ads for them because you visit DVC related sites , most people don't.

I think our conversation would be more productive if you studied the dynamics of supply and demand, and then applied them to the present discussion.

Thats just an inappropriate comment, what is not productive is to make an assumption that everyone is dumb and you are the smartest guy in the room.


As far as your perception of hotel prices in Crescent lake they have risen 31% in the past 10 years thats above CSI , so in relation yes people are seeing less value.

 

[Sandisw]

I called MS today and unfortunately, had one of the worse agents I’ve ever had…the purpose of the call was to combine 4 of my reservations made under the same membership, resort, room type, etc where I was able to add a day and also to be sure that any of my reservations that used different member numbers were marked as ‘continuing stay’. I ask him about renting and how that would work going forward and he said that no renting was allowed at all ever…(sigh)…I told him that wasn’t true - that we were allowed to rent but that we could not engage in commercial renting. He asked if I wanted him to get clarification from a supervisor and I agreed. Thirty minutes later all he could say was to go to My Docs and read up on renting…he really was no help at all!

And this is exactly what I put into my response emails (so far three of them in addition to the letter).....they are misleading and even outright telling people things that are untrue. when it comes to renting.

It is why the MS supervisor I talked to was going to forward my complaint that they need to train them better to say "renting for commerical purposes is not allowed....because when I actually asked her to confirm that the T & C said "personall use is not frequenlty or regularly...." she said yes, it does say that.

She said that this all are learning and its been only a monthy since they had added this additional feature. Hopefully, owners will continue to complain to MS.

I find it interesting you did not get sent to a supervisor, and if I had to guess, its because they know they are getting tons of questions based on misinformation being given.....maybe, at least, this will spark DVC into sending information to all owners by way of Notification on the website, explaining things more clearly, especially when they say there is no new policy, which is a factual statement since the one still in effect was written in 2011.

 

[Cyberc1978]

I’ve honestly stopped complaining when I know I get wrong answers.

I just put it in the review of my conversation with the CM. Mention them by name and ask that they get more training.

However I rarely call I always chat.

 

[Sandisw]

I’ve honestly stopped complaining when I know I get wrong answers.

I just put it in the review of my conversation with the CM. Mention them by name and ask that they get more training.

However I rarely call I always chat.

I think that counts! I think its just important that people continue to give them feedback.....because IMO, I am seeing a lot more peole sharing frustrations with this whole thing than before and saying they are contacting DVC to express their displeasure about the experience.

 

[Cyberc1978]

I think that counts! I think its just important that people continue to give them feedback.....because IMO, I am seeing a lot more peole sharing frustrations with this whole thing than before and saying they are contacting DVC to express their displeasure about the experience.

I know from past experience that if I tell the CM that (s)he is wrong will put me on hold until a supervisor is available and that will end with much time spend.

The chat function is great and almost everything can be accomplished.

Which reminds me that I need to buy MMB for my wife and get the 12/24 OTUP. Now I need to call