Do points for rooms/resorts go up yearly?

[beezerdave]

We are gearing up for a purchase of DVC and had another question. Do the point required per night at a resort go up from year to year? How does that work? I guess we had thought once we purchased we would be locked in but upon reflection could see that maybe the points per room per night might go up. TIA

 

[crisi]

Points for DVC resorts don't go up. They move around a little (Easter and Thanksgiving). In theory they can be adjusted, but the overall points can change...they can make weekends cheaper by making weekdays more expensive. Or they can make the first two weeks in December more expensive and decide to make mid-May cheaper. But they've only done something like that once - early in the program, and no one really expect it to happen again.

Now, any non-DVC options, from Disney resorts and cruises to staying at the Broadmoor, those prices can and do shift around every year, usually going up. The exchange fee was also raised in the recent past.

 

[Caskbill]

The points for the entire resort are fixed and cannot go up, so that basically answers your question. However be aware that there are fluctuations because of seasons. For example Thanksgiving and Easter vary year to year, but will be high season whenever they do occur.

Also points are different between weekday and weekends, so points within a given month may vary slightly year to year depending on how the weekends fall within that specific month.

And last, DVC can reallocate points if there is an imbalance. This means that they might raise points for one type of unit during a specific season, but if they do, they must reduce points somewhere else so that the overall points do not increase.

That said, DVC has only done this one time, in 1996 for the OKW resort where they made slight adjustments on how many points it took for some room types, with some going up, and others going down. If I recall it mostly affected the Grand Villa's point structure.

 

[RobDoc]

At all DVC resorts, the total number of points are fixed. If DVC decides to change any point requirements the total needed must be kept in balance and thus is some nights are changed to require more points, other nights MUST be changed to require fewer points.

This has happened only once, at OKW in 1996. At that time some weekend nights were lowered a few points and some weekday nights were raised a few points. I'd be surprised if any further changes were made at the DVC resorts, but it definitely can happen.

As for other non-DVC options, those points have changed most every year. There are no legal safeguards to protect those changes. It would probably be better to assume there will be increases in those programs and be pleasantly surprised if they don't change or drop some years.

 

[PamOKW]

My "long" post just disappeared when I posted -- but the posts above have already answered the basics.

Sometimes a specific "date" might move into a different season on the chart. For example, depending on how Easter falls year-to-year, April 1 could end up in a different season (as well changing from weekday to weekend).

Also, only the points for DVC resorts have the "no total increase" restriction. Points needed for cruises, concierge collection, etc. have no restriction and have gone up --- sometimes dramatically.