DVC Point Charts for 2011 - Post chart release discussion begins on Pg 14

[BWV Dreamin]

It matters because the smaller contracts (either add ons or sale of same) have generated those that are so close on points that they really were locked in to weekdays in many cases to make them work. DVC likely should have raised the minimum for a new resort to at least 100 or even the min new buy in of 150/160. They should also have regulated the sale of same in some way. Of course they could have bought them all back ROFR as well. The problem is you've got a sales side and a management side and at times, they are at odds. This would seem to be one of those times. I'm sure the sales guides are "loving" it right now with this on top of the economy.

It's also allowed people to buy in that couldn't afford it otherwise. In many ways that's a good thing but we're seeing the bad side of it now.

If the points are available for purchase I don't see where it matters who bought them and at what increments. It's all factored into the grand points
charts scheme. How will usage be different if I only own 75 points vs. 275? All
it means is that I can take more S-Th trips with my 275pts. The total does not
justify or determine the behavior.

 

[lugnut33]

It matters because the smaller contracts (either add ons or sale of same) have generated those that are so close on points that they really were locked in to weekdays in many cases to make them work. DVC likely should have raised the minimum for a new resort to at least 100 or even the min new buy in of 150/160. They should also have regulated the sale of same in some way. Of course they could have bought them all back ROFR as well. The problem is you've got a sales side and a management side and at times, they are at odds. This would seem to be one of those times. I'm sure the sales guides are "loving" it right now with this on top of the economy.

It's also allowed people to buy in that couldn't afford it otherwise. In many ways that's a good thing but we're seeing the bad side of it now.

Except the nice thing about a small contract is every other year it's like a big contract. For example, every other year I have 240 points (getting an addon which should bring us to 340 every other year). And the other nice thing is my MF bill at the end of the year is small. There are some advantages to a small contract.

 

[Chuck S]

A point is a point is a point. Why should it matter in what increments the points are sold? No, these small point contracts have always been in existence. DVC created the imbalance with the points charts. Let's not shift this over onto the owners. We are just using the membership as it has been made available to use by DVD.

No, they haven't, at least not in the large numbers of small contracts we see today. Minimum buy in was originally 230 points, then 210, then a continual lowering to where a lot of folks bought in at 100 points the last couple of years. And it is unlikely that small resale contracts from add-ons were available in the large quantities they are today, as "everyone" was a new member in the early 1990s, so they weren't selling their "new" add-ons off through resale.

It was really pretty impossible to "buy in" as a new member with a really small contract until the late 1990s or so, and even then it was relatively rare.

The huge numbers of people buying "just enough" points for 5 weekdays was just not there. Now we see more and more members wanting weekdays only, that throws the system out of balance. While the individual people buying didn't cause the problem, the sheer number of them as a percentage of ownership did help create an imbalance, as a higher and higher percentage of owners were booking weekdays only.

 

[tjkraz]

In that case, DVC exasperated a problem by selling small contracts...

I'd say that's a philosophical debate.

Is McDonald's responsible for our nation's obesity problem--or is it the person who chooses to eat 15 fast food meals per week?

Is Jim Beam responsible for a drunk driving accident--or is it the person who gets behind the wheel while intoxicated?

Whether DVC has a minimum of 100 points or 300 points, they have never directly controlled how people choose to use their points. For many years before DVC sold these smallish contracts to new buyers, they were readily available on the resale market.

100 points CAN actually get you a Studio for a full week at many resorts, during many seasons. And banking or borrowing for a single trip every 2-3 years will net an even larger villa.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

But if the minimum was lowered to 100 points to buy in, don't you think that people would buy a small first contract and try to be frugal and get the most use out of it?

That is the presumtion however the only real deterrent in using points on the weekend is to keep those nightly amounts high. Again as long as folks can obtain a longer vacation going S-Th, they will regardless of the total of points owned. In some cases we are seeing only a 1 or 2 point difference in studio stays. It's with these accomodations we will probably start to see the change over.

 

[BroganMc]

That is the presumtion however the only real deterrent in using points on the weekend is to keep those nightly amounts high. Again as long as folks can obtain a longer vacation going S-Th, they will regardless of the total of points owned. In some cases we are seeing only a 1 or 2 point difference in studio stays. It's with these accomodations we will probably start to see the change over.

Not to mention that even with the weekend rebalancing one can still get a cheaper and longer stay avoiding weekends.

I don't think this rebalancing is going to work in the scheme of things. At best, it will encourage regular weekenders to tack on a Thursday or Sunday, shifting demand to those days. Sundays will get even harder to book. The only way they can evenly distribute demand is to make weekday and weekend points identical.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

Thanks for bringing this up. I tried to speak to this point in the VGC thread but when it was brought up but I got no response.

VGC and BLT have only been open a few months and yet DVC feels the need to reallocate even before they can actually see how the booking patterns go for a full year. How do they justify that one? It can't be booking patterns because there is not pattern established yet.

It seems like they knew all along that these point requirements for 2010 would change again for 2011 but you can be sure no guide ever mentioned that to a prospective member. Its hard to believe that VGC and BLT will have different point requirements for 2009, 2010, 2011

I brought this up on another thread too - or maybe this one. There is little to no history to base a decision on for changes at VGC - or really BLT - and it makes me question the legitimacy of the changes even at the resorts that have been open longer. I also am one that thinks they have swung too far with the weekend points, but maybe they figure they'll see what happens and adjust yearly.

There isn't one.

Total points in a resort cannot change and they cannot increase the costs for a single Use Day more than 20% from one year to the next (excepting seasonal adjustments.)

I
Technically there really isn't a limit. Realistically it's likely making all units the same for every day and season as laid out in the POS. Technically they could make one unit 1 points and another 1000 if they wanted and balanced the points otherwise but obviously this isn't at all realistic.

I thought the POS does have a limit that states a maximum points that can be "charged" for a particular accommodation. I'd have to pull out the paperwork for certain but that's how I interpreted it. And it wasn't 1,000 so I don't think we have to worry about that. My one question in my head was if it was something about an average but I'm 90% certain is was a maximum number of points.

Standard & Value at AKV is pretty sweet too Arthur

Maria

Shhhh Maria - it's a secret!

Actually housekeeping budgets did go down for 2010.

At SSR the budget went down from $8.6 million in 2009 to $8 million in 2010. At BWV the budget went from $4.2 million in '09 to $4 million in '10. (Those are the two I have handy, but they are not the only ones that went down.)

If these budget reductions are related to projections of longer guest stays, unchanged point charts would have resulted in even higher dues for 2010.

From '08 to '09, SSR's housekeeping budget went up by about 8%. In a service dominated by labor costs, annual increases are almost always to be expected as raises are often guaranteed by collective bargaining agreements and the cost of providing benefits increases.

If the SSR housekeeping budget had seen a similar 8% increase from '09 to '10, the charge to members would have been around $9.3 million. The difference between that $9.3 mil and the actual charge of $8 mil is significant.

Considering the complaints about the cleaning of the rooms that keep coming up it may be due to something a bit more obvious - less staff.

 

[DVC92]

Again, the benefit to the membership as a whole is to even out demand and usage. It sounds like we differ on that assumption, so be it. I can't answer why they decided to do so now other than to say that the issue has been slowly getting worse and that we have senior management with more gumption to make such changes that we did not have in the past.

Is there any proof that a usage problem exists that warrants correction? Where is the concrete evidence to support the point changes? Has there been anything but conclusory statements that a problem is present? Management has such a cavalier attitude toward the membership; yet, they are supposed to be acting in our best interests.

 

[disneynutz]

If the weekends had vacant rooms, doesn't increasing the occupancy during the weekend increase our costs. I would expect Disney to match Cast Members to expected occupancy.

Bill

 

[Shamus]

BLAME DVC or BLAME THE OWNERS!!!

Well the truth is we need to blame both (at least a little bit).

DVC has been aware of the imbalance of use since early on. In the mid 90's (94-95) DVC was surveying owners as to what affect a weekend/weekday reallocation would have on their plans. In 1998 they advised OKW owners that a change would come unless weekday/weekend usage equaled out. They used examples where they said the average vacant room percentage increased by nearly 25% for OKW for the weekend. One example showed where the resort was sold out for most of the week including Wednesday and Thursday Night only to have over 100 rooms available for Friday and Saturday. So its not like they weren't aware or that its a new problem.

From my own personal observations and from what others have stated it is fairly evident that this imbalance has continued up to date and in fact has likely gotten worse.

It is also apparent that many owners bought in with the intention of solely staying weekdays. In addition many other owners adjusted their normal travel patterns over the years to avoid the weekends as they realized how doing so stretched their points. I myself would be in this second category.

So what are the affects of this usage imbalance??? Well as others have explained the system is designed to run at nearly 100% occupancy. Failure for it to do so results in a logjam of points that are being banked and not used or traded outside the system. DVC's responsibility is to see that the system runs as efficient as possible, and unused points is a sign of inefficiency.

My personal feeling is that DVC has been ignoring this elephant in the room for over ten years. In fact they really weren't ignoring it, they happily continued to feed it by encouraging new owners to utilize the system to their personal advantage by minimizing their purchase for weekday stays only based on the then existing points charts. Additionally they did not make the the point changes which I'm sure they knew were going to be unavoidable.

Further more, we here on the DIS (and other sites) also are to blame as we contributed to this problem by advising potential owners of how they could utilize their points to maximum advantage.

For DVC to now be implementing these changes leads me to believe that they are likely seeing most if not all of the following:

• An extremely high number of unfulfilled longer stay requests (6+ days) due to unavailability of a single weekday or two within the requested period.
• An extremely high number of Banked Points within the system
• An extremely high number of Vacant rooms on the weekends.

It is my opinion that DVC saws these numbers reaching a critical stage and felt they could no longer ignore the "imbalanced use" elephant sitting there and had to make a change.

I sincerely hope that this change will have the desired effect otherwise I would have to agree with what Dean said in regards that there would likely be future changes made such as minimum stay requirements or a longer stay priority booking.

 

[mikeandkarla]

I believe it will be a combination of things. Some people will decide to use more points on the weekends. We are probably in that boat.

In 6+ years of ownership I could count on one hand the number of weekend nights we have stayed on points. In our first 12 months as owners we did three 5-night trips (sun-thurs) to maximize our points and AP value.

But now that the kids are getting older, transportation costs are higher and weekend DVC costs are more reasonable, we would trade those three 5-night stays for two 6 or 7 night stays.

So SOME business will certainly be shifted to the weekends.

The other thing that's happened, as many people painfully know, is that their points either don't go as far as they used to or they go further.

A member with just enough points (in 2009) for a 5-night weekday stay will now come up short. If they can only book 4 nights with their points, one day of additional availability has been added to the system. Add up all those single nights and it will be a significant number.

At the same time, the small number of people who do frequent long weekends will find that their points go much further. Instead of getting two 4-day weekends per year they may now have enough points for three long weekends. That will increase occupancy on the weekends.

We are in the same boat, Tim. We are not in a position to add on now, so we will just cut our vacation short by a day to make up the difference.
I know everyone negatively effected will do whatever they think will be best for them, however if most cut their vacation short a day or two could that result in less total park/restaurant/merchandise revenue for Disney? Would that even matter in the big picture? Just a thought.

 

[MiaSRN62]

Shamus : So what are the affects of this usage imbalance??? Well as others have explained the system is designed to run at nearly 100% occupancy. Failure for it to do so results in a logjam of points that are being banked and not used or traded outside the system. DVC's responsibility is to see that the system runs as efficient as possible, and unused points is a sign of inefficiency.

Shamus : For DVC to now be implementing these changes leads me to believe that they are likely seeing most if not all of the following:

* An extremely high number of unfulfilled longer stay requests (6+ days) due to unavailability of a single weekday or two within the requested period.
* An extremely high number of Banked Points within the system
* An extremely high number of Vacant rooms on the weekends.

Shamus....just a comment/ponder. I totally understand everything you're saying, but if the typical weeknighter is like us, and realizing a drop of value in their total amount of points because of the 2010 and 2011 allocations, then I would assume this could backfire on DVC and lead to an even bigger stockpiling/banking of points ? I know I will now be banking and taking less trips vs doing my yearly trips to conserve. We will probably be using our off-site timeshare in the non-DVC years. So I'm still going to FL regularily, just not going to be visiting WDW property as often. And more than likely we'll still be using a majority of weeknight points over weekend----and with the allocation----using them less than pre 2009. I'm fairly certain there are many others like me who will be doing similar. I realize there will be some weekend converts. So not sure how this allocation is going to solve the banking and vacancies as much as DVC may be hoping ? Maybe it will ....I don't know ? But I find it hard to believe I'm the only one who is switching to the banking game to find a way to get a handle of the allocation ?

An extremely high number of unfulfilled longer stay requests (6+ days) due to unavailability of a single weekday or two within the requested period[

I've personally over 10 years of Membership never been hindered from a stay of 6+ days due to unavailability of weekdays except during really high holiday/popular times or when calling less than 3 months out. But generally, when calling 7-11 months out I've always gotten my dates somewhere (more than average at the resort I requested).

In the past 10 years I used my points faithfully every year.....borrowing from time to time and barely banking at all. Now, we're gonna switch gears and go less and bank lots more on a regular basis. I'm not complaining or anything....just see this as the new way to get the most out of our stays. I'm not trying to mess up the system, but rather I have two kids in college right now and not desiring an add-on to my 250 points at this time. I don't feel the weeknighter mentality will be swayed to the weekends to a large degree, or at least not to the degree DVC is hoping for ?


edited to add : also, this second allocation will also probably make us rethink purchasing AP's every year. Not sure about that yet...still trying to figure this all out.

Maria

 

[CMOORE185]

Not to mention that even with the weekend rebalancing one can still get a cheaper and longer stay avoiding weekends.

I don't think this rebalancing is going to work in the scheme of things. At best, it will encourage regular weekenders to tack on a Thursday or Sunday, shifting demand to those days. Sundays will get even harder to book. The only way they can evenly distribute demand is to make weekday and weekend points identical.

I can only speak for myself but with this reallocation I will now travel on weekends when I never did before. To me in the point charts prior to 2010 the difference between weekdays and weekends was way out of balance and forced me to travel weekdays only. I also believe if you made weekday and weekend points identical you would create too much demand for weekends, as everything being equal people would rather include weekends in their travel, because those are days you do not have to take off work and kids are out of school.

 

[BWV Dreamin]

There are other reasons people avoided the weekends. First and foremost.. crowds. It makes no difference in airfare whether we leave on a Sat or Sun. 5 nights, 6 days is plenty of WDW and I like having a day or two to get ready for work. One reason to purchase was that you could go more often. Extending trips by one, two or three days cuts into that next trip.

 

[Chuck S]

....5 nights, 6 days is plenty of WDW.....

Blasphemy!

 

[jamstew]

Blasphemy!

 

[chalee94]

After all these years, they decided last year that they would fulfill their obligation and reallocate the point requirements. For 2011 they decided that they needed another reallocation because in 2010, not enough people booked weekends and they know this 15 days into 2010?

the 2011 reallocation is just a continuation of the 2010 changes, which in many cases bumped up against the 20% limit.

 

[jdunn1]

Just wanted to say I am disapointed with the points reallocation. When I bought in six years ago, I bought enough points for a five day stay sun-thur and now I do not have enough points for even that.

Things change, I know and less points for weekends is also very nice but now that my contract is worth even less days, it's time for me to sell it. I wonder if many other people will do the same. Suddenly, 165 points isn't what it used to be.

Marriott here I come -- I hope.

 

[Dean]

If the points are available for purchase I don't see where it matters who bought them and at what increments. It's all factored into the grand points
charts scheme. How will usage be different if I only own 75 points vs. 275? All
it means is that I can take more S-Th trips with my 275pts. The total does not
justify or determine the behavior.

I didn't want to imply anyone did something wrong but taking options allowed, only that ther are effects of those actions that are negative. That's true for the smaller contracts at a given resort, it's also true for SSR as whole due to the sheer number and percentage of points looking for a room at 7 months out. IF you only own a smaller contract at a given resort you're more likely to reserve only a few days and more likely to reserve weekdays over weekends with the previous points breakdown.

Except the nice thing about a small contract is every other year it's like a big contract. For example, every other year I have 240 points (getting an addon which should bring us to 340 every other year). And the other nice thing is my MF bill at the end of the year is small. There are some advantages to a small contract.

There are many good things from an ownership standpoint for small contracts,unfortunately there are some system downsides. Certainly one could use a smaller contract as an every 2 or 3 year options and some do. However, it seems the majority are still targeting stays less than a week and more S-F with smaller contracts than larger ones. There are many who own smaller contracts that use them every 2-3 years and still target weekdays and there are those that own more and do the same.

Not to mention that even with the weekend rebalancing one can still get a cheaper and longer stay avoiding weekends.

I don't think this rebalancing is going to work in the scheme of things. At best, it will encourage regular weekenders to tack on a Thursday or Sunday, shifting demand to those days. Sundays will get even harder to book. The only way they can evenly distribute demand is to make weekday and weekend points identical.

I don't think that's true. There is un inherently uneven demand for weekends over week days which is why there was a differential to start with. The issue, as I see it, is what is the optimal balance of points variation to even the demand. We don't know but have to assume DVC has a lot more info than we do on the matter.

I thought the POS does have a limit that states a maximum points that can be "charged" for a particular accommodation. I'd have to pull out the paperwork for certain but that's how I interpreted it. And it wasn't 1,000 so I don't think we have to worry about that. My one question in my head was if it was something about an average but I'm 90% certain is was a maximum number of points.

I don't have the POS to review but at this time my recollection suggests it's a leveling issue, not a min/max issue. For example say a 2 BR in adventure was 10 and a 2 BR Magic was 100, they could reverse the 2 if they wanted.

Is there any proof that a usage problem exists that warrants correction? Where is the concrete evidence to support the point changes? Has there been anything but conclusory statements that a problem is present? Management has such a cavalier attitude toward the membership; yet, they are supposed to be acting in our best interests.

As I've noted, none of use have that info. You can likely get it but it'll take a trip to Celebration to spend the day with DVC management. As I've said before, there comes a time when DVC doesn't make sense for a given family, sometimes changes may cause that to happen midstream. IF I had that level of distrust I'd likely sell tomorrow. It is interesting to see the DVC membership in the "spurned lover" role.

BLAME DVC or BLAME THE OWNERS!!!

Well the truth is we need to blame both (at least a little bit).

Exactly, nice post. None of that blame can go to DVC MS though but to the DVD sales side.

 

[Dean]

Just wanted to say I am disapointed with the points reallocation. When I bought in six years ago, I bought enough points for a five day stay sun-thur and now I do not have enough points for even that.

Things change, I know and less points for weekends is also very nice but now that my contract is worth even less days, it's time for me to sell it. I wonder if many other people will do the same. Suddenly, 165 points isn't what it used to be.

Marriott here I come -- I hope.

Marriott is a great system but there are rumored changes in the winds there too, esp as it relates to resale buyers.