They were clearly sales failures to the degree that they scraped 3 other projects that were in the works at the time including one already announced and another they had a contract on in CO directly due to the failures in sales. They also scaled back the plans for VB to roughly 60% of it's original planned size for the same reasons. Truthfully I think they sold fine given their lack of effort to sell them, however, they most definitely lagged DVD's sales predictions and expectations. While I think both resorts have issues that offered sales challenges (HH not on the beach, VB in an isolated area), I think those are issues that most timeshare companies like Marriott, Spinnaker and Coral would have easily overcome and have for similar resorts in similar or the same areas. Unless they change their approach, HI is unlikely to be a success either from a sales standpoint. Both HH and VB are seasonal resorts, HH more so. One has to look at the whole year for demand, not just a few months. It doesn't matter how nice the HI resort is unless they get people to tour. They've already proven they can't rely on current owners to sell out even a small off property resort, much less a larger one.
A trust system has advantages and disadvantages. From a sales standpoint it gives you the opportunity to sell BLT while really selling HH and when selling at HH, you simply sell BLT. You emphasize all the resorts the buyer wants to try and imply that it's easy to get them all if you plan ahead. It also simplifies much of the planning and accounting from a sales standpoint. Most buyers don't realize until it's too late that you're really competing with every other owner for the prime options. For
DVC that wouldn't be that bad simply because the range of quality and desirability from top to bottom is not nearly as large as it is with say Wyndham or Bluegreen.
As for aggressive, I think you're assuming that anything more than what DVC has traditionally done is aggressive and that would be far from correct, IMO. DVC is so far out there (or has been) that I know of one couple that planned to buy but no one ever asked them to buy on their tour so they assumed they didn't quality and didn't buy. It is entirely possible to be far more aggressive overall than DVD and still not be high pressure. DVD misses almost every opportunity. They don't get fresh meat on property, if they do, they don't make an attempt to get them to a sales tour, they don't tour current owners trying to get them to add on and they don't offer sales incentives. All of these things and more can be done professionally and without high pressure.