My hypothetical was about a cluster identified as “long-term DVC loyals” being unprofitable, not all DVC members or the program as a whole being so. There are undoubtedly a whole lot of ways Disney slices and dices data on DVC folks. I’d never guess the whole program to be unprofitable/lower profit as they continue to invest substantially in it, but I’d bet the proverbial farm there are sub-segments of DVC owners who are unprofitable/lower profit and I’d double down on the farm that Disney knows who they are and probably aren’t quite as concerned about hurting their feelings as perhaps those folks would like them to be.
While Disney has a profile built on every single one of their guests I'm sure (and Club 33 interviews have confirmed) - I'm not sure they profile people into small enough groups like "dvc members that don't spend a lot of money" vs. "dvc members that spend a lot of money". Even if they do, other than for internal purposes - to what end would it impact the guest experience? Do you think they will give you a scarlet letter to wear if you've owned DVC for more than 10 years, so CMs can identify you and be less concerned about their feelings? I'm just not sure how you identify and treat them differently in any way.
Could they profile you and your spending habits and their IT systems take that into account when deciding to give you a room upgrade if one is available? I'm sure they do that, but I don't think they take into account how long you've been a member, at least they wouldn't penalize you for it. And if they did anything like this, I'm sure it is less profiling people into groups and more of a point system where doing "high return" activities nets you more points like other companies do (many do this internally and do not divulge it to the customer, while others are more overt about it like airlines).
However, I'd argue that DVC members as a whole is a small enough group that Disney doesn't seem to be moving to cater to them specifically, rather they've for the most part lumped them in with resort guests. Case in point, we don't really have any specific perks that are different from Annual Passholders or Resort guests. Instead it seems like any discounts that DPEP already created for APs was just carbon copied to DVC members and we get resort guest benefits because we're staying on site when we use our time share.
Beyond perks and discounts I'm not sure what else Disney would or could do? I suppose they do have the blue card / white card "class" system for DVC Members, but that doesn't differentiate between "long-term DVC loyals" and new DVC members, in fact long term DVC members are more likely to qualify for Membership Extras (the phrase DVC uses for discounts and perks) than not because if you bought before June 2016 they grandfathered everyone into Membership Extras while after that point only members buying direct from Disney get the perks (if you buy a resale contract you don't get the perks).
And while I'm sure there certainly are DVC members that don't spend as much as others, the same can probably be said of infrequent guests and even once in a lifetime guests who are on a strict budget, stay offsite and pack PB&J sandwiches in their backpacks for lunch and dinner. The same goes for APs.
From an overall perks perspective, there seems to largely be 3 types of guests that Disney has targeted. Day guests who maybe staying offsite, Resort guests who are staying onsite, and Annual Passholders. I guess a 4th type of guest would be DVC members, but again I'd largely argue they're just considered resort guests (you also have Club 33 members and possibly other smaller niche groups). They haven't so far really further differentiated between guests at a large scale. There are smaller specific discounts and perks here and there that certain groups may have (Chase Disney Visa for example), but it doesn't have a huge impact.
Curious though, you posed the hypothetical question earlier, what do you think Disney should do about the "unprofitable long-term DVC loyals"? If they're deemed unprofitable as you say - how do you differentiate them from other DVC Members, and what would you do? There are a lot of time share laws, so Disney can't do whatever they want. They could I suppose offer to buy out the contracts of unprofitable DVC members to get rid of them as guests.
Disney could certainly introduce a rewards program similar to what the airlines do and overtly demonstrate to customers their desired behaviors to earn a higher status tier along with certain perks for those guests.
In any case - to try to get back on topic - I do see Chapek as being very data driven in terms of his decision making. Using data to help you make decisions isn't a bad thing, but you can also abuse data to make decisions and I don't know if Chapek and his team have used the data appropriately to make decisions - they need to see how it looks from the customer's perspective too but I think the data they're using right now has a goal of leading them to a bottom line figure.
