Is DVC point structure an attendance/occupancy balancing tool

[TiggerFreak]

In the thread where I was lamenting about the recent cuts at WDW, one of the replies took to task my assumption that DVC members are more likely to stay during the week than on weekends.

Is it possible that the point differential is not just because more people want to stay on the weekend, or could DVC/WDW/DVD have seen another tool to help balance attendance/occupancy across the entire week.

I don't see anything nefarious in this line of thinking, it makes good business sense.

What do you think

 

[CarolynFH]

Makes sense to me. Don't hotels charge more to stay at popular times, and less for the less popular nights, to encourage folks to come when it's not as crowded? Same for airfare; even some restaurants have "early bird specials" to get people in to eat when the restaurant is not busy. Pretty standard business practice, I think.

 

[drusba]

Point structures by seasons where some seasons are more than others is intended to be an attendance balancing tool. The higher weekend structure possibly had that origianal intent to prevent Florida and other nearby members overwhelming the weekend times and preventing others from being able to reserve an entire week. The reality is that you are correct that weekday demand is quite a bit higher than weekend demand and many only use DVC for weekdays. (Don't know who challenged that but even DVD conceded that point in 1998 when at annual meetings it floated the idea of lowering weekend points and raising weekday.)

 

[Mom-to-3]

The summer Saturday night points at HHI are wildly high! (My book is upstairs and i'm too tired to go get it. ) I specifically asked the sales rep and she said it was too discourage folks from just driving in for the weekend and leaving the resort empty during the week. She said, "Just pay cash for Saturday."

That's easy for her to say but it's $395 plus tax for one summer night!!!

 

[Dean]

Obviously the points structure is an equilibration item. The goal is (or at least should be) to balance demand between season and days to make it as equal as possible. If all days were the same number of points, many would use mostly weekends (myself included). Appearances would suggest that the weekends are less utilized than weekdays and has led me to believe they will restructure the points in the future. So far, they have only adjusted the points once (95 I believe).

The question is whether DVC wants the points structured in such a way they have more weekend days to rent out, hopefully this is not the case but has been speculated by several people over the last 2-3 years.

Any points resort has to balance how to control utilization. The means DVC uses is to adjust weekends vs weekdays and to have a season differential. Others do those plus require a minimum stay, extra housekeeping fees and have a more restricive window (say 6 months) for shorter stays. From a reservation and restriction standpoint, DVC is the most flexible system going. Too bad they don't have more resorts in their system, a network of 30-40 appropriate resorts would sure make membership far more flexible. With BVTC, they already have the system in place to hook up with other points systems and have an "internal" trading system. Other points systems out there to consider would include Hyatt, Hilton, Worldmark, Shell, Intrawest and Bluegreen to name a few. There is already a limited arrangement with Intrawest (for 2 of their resorts ) and one in Europe (name escapes me at present). I'm not sure the points trade off but seem to recall it's not favorable and can only be booked at 6 months out. There are a few individual points resorts as well like Paradise Village in Puerto Vallarta.

 

[bonzie1]

I remember when we bought we asked about the changing point value each year. We were told the point would always hold it's value... if they raised the points somewhere, they would lower them somewhere else. And, yes, points were based upon supply and demand.

We just got our new DVC manual and I was disappointed to find that now DVC has broken down points even further if you stay in a wdw resort... standard, preferred garden, concierge, etc. This really puts a damper on our selections. We used to be able to stay at the Poly in a lagoon view room for 25 points... no chance of that happening now. They are forcing us to stay in our home resort, or pay the points. Very disappointing.

I may give DVC a call for an explannation on the new point charges. I've seen many go up, but none come down. When you only have a small amount of points, you want them to stretch as far as they can!

 

[Chuck S]

Bonzie 1, it is the DVC resort points that must match up in an adjustments. All other points (cruise, WDW resort, Disneyland,etc) are negotiated every year and may change drastically without notice, or even discontinued completely. Your best value has always been to stay at a DVC resort, the other uses are considered a 'perk' or a way to use points if you MUST have a vacation and DVC resorts happened to be booked full (very, very rare).

 

[Laurajean1014]

Here's a thought.

With attendance down so much, wouldn't it be nice if Disney put through a sale at staying at the HOME AWAY FROM HOME DVC's!

Something like, if you travel between (MONTH) through (MONTH), DVC will allow you to stay at half the points it would normally be! This will allow many DVCr's to go to the parks whether they are local or flying/driving in.

If someone can get OKW at $100/night, why not fill the parks with DVCrs for 100 points a week?

 

[drusba]

Laurajean, it is an excellent idea that many would take advantage of, but unfortunately it would be illegal for them to do so. Those rules that prevent DVD from increasing the total points necessary to reserve a unit during a year also apply to the opposite situation--they cannot just decrease points applicable to nights in a unit with making equal increases elsewhere during the year. This concept evolves from timeshare laws that make it illegal to oversell the vacation time a resort can offer. The number of total points sold at a resort cannot exceed, at the time of sale or afterward, the total number of points it would take to reserve all of the DVC dedicated rooms (96% of all rooms at a resort for one that is sold out) for every night of the year for 51 weeks of the year. If DVD were to just lower number of points for particular times DVD would be placing the resort in an improper "oversell" position.

 

[CarolMN]

Even if it weren't illegal, I don't think there are all that many "unbooked" DVC rooms for at least the next couple of months. It seems to me that people are still hoping for the waitlists to come through for many dates in November and December.

If there were to be any kind of "sale", I think it would have to be for the resorts in the Disney Collection!

 

[sumessefui]

It has been stated above that weekday demand is greater than weekend demand. This seems to be a fact from reading endless postings addressing this. But, is not the reason for this the point struture, that many complain about? It seems that a good many members are trying to maximize a minimum of points, and so avoid weekends. If you look at the point charts, they show totals for a weekly stay. If the weekend points were lowered, than would not the weekday points have to be raised? This would then cut the number of nights that many members would be able to utilize, and I am sure there would be much complaining about that. Also I feel that it would make many weekends very hard to book, as those who live close would now go for long weekends. What then is the solution?

 

[Dean]

The ideal points structure would place the usage and demand almost equal for each day of the year. This will never be exact but is the goal. I've seen some number that suggest a significant usage differential for weekends vs weekdays. At some point, you figure that DVC will need to make a change. It is their fiduciary responsibility to do so if the demand is too one sided. This will affect some members adversely by raising the days they normally go and you will hear about it. Still, there's nothing they can do. No amount of I didn't expect or my guide promised, will do any good in this area. I personally expected a change for 2000 but obviously nothing has happened yet. Since we are among those that go 5 days and avoid weekends, we may be adversely affected but that's life. Anyone that bought exactly the amount of points for a specific stay without at least considering this possibility likely made an unwise decision. I remember all of the ranting back in 95 or 96 when they made the last change, boy were some of the snow birds upset.

 

[sumessefui]

Dean,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. In our case, it would not effect us , for we purchased our points with the 7 day stay in mind. You are right however, that an adjustment for good or ill is in order.

 

[Snowgod]

It is my belief, based on other resort industries, that if weekend points are lowered, weekend warriors will take them and you still wont have the weekends to use.

 

[Dean]

Originally posted by Snowgod
It is my belief, based on other resort industries, that if weekend points are lowered, weekend warriors will take them and you still wont have the weekends to use.

I believe that is obviously the case if the points were equal but that is not what I think will happen. DVC needs to even out the demand across seasons, unit size and days of the week. Whether the current structure will do this seems doubtful in the long run, but obviously, none of us have enough data to know for certain. The best info I had suggested weekends were running about 79% occupancy and weekdays in the mid to upper 90% range. Obviously there have been some changes since then with the economic downturn and terroritst attacks. If changes are in order, I suspect minor changes will occur and no major overhaul.

I guess the real point I was making was that if a change were needed, it was DVC's responsibility to make that change and that no one would have anything to say about it. There should be no complaints of I just bought exactly enough points for this stay or my guide promised it wouldn't happen or the like. Frankly, if they change the points to lighten up weekends just a bit, it will likely hurt us more than most since we never use weekend days and usually stay for 4 or 5 days.

 

[TrudyZ]

Dean:

I am not so sure that DVC has been as affected by the turn of events as the rest of the resorts.

We were just there at OKW Oct. 10-20th. To us, there seemed to be more people there at OKW then when we were there in early May.

I asked about occupancy rates, and was told between 87-94% for the time I was there. I posed the same question (about the affect of 9/11 on DVC resorts); they seemed to indicate that the DVCers were still coming (for October); and they were not seeing the same amount of downturn of the ocupancy rates as the other WDW resorts.

Trudy

 

[Dean]

Based on sale out at OKW and BW, I'd say anything less than about 96% would be a potential problem since 96% of the points are sold. I know some of those have been turned back in for various reasons but I would think WDW would rent out at least 75% of those points.