New policy for reservations based on check IN date

[bobbiwoz]

Ok...I was confused thinking that at least the first day had to be available before I could waitlist.

The Friday/Saturday night stays in a BC are just too prohibitive for us to try to walk a reservation for a BC. I'm glad we could at least waitlist. We had one BC stay last month, and DH wants another one!

Bobbi

 

[jeankeri]

As far as time of day, it's variable ... more or less when I have time. The thing with the new policy is that once you have that 11+7 locked down, you can pretty much call at your convenience.

Is this the case with 7 night stays only? Does it work the same for 2-6 night stays, or are you committed to calling at 9am in this case?

 

[simzac]

Thank you Chuck and Crew!

I created a thread, located here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1898244

Thanks to those who have given suggestions as to what the results should include!

Thank you mods and jdg345 for your willingness to tally the results. I certainly will be checking that thread daily.

 

[jade1]

Thank you mods and jdg345 for your willingness to tally the results. I certainly will be checking that thread daily.

Same here, although I dont expect to see the good stuff (or is it bad stuff) for another oh.....5 months or so.

 

[CarolMN]

Same here, although I dont expect to see the good stuff (or is it bad stuff) for another oh.....5 months or so.

Jersey Week bookings may be the start of the problems, but I personally don't think we will see problems until the Thanksgiving reservations begin.

FWIW, I'm not expecting to see problems for anything other than standard view at the BWV, and possibly the Boardwalk views there.

I honestly don't think the VWL or BCV (even the 2Bw2Q) will sell out during the first week the window opens. For those who own VWL & BCV, I hope I'm right about that.

I am only talking about issues at the 11 month window. There really won't be any way for us to have good enough data to tell if the problems at 7 months are due to the new process or to home resort owners using their advantage.

Again, there are so few AKV concierge rooms that no matter what process is used, there will be lots more disappointment than success. (So I don't think those rooms are very relevant to the discussion). Some think that OKW GVs can also be a problem at times, but I think problems getting those at 11 months will be more the exception, than the norm.

We'll see.

 

[jamstew]

Some think that OKW GVs can also be a problem at times, but I think problems getting those at 11 months will be more the exception, than the norm.

We'll see.

Hi Carol -- There's a thread going on about successful OKW and HH reservations here http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1879720. Some involve GV's. I haven't looked to see if any of them have posted to the new booking thread, but I thought it might contain some data that you'd want.

 

[jdg345]

Yes. The difference is that your entire stay has to be available for the waitlist to confirm. In the past, it was possible to waitlist "day by day". For example, you want July 4-9. Nothing is open. July 3-5 becomes available but it doesn't fulifill your entire need. Those days are used to fill out someone else's request for July 1-4 instead. In the past, you could have gotten July 4-5 and then could continue to fill out your reservation as days came open....not a perfect example but I think you can get the gist.

Correct; the workaround is to call DBD and see if you can pickup a day or two and manually fill out your WL.

 

[jdg345]

Is this the case with 7 night stays only? Does it work the same for 2-6 night stays, or are you committed to calling at 9am in this case?

imo, it's just easier to walk the full 7 days as it leaves less room for error on the part of MS. That said, it should work the same way as long as you're calling to extend on a day you already have. For example, if you book Days 1-2 at 11+7, you need to call back tomorrow sometime to extend. If you leave it for the day after, your room is back in inventory and available to anyone else who is calling that day.

 

[jdg345]

Thank you mods and jdg345 for your willingness to tally the results. I certainly will be checking that thread daily.

I'm hoping they allow a code/table tag to make the Tally easier to view. I'm keeping track offline for now and will try to get the first Tally in before the end of the weekend.

That said, I expect to see a great many more successes than failures at this point in the game. If we start to see failure counts trending upwards before the Thansgiving/Christmas/NYE windows open up, then it's likely going to be really messy when that time comes.

 

[skelooch]

Correct; the workaround is to call DBD and see if you can pickup a day or two and manually fill out your WL.

I was told yesterday by a MS supervisor that any cancelled days do not go back into inventory and cannot be accessed by any CM, until any and all waitlists are filled, it's built into the system.

 

[CarolMN]

I was told yesterday by a MS supervisor that any cancelled days do not go back into inventory and cannot be accessed by any CM, until any and all waitlists are filled, it's built into the system.

That is my understanding as well & I'm quite sure it is correct - but there are some here who believe otherwise.

I've posted this before, but for those who may have missed it -

When someone cancels a day for which there is a waitlist, the computer knows it and takes the day(s) out of the general inventory. It puts the match in the "waitlist file". I believe this is a "real time" process.

Once a day is in the "waitlist file", it is no longer available for anyone else. The computer knows there was a match to a waitlist, but it cannot make the actual reservation on its own, so a CM needs to complete the process.

CMs work the "waitlist file" matches in the order of closest to arrival first. Those whose waitlists have come through quite a ways in advance may not find out about it right away if the CMs are busy or if there are lots of matches ahead of theirs. When the phones are busy, it is my belief that the waitlist work is put aside (as are email messages and other "non-urgent work) and everyone answers phones. That's just the way call centers work.

The reason so many members report calling and finding out that their waitlist has "just come through" is that many CMs will look at the "waitlist file" if the caller mentions waitlisting. If the match is there, the CM can just complete the process at that time and the caller who called to check on his waitlist hangs up happy. But the caller did not get anything he wouldn't have gotten anyway. He just found out about it sooner.

 

[Dean]

I'm hoping they allow a code/table tag to make the Tally easier to view. I'm keeping track offline for now and will try to get the first Tally in before the end of the weekend.

That said, I expect to see a great many more successes than failures at this point in the game. If we start to see failure counts trending upwards before the Thansgiving/Christmas/NYE windows open up, then it's likely going to be really messy when that time comes.

While it's good to track the info and should be done, the one problem is we don't have the comparison number on the old method. Thus it'll be essentially impossible to compare and use this info as an argument in either direction. I'm sure DVC has a significant amount of this type of info but I doubt even they have enough specific info to compare the ultimate success rate of one vs the other.

 

[ransom]

CarolMN: Thank you for the succinct explanation of how wait lists work! I'm too new to DVC to know much about wait lists (only made two reservations so far, neither of which was wait listed). But thanks to you, now I know how they work!

Your post is a keeper for my ever-growing "DVC Notes" file.

 

[AKV707]

That is my understanding as well & I'm quite sure it is correct - but there are some here who believe otherwise.

I've posted this before, but for those who may have missed it -

When someone cancels a day for which there is a waitlist, the computer knows it and takes the day(s) out of the general inventory. It puts the match in the "waitlist file". I believe this is a "real time" process.

Once a day is in the "waitlist file", it is no longer available for anyone else. The computer knows there was a match to a waitlist, but it cannot make the actual reservation on its own, so a CM needs to complete the process.

CMs work the "waitlist file" matches in the order of closest to arrival first. Those whose waitlists have come through quite a ways in advance may not find out about it right away if the CMs are busy or if there are lots of matches ahead of theirs. When the phones are busy, it is my belief that the waitlist work is put aside (as are email messages and other "non-urgent work) and everyone answers phones. That's just the way call centers work.

The reason so many members report calling and finding out that their waitlist has "just come through" is that many CMs will look at the "waitlist file" if the caller mentions waitlisting. If the match is there, the CM can just complete the process at that time and the caller who called to check on his waitlist hangs up happy. But the caller did not get anything he wouldn't have gotten anyway. He just found out about it sooner.

Thanks CarolMN. I am also a relatively new member and this really helps to explain the process.

 

[jekjones1558]

Hey, CarolMN, I'm NOT a newbie and I also appreciate your easy-to-understand WL explanation. Thanks!

 

[Starr W.]

That is my understanding as well & I'm quite sure it is correct - but there are some here who believe otherwise.

I've posted this before, but for those who may have missed it -

When someone cancels a day for which there is a waitlist, the computer knows it and takes the day(s) out of the general inventory. It puts the match in the "waitlist file". I believe this is a "real time" process.

Once a day is in the "waitlist file", it is no longer available for anyone else. The computer knows there was a match to a waitlist, but it cannot make the actual reservation on its own, so a CM needs to complete the process.

CMs work the "waitlist file" matches in the order of closest to arrival first. Those whose waitlists have come through quite a ways in advance may not find out about it right away if the CMs are busy or if there are lots of matches ahead of theirs. When the phones are busy, it is my belief that the waitlist work is put aside (as are email messages and other "non-urgent work) and everyone answers phones. That's just the way call centers work.

The reason so many members report calling and finding out that their waitlist has "just come through" is that many CMs will look at the "waitlist file" if the caller mentions waitlisting. If the match is there, the CM can just complete the process at that time and the caller who called to check on his waitlist hangs up happy. But the caller did not get anything he wouldn't have gotten anyway. He just found out about it sooner.

I called a few weeks ago to put in a request for a reservation, didn't mention my WL for one of my other trips. The CM when my file came up said "let me check on your WL for you".

 

[bookwormde]

CarolMN

I am still trying to understand the new block waitlist thing.

I understand your explanation for how it would work when MS was doing DBD waitlist filling. My question is if someone is waitlisted for 6 days and one of those days does not come back in inventory does that mean that the other 5 days will not go into inventory no matter how long it takes for the 6th day if ever.

If no one has those other 5 days on their waitlist which does not include hard day to get it seems that MS could end up “stuck” with open rooms which could otherwise be easily rented if they went back into open DVC inventory instead of being tied up in a long waitlist which might never fill.

Is there any limit to the length of a waitlist inside the 11 or 7-month window?

It seem to me that is someone got there first day out of say a 20 day stay but not the second then they would have to waitlist for 19 days, if one of those days is hard to get (say New Years) and a number of members did the same thing then a huge block of rooms would end up “stuck” in waitlist holding almost indefinitely unless they fit someone else’s waitlist that did not include the difficult day.

Anybody, is there something I am not thinking about correctly with this potential problem?

bookwormde

 

[CarolMN]

CarolMN

I am still trying to understand the new block waitlist thing.

I understand your explanation for how it would work when MS was doing DBD waitlist filling. My question is if someone is waitlisted for 6 days and one of those days does not come back in inventory does that mean that the other 5 days will not go into inventory no matter how long it takes for the 6th day if ever.

If no one has those other 5 days on their waitlist which does not include hard day to get it seems that MS could end up “stuck” with open rooms which could otherwise be easily rented if they went back into open DVC inventory instead of being tied up in a long waitlist which might never fill.

Is there any limit to the length of a waitlist inside the 11 or 7-month window?

It seem to me that is someone got there first day out of say a 20 day stay but not the second then they would have to waitlist for 19 days, if one of those days is hard to get (say New Years) and a number of members did the same thing then a huge block of rooms would end up “stuck” in waitlist holding almost indefinitely unless they fit someone else’s waitlist that did not include the difficult day.

Anybody, is there something I am not thinking about correctly with this potential problem?

bookwormde

DVC doesn't take days out of inventory unless there is an exact match to a waitlist. So for your first example, the 5 nights that became available would not "go to the waitlist file" because the waitlist is for 6 nights. That's not a match. Of course that assumes there is no match for the 5 nights. If someone else had a waitlist for one or more of those same nights, the nights would go to him or her, even if the person with the 6 night waitlist got on the waitlist first. If no one else wanted any of the 5 nights, they would stay in the general member inventory until someone called to reserve one or more of them or until the 6th night became available and the waitlist request was matched.

As far as waitlisting goes, shorter stays do have an advantage over longer stays. Always have. That hasn't changed.

Don't know if there is a limit to the length of stay that can be waitlisted. But your 20 day example can't happen at the 11 month window. Assuming a member calls at the 11 month window, I find it very difficult to see how anyone could get the first day and not at least the following 6.

If that was a 7 month example, then I just think anyone who wants a 20 day stay during a popular time should be booking at their home resort. For those who want to book a non home resort, some of the days would likely be available and he/she would have more than one shorter waitlist to fill in the holes, anyway.

Since DVC doesn't "hold" days waiting for a waitlist match, there is no chance of a huge block of rooms getting “stuck” in the waitlist.

 

[bookwormde]

CarolMN

Thanks for the answers

I was mostly interested in the canceled days and if they only checked for one day and then they went back into inventory or if as long as part of a waitlist needed that day that it was held until all waitlists that needed that day were filled?

I guess I cannot seem to get my brain around the potential intricacies of the new wait list system.

bookowrmde

 

[CarolMN]

CarolMN

Thanks for the answers

I was mostly interested in the canceled days and if they only checked for one day and then they went back into inventory or if as long as part of a waitlist needed that day that it was held until all waitlists that needed that day were filled?

Nope, they don't hold anything. They take a "sure thing" first.

I guess I cannot seem to get my brain around the potential intricacies of the new wait list system.

bookowrmde

See if the example in this thread helps -

How does waitlist work exactly!