If I am recalling correctly, there was an announcement last year, possibly at the annual meeting, that refurbs then and into the future for the DVC resorts were going to occur on a more frequent schedule than before and that it could have some impact on annual dues but probably not by a large amount. I did not construe that as something being done so Disney could sell the resorts but instead as DVC finally conceding, after years of denying it to itself, that the DVC resorts needed refurbs on a schedule similar to the hotels.
At least as to any WDW resorts, I do not perceive any possibility of Disney selling what it can, mainly the land, to rid itself of DVC, absent something more drastic and unthinkable like making it part of a decision to sell its entire theme park business. It already has the ideal system from its viewpoint in that if it determines in the future it no longer wants DVC, it just has to wait it out until the land lease expiration dates. Moreover, its position as manager of the resorts is not a money losing proposition. Though dues for most things need to be set based on cost and not a cost plus profit factor method, there are several "profit" factors buiilt into the system. One is is the sixty day breakage period where Disney gets to rent any unreserved rooms and only a small portion of the rental income goes to offset dues; the rest funds the reservation system (MS) and ultimately anything above those costs is just profit to Disney. Another is the management fee built into dues which is 12% of the annual budget (excluding items such as taxes and the management fee itself). For all resorts, that is a number already in the tens of millions and it covers essentially exactly what it says, Disney overall management of the resorts, while all the costs of actually running and maintaining the resorts, including mangement of the particular resort are covered in other dues items. Undoubtedly it is making profit from that fee. Then you have the resort "cost" items in the dues that are not truly items at "cost," in that the dues are paying for things like transportation at a cost charged by other Disney entities to the resort, but nothing prevents that other entity from charging at a price that includes some profit.
On top of the above profit centers, we have the new "model" DVC resort in the Polynesian, to be repeated at WL. You build a resort where a huge amount of the points are devoted to hugely expensive, in dollars and per point per night, on the water bungalows or beach cabins. You then sell those points to your target audience which consists mainly of people who can usually afford to get only the smaller and less expensive units like studios, thus make a huge dollar profit selling items that the purchasers can't afford and usually won't use, set up a showcase item for your main park business, and then when the 60 day breakage comes around you often have many of those uber expensive showcase items to rent. Disney then gets to keep most dollars from such rentals as profit, other than a small portion that goes to offset dues, because all the costs of operating and maintaining those uber expensive showcase items are paid out of dues charged to all those DVC members who bought only to get studios.
If Disney were to sell the WDW DVC resorts, it would give up all of the above profit centers while turning over control of part of its WDW resort business to a a new company that would likely be difficult to deal with in relation to the operation of WDW as a whole. Not a good business decision.
Bill
