Online Reservation System

[Garthilk]

Hmm,

So what is the hold up with an online reservation system? I imagine it is probably disney itself rather than the DVC unit. It seems like members would be best served by being able to access reservations online. The initial cost of development would be easily offset by reduced expenditures paying member services representatives. In addition, giving members access to online reservations would likely mean that usage patterns would change. With members being able to see all date and room availability I'd wager usage patterns would change a bit.

It is amazing is that it is nearly 2011 and online reservations are still an unknown.

 

[Chuck S]

There are a lot of intricacies to the DVC system that would makedesigning a true online reservations difficult, but not impossible. These include banking and borrowing, home resort booking windows, multiple home resorts, DVC availability vs. CRO and DVC Cash availbility, trades, transfers, etc. Add to the fact that Disney and DVC see to be trying to merge their reservation systems, and it gets even more complicated.

And then, make it user friendly and "idiot-proof" as much as possible. PLus, look at all the bandwidth/resources that would be needed/used by members just "wanting to check availability," but not actually book, which would be pointless because I doubt any online system would show you how many units of any type would be available at any given moment.

While in the long run, online booking would likely save $ over calling in, initial development costs would be very expensive. So they'd have two options, add that cost to dues, or take it out of Disney's management fees, which are limited to a percentage of the overall dues.

That said, they are slowly moving in that direction. Cash reservations and Dining can "see" our DVC reservations on their systems, but integrating all the point use nuances is sure to take time.

 

[drusba]

In the early 90s when the internet took off, Disney created its go website with the idea of becoming the leader in go to websites like AOL at the time. Its website was complex, hard to use, and basically a piece of junk and it failed utterly in its attempt to be a leader. Disney did not adopt on-line reservations for its regular hotels until about 5 years after evey other hotel chain the nation already had one. The on-line reservation system it created had continuous, significant use problems for about two years. Its foray into a general Disney site has gone through many changes but the site has never been easy to use or to find things, e.g., its search engine still seems to break all rules of probability by never being able to find anything you want to find. Disney not too long ago created its on-line dining reservation system. Its complex, difficult to use and it is impossible to get multiple reservations done in any reasonable period of time.

The DVC site has gone through a number of changes over the years but it has had continuous problems (and when it has one it takes months to fix) and logical progression to finding anything was apparently something outlawed when it was set up.

So the real question to ask is when is Disney, a company that has proven itself over the years to be totally incompetent at websites, going to gain the ability to set up an effective, efficient and easy to use on-line reservation system for its members that does not break down all the time? The answer to that is probably never. The answer as to whether we will ever have an on-line reservation system is: possibly and they have mentioned they are looking into it. There are obvious issues with doing it because reserving with points, sometimes from multiple accounts, with banking and borrowing and other complications is not as simple as setting up a cash basis reservation site and for Disney that means it is an extreme challenge.

 

[MinnieGirl33]

Despite the fact that this is a feature I would LOVE to see happen, with Disney's IT Department being what it is, I wouldn't trust it for a very long time.

 

[Garthilk]

There are a lot of intricacies to the DVC system that would makedesigning a true online reservations difficult, but not impossible. These include banking and borrowing, home resort booking windows, multiple home resorts, DVC availability vs. CRO and DVC Cash availbility, trades, transfers, etc. Add to the fact that Disney and DVC see to be trying to merge their reservation systems, and it gets even more complicated.

And then, make it user friendly and "idiot-proof" as much as possible. PLus, look at all the bandwidth/resources that would be needed/used by members just "wanting to check availability," but not actually book, which would be pointless because I doubt any online system would show you how many units of any type would be available at any given moment.

While in the long run, online booking would likely save $ over calling in, initial development costs would be very expensive. So they'd have two options, add that cost to dues, or take it out of Disney's management fees, which are limited to a percentage of the overall dues.

That said, they are slowly moving in that direction. Cash reservations and Dining can "see" our DVC reservations on their systems, but integrating all the point use nuances is sure to take time.

Hmm,

Where you see difficulties, I see a cost savings. The technical design is really actually pretty simple and I'm sure that the technically inclined folks at any major coorperation would probably say the same. Bandwidth is irrelevent. You can make a website withstand nearly unimaginable amounts of traffic. More than DVC members could ever throw at a website.

Initial development costs probably wouldn't be as high as you might think. Lets go out on a limb for example and say that there are only 100 member services reservation folk (And lets say we want to lay off 34), each making 30k a year. 1 million dollars in payroll basically.

For a cool million, you couldn't built it for a million dollars? But lets take this a step further. Lets say, they built this system 5 years ago. That would be at least 5 million in savings at a minimum?

For 5 million we can't do this yet?

Now this is probably conjecture, but the reason we don't have this yet is mostly because of over controlling executives. Suits whom do not want to give up a piece of control over something in order to better the company and it's customers or investors.

This is likely why Disney has seperate reservation systems in California and Florida, how the two systems do not talk. It is such a shame too.

 

[GrumpyPOTFH]

In the early 90s when the internet took off, Disney created its go website with the idea of becoming the leader in go to websites like AOL at the time. Its website was complex, hard to use, and basically a piece of junk and it failed utterly in its attempt to be a leader.

You forgot to mention they also set it up as its own stand alone company with a stock offering. I lost big time on that investment.

 

[Chuck S]

Hmm,

Where you see difficulties, I see a cost savings. The technical design is really actually pretty simple and I'm sure that the technically inclined folks at any major coorperation would probably say the same. Bandwidth is irrelevent. You can make a website withstand nearly unimaginable amounts of traffic. More than DVC members could ever throw at a website.

Initial development costs probably wouldn't be as high as you might think. Lets go out on a limb for example and say that there are only 100 member services reservation folk (And lets say we want to lay off 34), each making 30k a year. 1 million dollars in payroll basically.

For a cool million, you couldn't built it for a million dollars? But lets take this a step further. Lets say, they built this system 5 years ago. That would be at least 5 million in savings at a minimum?

For 5 million we can't do this yet?

Now this is probably conjecture, but the reason we don't have this yet is mostly because of over controlling executives. Suits whom do not want to give up a piece of control over something in order to better the company and it's customers or investors.

This is likely why Disney has seperate reservation systems in California and Florida, how the two systems do not talk. It is such a shame too.

Remember that Disney owns the servers, DVC is a separate operating entity. DVC has to use software developers selected and approved by Disney, especially if they are trying to merge the overall reservation system.

 

[Garthilk]

Remember that Disney owns the servers, DVC is a separate operating entity. DVC has to use software developers selected and approved by Disney, especially if they are trying to merge the overall reservation system.

And back full circle to reality.

The reality is, if Disney wanted DVC to have an online reservation system. We would have had one by now. DVC leadership is essentially either 1) inept in their ability to concive a solution or 2) powerless to impliment a technical solution.

I'm not sure which is more disheartening as a member.

 

[ndpeirce]

We just became members and at our sales pitch the guy told us the current servers can't support it so they are doing a major overhaul of the servers this fall. The new system will support online reservations, but it sounded like the roll out would be slow.

 

[MinnieGirl33]

I think I would even be satisfied with just having visibility to real-time availability that included the number of units in inventory.

 

[crisi]

I think I would even be satisfied with just having visibility to real-time availability that included the number of units in inventory.

It changes so fast that its likely to cause more issues than it solves. DVC stopped answering questions on availability more than seven months out for non-home resort owners because people would call and say "what do you mean, there was availability a week ago!"

 

[speicher46]

Hopefully DVC will have an online reservation system soon.