Please Help me with this Scenario!

[keaster]

We are AKL owners with a February use year. We have used our 2016 and 2017 points, have 480 points available in our 2018 UY.

I'm thinking of booking a standard 3 bedroom grand villa at Aulani for hubby's 50th birthday January 2018. I would need to borrow all our 2018 points and need another 192 points to complete the reservation.

I don't know much about doing a transfer or renting points...are transferring and renting the same thing? Would I need Aulani points for it or would any points do? I would be booking this at the seven month mark, so I actually don't even know if the grand villa would be available!

Thank you!

 

[maburke]

There are a lot of things to consider here, not least of it the risk of doing such a massive borrowed point spend in the last month of your use year. If you had to cancel, say, 2 months out, you'd have only those 2 months to use all the points or lose them. If you waited until February, you'd have the entire year to reschedule, and you could bank if needed.

The chance of any standard view anything available at 7 months is always slim, and I'd think it would be worse for a GV.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Renting and transferring aren't the same.

Renting, you're asking another owner to make a reservation for you. So they'd be booking part of your stay with their points, and it would be a separate reservation entirely. They would control it until you checked in, and it wouldn't merge with your reservation.

Transferring, you're having an owner call Member Services with you, to move points from their account to yours. You would then be able to call MS to use those points to make a booking. Those points would retain their home resort and Use Year.

For your purposes, you probably would rather have a transfer. Any points would do, most likely, so long as their UY was okay for your stay dates. You would have to call MS to book your unit.

I think with either approach you'd be at high risk at 7 months of not getting what you want, or having to waitlist. You might be better off trying to rent the entire stay from an AUL owner between 11-7 months, and rent out your own points to offset that cost.

 

[CarolMN]

.....(snip).....I think with either approach you'd be at high risk at 7 months of not getting what you want, or having to waitlist. You might be better off trying to rent the entire stay from an AUL owner between 11-7 months, and rent out your own points to offset that cost.

That is what I would do, too.

Whether you rent the reservation you need from another member or transfer points & book with your own account, you will run the risk losing the value of the reservation/points if you need to cancel. Because it is such a large trip, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND you get trip insurance for it.

Good luck - sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate a 50th birthday!

 

[keaster]

Thanks for in input! It is a pretty high risk scenario for what I'm trying to achieve lol, so I'm not sure if I'll go through with it, but it's always good to feel things out to see what others who are more experienced think! The suggestion to rent the entire stya from an Aulani owner then renting out our points to offset the cost sounds like the most doable!

 

[supersnoop]

Can you push the trip to February? That would make it a whole lot easier and practically eliminate the risk.

 

[DenLo]

Can you push the trip to February? That would make it a whole lot easier and practically eliminate the risk.

And you could borrow your 2019 points for the reservation as well.

 

[dclpluto]

Can you push the trip to February? That would make it a whole lot easier and practically eliminate the risk.

most likely they cannot it's for a birthday unless their birthday is at the end of January. Like mine is January 30th and I also have a feb use year. They could go at the start of the birthday and have the points as some of the reservation will run into next use year. If their birthday is not at the end of the month it will not work out.

 

[maburke]

My birthday is in January and I would gladly celebrate in February for a trip like this!