With over 100 people voting in this poll, I wanted to reflect on the findings.
Poll allowed participants to pick up to 3 choices, and 3 choices were way above all the others:
28% of people simply want the studios to be as cheap as possible. This is LOWER than I expected, honestly. There are definitely a number of people who maximize their points for the most days, booking studios exclusively. But at least on this forum, those people are overall still a minority. A large minority, but a minority.
56% -- a slight majority, would happily take advantage of booking larger rooms if the gap between studio and 1BR closed a bit. (I'm sure it would depend on just how much the gap closed).
What I found interesting -- If the price of a studio for 7 days was equal to the price of a 1 BR for 5 days, a large number -- 38%, would take the 1 bedroom for 5 days.
Right now, depending on the resort, season, etc... It can be closer to 7 days studio = 3 days 1 BR.
Very few people indicated they would add points if studio prices increased. (just 2 votes out of over 100).
So interesting but not surprising -- a fairly large number of people would be willing to trim their vacation by 2 days to get a nicer and bigger unit. I suspect if this was 7 days studio / 6 days 1 bedroom, we might even get a majority going to 1 bedroom. And if it was more like 7/4, then fewer would be willing to trade. At the current 7/3-- I don't see many people making that trade. They either own enough points knowing they want to book 1 bedrooms specifically, or they combine multiple years for 1 br, or they only stay in 1 BR if their annual trip is a weekend as opposed to a week. But most annual-week-long 100-150 point owners will be sticking to studios.
But it seems more of those 150 point owners could be tempted to upgrade to an occasional 1BR, if their 150 points could get them 4-5 nights instead of 3-4 nights.
As has been noted, this all traces to to the lockoff premium. Unless you suddenly had a tremendous number of 2BR bookers, the lockoff premium guarantees that it would take more points to fully book a resort, than are actually sold for the resort. (ie, for example a resort may sell a total of 5 million points but it actually would require 5.5 million to fully book the resort).
I suppose there are a few ways this benefits
DVC members, and a few ways it hurts DVC members while helping Disney:
1 -- it makes it nearly impossible for a resort to be consistently booked up prior to the 7 month window. Sure, it can happen for a few days here and there. But there will almost always be at least some availability for home resort bookers, prior to the 7 month window.
2 -- Connected to the above, there will almost always be at least some 7 month availability at most resorts most days of the year.
3 -- Makes it easier for Disney to temporarily take rooms out of circulation (whether for ordinary maintenance issues, or for scheduled refurbishments).
4-- Gives Disney more of an inventory for cash rooms.
Effectively, the "resort total points" becomes a semi-fictional number based on the lockoffs. But then when you breakup the lockoff, 1 bedrooms suddenly cost a lot more. And there just aren't enough sold points out there to book all the rooms anymore.
Closing/narrowing the lockoff premium would give owners the benefit of actually getting to use all the rooms in their resort. But would take away the flexibility for maintenance, refurbs, etc.
Of course, a potential solution would be: Sell fewer points but no lock-off premium. If a resort truly has 5 million points, only sell 4.5 million. Instead, they use the lockoff premium to artificially raise the point prices, thereby creating reserve points.
