You might want to look at a post I made on a UK timeshare site, on which I am a moderator, earlier today where I DID indeed call II out on that subject. The OP in that thread was a South African member of RCI who had just discovered RCI's rentals and was outraged. However, II does this in a MUCH more minor way than RCI.
I have seen RCI cheerleaders on timeshare boards unfairly claim DAE and Trading Places was doing the same as RCI, but that is just untrue. I really am not familiar enough with SFX to know if there is any truth to your contention there or not. One of my weeks would be accepted by SFX, so I may be checking them out before long.
You might also want to check the thread on this subject on Timeshare Forums where people who do very regular RCI searches have concluded that at least 10,000 weeks and probably more just disappeared when this ''enhancement'' was made. They didn't get more restricted, they just disappeared from the enchange system, and they were the more desirable weeks. RCI did something with them, and whatever it is clearly does not involve exchanging.
High-end is really only part of the picture. The real key is high DEMAND and low supply. Being high-end will indeed be one factor, but only one, on the demand side.
Once they try to micro manage a concept of "like for like", instead of treating it on a composite of factors, by slicing and dicing each aspect individually, it only helps one entity. That is not exchangers, but on the contrary the RCI rental pool because all it does is artificially create more ''excess'' to be rented. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
When you start looking at Weeks resorts that have nothing good or nothing at all for exchange but DO have it for rentals, then that tells the story of what is going on. We don't have to wait a year. We can see it now.
When RCI first started renting, the Seasons chain of timeshares in Europe jumped ship to II, and put out a well written explanation as to why in a special issue of their newsletter. They cited the number, already well into the thousands even then, of RCI rentals from their spacebank to the general public and said that combined with the preference for their points system, RCI would leave their weeks-based members (or mini-systems like Seasons) out in the cold. They verbally fired a withering broadside at RCI over these issues, and events have shown they were right on target.
Hm. I see your point, to a point. But you've been railing against RCI for many years now and not against II or SFX, which do the same thing with rentals.
As the internet has educated people more about timesharing and resale pricing, developer sales have experienced a definite impact with higher rescission rates. I wonder if timresharing internet sites (like TUG) have made it too easy for Tuggers and Lurkers to learn to cherry-pick and upgrade through RCI and the result has impacted the ability of high-end resorts to get ready trades into other high-end resorts. Sometimes people complain about that and more so in recent years.
But here, we're seeing changes that may, over a little time, increase the availability of high-end trades for those with high-end deposits seeking them. It may take a year or more to see if this is a tangible result. I'm not going to be so quick to assume that these changes are truly all about increasing rental revenues. It still seems to me that the majority of rentals available at cheap prices are within the next couple of months. And that makes sense.