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Marriott:
Maui Ocean Club
Waiohai Beach Club
Barony Beach Club
Abound ClubPoints
HGVC:
HGVC at Sea World
JIMinNC, ski_sierra, let me deep dive into the details of what I am saying. I will use Bay Club/HGVC as an example, but I could use any HGVC resort.
I own A Penthouse weeks. There are 750 weeks available at Bay Club. (15 units @50 weeks a year. Weeks 51 and 52 are their own separate class.) For convenience, all sold out.
Of those 750 weeks, how many will book via home week preference? All of them?, some of them?, none of them? If everybody booked home week advantage, there would be a 1 to 1 booking when the window opens. So far, so good.
But say 50% decide to not to use the home week advantage, because they want to "point out" to another HGVC location.
Now you have 50% of 750 weeks competing for the same "prime weeks" for the type I own. Much better odds of getting the week(s) I want, for the place I own. Is anyone being hurt? No. I'm paying $400+ a week more, by owning at Bay Club, compared to, say, Elanra, for this preference. Any one could have this preference, if they are 1.) Willing to pay the extra fees, and 2.) Willing to plan more than 9 months in advance.
Now if one had a hypothetical HGVC trust structured like MVC, here is what would happen. (For this discussion, let's assume that Bay Club has a ROFR. In practice, it does not.)
I understand and concur with everything you wrote in the above quote. My comments will relate to the next quote below:
Assume that the trust has 50% of the weeks, either by ROFR, or by deposit by those "pointing out" people. (The MVC weeks owners converting to Trust points equivalent. . .)
The only way the MVC "Trust" controls a week, and thus has actual owner booking rights for that week, is to actually own that week (through repurchase, ROFR, new resorts, etc). MVC owners electing for points do not convert their week to "Trust Points", so the Trust does not have the right to book this weeks as the owner of that week. Those elected weeks are deposited into the MVC Exchange Company and are made available for other MVC owners to book through the Exchange. Then, the depositing owner gets the election point value of their deposited week in the form of "Elected Points", not Trust points. This may seem like a semantics issue, but legally those Elected Weeks are very different than weeks the Trust controls directly.
Those MVC owners who elect for points are removing their week from the inventory available for traditional home week reservations, but they are also removing themselves as a competitor for that inventory - so the system stays in balance. Points reservations are generally only confirmed from inventory that gets put into the MVC Exchange Company - either through Trust ownership of that inventory or points election by a weeks owner.
Whereas in the current system, those weeks are not assigned until the home week window closes. They are inventory for the current HGVC points people. Under the "MVC like" trust, those weeks get booked at the opening of the home week, as inventory for the trust!
So I go from 50% of the people competing over the weeks I own in the initial window, to 100%. Then I would not have any advantage by owning at Bay Club. It would be given to the trust. At which point, why own at Bay Club, paying the Hawaii premium? Sell and Buy in Vegas, if you can find a person to sell to.
Using your example above, right now, there are 750 Bay Club Penthouse A units. If as you proposed, 50% of current owners book during home week season, that leaves 375 units available for Club bookings.
If HGVC adopted an MVC-like Trust, they would only have the right to use the home window to "book" the weeks the Trust actually owns, they would have no explicit ownership rights to book the weeks that weeks owners choose to elect for points. Using your 750 unit example, If a hypothetical HGVC Trust actually managed over time, to own 25% of that 750 units, the Trust could only book 25% of that unit type/season or about 188 weeks. So, again using your Bay Club example of 750 Penthouse A units:
- The HGVC Trust books their 25% (188 units) during the home window, that leaves 562 units for other owners.
- If 50% of the owners opt to use their home week, that consumes another 281 units, meaning a total of 469 units out of the 750 are booked during home week season (63%)
- The remaining 281 units are available for Club Bookings.
In essence, this is what happened at MVC with the DC Trust. All the frictional inventory, (not sold, or ROFR'ed, or repo'ed), that had been part of the week owners inventory, became DC Trust inventory, leaving all the week owners with a 1 to 1 booking, at every location in the system. With cancellations along the way, the results could end up with owners not getting a week, even if they paid for it. (This is downplayed, but it is very real. personal experience.)
MVC has always structured their system different than HGVC. There has never been an HGVC-like "home resort window" in MVC. There was always a 1 to 1 booking ratio, except for whatever unsold or repo'ed inventory MVC controlled. In the old pre-2010 weeks system, there was no internal exchange system, so all you could do was book your home week at 12 months out (or 13 months for multi-week owners). Anyone wanting to visit another MVC resort just reserved a week and deposited into II, where there was a priority period of a few weeks when only MVC owners could be assigned other MVC deposits. So, while the developer inventory did provide a bit of a buffer for reservations, it was never as powerful as the HGVC home season/club season model.
So when MVC created their Trust and their internal points system, there was no home week priority to protect. They just had to ensure that the legacy weeks inventory "bucket" and the new points buckets are kept in balance. Any HGVC Trust would likely have to respect the current Home Season/Club Season approach or risk huge owner backlash, so that will mean that any HGVC Trust would probably look more like my example in the bulleted example above that what MVC has today.