I got another email about this election This guy made one too many factual errors in the letter.. There are a lot of good reasons to get rid of Wyndham, so you dont have to make stuff up
Concerned Owners at Kauai Beach Villas
NEWSLETTER
May 15, 2017
Aloha Again To My Fellow Owners at Kauai Beach Villas:
I apologize if this email may seem long to some, particularly if you're reading this on a smartphone. I do recommend that you find a laptop or desktop computer on which you can read it. This is too important for a short blast.
I promised you in another email that I would expand on what brings me to getting involved in this way, why I think this particular vote is SO critical, and what damage I foresee Wyndham could do to our interests as owners. This will follow a bit later on in this newsletter.
But first, I want to implore you, once again, to make sure to vote. I have attached a sample ballot, which might make it easier for you to fill out your own. On the sample ballot, I have written in my name, but you could write in ANYONE to be your Proxyholder who will be there, in person, to vote on June 1st. If you are planning to be there yourself, you can still vote via the Proxy ballot and attend. If you are planning on attending yourself, there is a checkbox where you can indicate that you'll be there. Personally, I
will be there in person to vote and to act as your Proxyholder.
And keep in mind, I strongly ask that you keep your votes to Trish Harrington and Karen Blackford. Why? We NEED to keep them on the board. If we water down the voting (by voting for a many candidates), we risk having Wyndham use their voting to get Trish and Karen off the board, and they're the ONLY traditional owners on the board, and therefore the only ones representing our interests.
In case you didn't know, each board, the AOAO and IOA, stagger the voting for their board members. They do this to make sure there is continuity from year to year. Imagine a year having 5 new members and no one really knowing what they're doing. So this year, we're voting for 3 board members. We want to absolutely make sure that Trish and Karen stay on. Next year, there will be a vote for the other 2 board positions. We'll work on (collectively) getting 1 or more additional traditional owners on the board so that we'll have a majority.
Again, if you wish to cast your votes yourself, there are
the ways to do so. Regardless of what method you choose to cast your vote, the board needs to receive your vote by
May 25th at 4pm, PDT!!
- Vote by Mail – by now, you should have received a ballot in the mail (If you haven't, please call GPVS at 888-477-6967 to request another one. At this point, unless you can vote by the end of the week, I don't recommend this method.The ballot is on a pre-paid, pre-addressed postcard:
Pahio at Kauai Beach Villas Interval Ownership Association
c/o Grand Pacific Resorts Management
P.O.Box 4403
Carlsbad, CA 92018 - 9986
Make sure you type the above on the address line, not the search line. Enter your personalized password which you were provided. Follow the prompts and cast your vote. It’s that simple.
If you have any trouble with your password, call GPVS @
(888) 477-6967
You may choose
me,
Jeff Bellin, as your
Proxyholder to vote for you (
You need to choose a Proxyholder if you will not be attending.). I will be traveling to the resort that week from Salem, Massachusetts to ensure our voting block is represented for theJune 1st vote. I will cast the votes for whom you choose if you fill in the candidate selection at the lower right of the ballot. If you do NOT fill out that section, I will use your voting power to vote for the candidates I think best represent the traditional deeded owners.
To make me your Proxyholder, go to the upper left of your ballot, check the
4th boxdown and write my name,
Jeff Bellin, into the blank.
You must submit your ballot by May 25th at 4pm, PDT. It's imperative that you either vote for the above candidates directly, or have me vote on your behalf via Proxy. (Please, do not check any of the first 3 Proxy boxes).
Remember, 3 total votes per unit week owned on a yearly basis, 1.5 votes per unit week owned on an every other year. Again, see the sample ballot that follows:
Again, the future of our resort rests in the hands of its traditional deeded owners. We need your vote, if we owners are going to control the board, and make the decisions that affect us. We need to keep
Trish Harrington and
Karen Blackford on the board, to start with.
We need YOUR VOTE to help keep Wyndham from replacing the only 2 traditional owners we still have on the board,
Trish Harrington and
Karen Blackford.
Please vote today!
How Did the Kauai Beach Villas Get To Be In This Situation And Why ME??
So, how did I get caught up in this, and why is this so important now to traditional owners, owners who want to see the value of owning timeshares at the Kauai Beach Villas be as great as possible? This all started for me back in 2004 when returning for the first time since we had bought in 2001. Of course, it's Kauai and we loved the oceanfront view from our unit, the oceanfront unit guaranteed as we had paid the premium to get us a deed to waterfront buildings.
We went through the owners update presentation. During our presentation, we were offered the opportunity to give Wyndham our oceanfront unit deed, plus $7000, to become a member of Club Wyndham. I immediately thought this odd for a number of reasons:
- The company PAHIO had hired to maintain the resort, Wyndham Management, was using their paid time to market their own vacation product. I thought and still think it's unethical. If you hire my restaurant consulting company to help with your restaurant, my company people shouldn't use that time to sway employees or customers away from your business.
- If I gave them my deed, I would then no longer have the guarantee that I would be able come back to the Kauai Beach Villas, much less guarantee to be able to use the oceanfront buildings. At the time, I imagined that they probably only had a handful of inventory using the method of getting people into Club Wyndham, so at the time, I was thinking I'd be competing with Club Wyndham members all over the U.S. trying to stay at KBV in just a few actual units of inventory.
- I'm supposed to give them my deed and $7000 to get into their club?!? I mean, what gall, I thought. I just paid 10s of thousands of dollars a few years ago to own a deed, a piece of KBV. Now they wanted me to give them the deed and several more thousands of dollars? And I would have no guarantee of getting back into KBV? With a vacation club, I own nothing, and the money I would be putting into it (the many thousands of dollars I paid for my part ownership, as well as the $7000) guaranteed me nothing!
I thought to myself during the presentation that something was very wrong. I looked up the IOA Board contact information and was able to get in contact with then Vice-President Trish Harrington. I told her what I had encountered. If I recall correctly, she had not been aware at that time that Wyndham was trying to secure deeds from owners. She did say that upkeep of the place was not what the board had hoped, but she liked the then current manager that was in place.
But as years went on, both the AOAO and IOA were getting less happy with the upkeep of the place and the rising maintenance fees .
Meanwhile, I did an exchange one year into the Coronado Beach Resort in Coronado, San Diego. It was the most upscale resort I had ever stayed in at the time within the U.S., and I was astounded as to the level of upkeep, as well as customer service I encountered. The staff was not only solicitous, but bent over backwards to make sure I was happy. For example, one of the benefits of the resort is free bicycle rentals which included helmets. When I informed them that none of the helmets fit my head properly (I'm a bike advocate in my hometown, so I know about the importance of proper bicycle fit), the manager on duty took me across the street to a bike shop, with cash in her hand, and rented me a helmet from the shop ($20!). A small thing, but a big statement. Any time there might be an issue, they were right on it, and with enthusiasm. It was a different experience, for sure, than what I had experienced at KBV in terms of customer service.
I talked with the general manager of the resort, who, it turned out, was a VP with Grand Pacific Resorts corporate. He he had taken over the management of the resort, himself, when it was having some issues. I told him how impressed I was with the experience and it was quite different than what I was used to at KBV. For example, you know that sterile experience of checking in at KBV at the stand-alone building? Wyndham never seemed to be inspired to alter that experience. I took a road trip up to see a couple of Grand Pacific developed resorts in Carlsbad and was bowled over by the quality.
Keeping in touch with Trish Harrington, I learned that the IOA and AOAO were becoming less and less enamored with Wyndham in the overall upkeep of the resort, including the insides of the timeshares, the grounds, and the outsides of the buildings. The resort had gone down from a Gold Crown Resort designation in the RCI system to a Silver Crown Resort, and just barely making that. Wyndham wasn't replacing tableware and glasses with equivalent quality, and they were not maintaining the numbers of stemware and settings in each unit. Owners would show up with incomplete kitchens. Furniture was being replaced with lower quality items.
And yet maintenance fees were going up – a lot! My maintenance fee started at $679 in 2002, and now it's about $1400. Why have maintenance fees gone so high when the resort's maintenance has been so meh, so mediocre? Here's why:
As complete and total hired manager of the PAHIO Kauai Beach Villas in the past, Wyndham was responsible for the upkeep of the grounds, the buildings, and the upkeep of the insides of the timeshares. They were also responsible for sales and rentals, generating income for us. What pays for the upkeep of the resort? The maintenance fees, right? Yes, but not only the maintenance fees, but rentals of unused units are also additional income which go toward the upkeep of the resort. Any deeds whose owners have essentially abandoned (and therefore not paying their maintenance fees), and unit weeks that aren't being used, Wyndham was supposed to work hard to find renters for those unused units. That rental money is supposed to help offset the costs for those owners who
are paying their maintenance fees. That was an important part of their job.
But Wyndham
wasn't working hard to fill the empty rooms with renters and generate rental income, even though that was part of the job description as resort manager. Why is this? Because their modus operandi, their working model, is to get owners to be apathetic. Notice how you didn't receive much in the way of communications from them over the years? That's intentional. They hope that you lose interest. Then, eventually, they might call you up and offer to take your deed from you for nothing. The same deed you paid 10s of thousands of dollars for, Wyndham takes that deed and turns around and sells it for retail. They get the money, and they do nothing for you. That's the opposite of what they were being paid to do.
Think about this – do they make more money getting 10% of the maintenance fees, or getting you to give them your deed for nothing and turning around and selling it as a
Wyndham Kauai Beach Villas deed for $15,000 (and then continue to get the maintenance fees as manager of the property)? And those pitches to have you give up your deed to them plus thousands of dollars to get you into Club Wyndham? They get your deed for nothing, they turn around and sell it for a profit
and they get thousands of dollars from you for Club Wyndham membership. It's quite a racket.
So Wyndham has not been very diligent about making rental income for you, as owners. To give you some idea of how little they put into making rental income (and these are numbers you can get for yourself as part of the financial numbers available to you as owners), prior to 2015, there was about 2.4 million dollars in bad debt (owners not paying or units not being used), most of that uncollectable (owners just gone deadbeat). In 2015, about $615,000 was designated as bad debt. Other than raising maintenance fees on those who do pay, the only way to put a dent into that is rental income.
In
all of 2015, Wyndham raised about
$165,000 in rental income, quite clearly not enough to erase the
$615,000 in debt for that year. In contrast, from
January 2017 – April 2017 (4 months), Grand Pacific Resorts has made over
$300,000 (!) in rental income for KBV. That doesn't go into GPRM's coffers. That goes to us owners to offset maintenance fees. That's
double what Wyndham did in
all of 2015, and we're only a quarter way through the year! By the end of the year, we could easily be looking at $700,000 or more in rental income. And that's money that goes to upkeep the resort so that YOU don't have to pay more. Not only that, but with the rental income now
abovethe budget forecast, the IOA and GPRM can start to think about making improvements to the resort. We need to get the AOAO to hire GPRM to manage their part of the resort (grounds and exteriors of the buildings) to help improve that end of things.
Ultimately, the more money GPRM makes for us, the more maintenance fees can be kept in line, and much greater improvements can be made to the resort. The Kauai Beach Villas is a unique and intimate resort on Kauai. As you probably know, there is NO resort on Kauai which is so close to the water. The oceanfront buildings are 10s of yards from the beach and water line. There's no other resort on the island that can boast this. If this resort returned to being top-notch, luxurious, family-friendly, with entertainment (like a real resort experience should be), this would be easily worth the current maintenance fee, in my opinion.
Those coming here, whether for the first time or returning, would have a wonderful experience, and want to return again. They may be inspired to buy their first week, or buy another one. And guess what inventory they'll have to buy from? Those units that you put up for sale. All of the other resorts at which I own have a resale program. At one resort, the resort keeps 25% of the sale price and the owner gets 75%. The money the resort gets goes back to the resort to defray expenses, keeping the resort sparkling and the maintenance fees down.
We'd all love to have a way to sell our units when we no longer need them at the resort, right? That's supposed to be the job of the resort management company. They're supposed to work for us. Well, that can't really be done if there is no physical sales space on the premises. Wyndham, however, is using the clubhouse to sell timeshares at their property in Princeville. And every guest (that includes you) has to go through Wyndham's salesperson in the clubhouse in order to get their parking pass and free WiFi code. Can we change this procedure? I don't know.
Meanwhile, with those deeds that Wyndham got for free from owners who didn't care anymore, Wyndham was supposed to be assuming the payment of those associated maintenance fees. But they were slow in transferring ownership to themselves. It was no skin off their back. The owners who had given up were not paying, and IOA board was only seeing bad debt as a larger number.
By Wyndham delaying the actual transfer of the deeds to their own name by as many as 2 years, Wyndham could save 2 years of paying maintenance fees on each unit. They didn't care. They didn't care that it hurt traditional owners. They didn't care that the lack of money coming in meant raising maintenance fees on those owners who
were paying. They made more money on eventually selling the units.
The IOA, acting in good faith, and with several years remaining on Wyndham's contract with the resort, tried to work with Wyndham to improve their quality. As years went by, the board wasn't seeing results.
IOA succeeded in voting to hire GPRM and have them come aboard when Wyndham's contract expired. Wyndham's response to this has been to try to wrest control of the IOA and eventually get back management of the entire resort. If we don't stem the tide of Wyndham throwing owners off the board, Wyndham will be able to get rid of Grand Pacific in a few years, and you can forget about us having any say in what goes on.
As I have mentioned, a similar situation occurred at the Makai Club Resort in Princeville (a resort Wyndham
still arrogantly calls the “
Wyndham Makai Club”), when, after running it down and seeing Wyndham turn around and sell deeds, making a profit for themselves, the Makai Club Resort board fired Wyndham and elected to bring in Grand Pacific Resorts to manage it. In the 3 years since GPRM has managed it, the resort's quality has gone way up, to the point that owners call it “sparkling”. Wyndham, however, is still trying to fight it. As they successfully were able to get a share of the deeds, just as they have done at KBV, they're fighting to wrestle control of the board so they can get back management of the resort. Wyndham has been calling KBV the Wyndham Kauai Beach Villas when it had been the PAHIO Kauai Beach Villas. It'd be like if you hired me to clean and maintain your house and I put “The Bellins” on your mailbox.
So, is it getting any clearer that Wyndham needs to be shown the door, or at the very least, be kept at bay?
Theoretically, I don't care which company runs the resort as long as it's a great experience and maintenance fees are kept down. The better the KBV resort experience and the more reasonable and affordable the maintenance fees, the more valuable it is not only to us as owners, but to anyone who might want to purchase a deed in the future (and that means YOUR'S, if you need or want to sell!). Wyndham has failed on all counts. This is why it is SO critical that you vote, and the voting deadline to get your vote in GPVS's hands is May 25th by 4pm, PDT. Please, do yourself and every other owner a favor –
VOTE and do it today!! And give your votes ONLY to
Trish Harrington and Karen Blackford.
Do not dilute your votes.
Again, if you need to get another copy of the ballot package, or need to get your personal info so you can vote, contact Grand Pacific Vacation Services at
888-477-6967. I'll be around for a few days if you want to ask me anything related to this, but I'm not a voting administrator. I'm not a IOA board member. I don't work for GPRM.I'm like you, an owner. And I'm an owner interested in making KBV a great, worthwhile, and affordable resort jewel on Kaua'i. If Wyndham is allowed to impose their own will, you'll be powerless, they're not going to take your needs into account, maintenance fees will continue to go up rapidly, and your deed will have less worth.
We need to reverse that trend. If we don't and Wyndham takes over the board completely, that will be the end of our ability to influence decisions regarding the resort. We want a resort that sparkles, that is in demand (so that your deed becomes more valuable in case you want to sell it), with maintenance fees that are reasonable and make sense.
