I think from a “better than a sharp stick in the eye” standard, SVO’s replacement benefits for villa upgrades for elite owners certainly are better than that. Yet, shockingly, not one person has stepped up to the plate here to say the 4000 Starpoint bonus for booking a $27,000 “signature escape” African safari made their day.
But, from a “should I buy another developer timeshare from SVO for $20K to $40K” standard, we all will agree these replacement benefits don’t even come close to measuring up.
To understand my "beef" with SVO on this one we'll need to power up the wayback machine Mr. Peabody and travel back to early 2007.
Back then, SVO was heavily, and I mean heavily, marketing its elite program with the villa upgrade feature. Giant, and I mean giant, floor-to-ceiling posters graced every SVO timeshare lobby touting “elite ownership has its benefits.” Taking a marketing cue from Denny’s, SVO even placed those mini-folding paper tents with the same message in EVERY villa room. Every SVO salesperson, including mine, talked up the benefits of being upgraded as an elite owner. “You can use only 67,100 StarOptions but be upgraded to an 81,000 StarOption room 30 days out.” “You’ll know well ahead of time too, so you can plan accordingly.”
And because of all these promises, people, including me, bought.
Even on May 30, 2007, the day before Suzanne Clarke’s email killing the upgrade program,
people were buying developer units by the bushel, All of them filled with the excitement of the lifetime of upgrades promised by everyone at SVO and posted everywhere around SVO properties. All of us were busy happily humming SVO’s praises and enjoying our good fortunes for finding such a great opportunity.
Then, on May 31, 2007, Suzanne Clark, VP of SVO “Owner Services,” dropped her bomb, and our (well at least my) faith in SVO management was lost forever.
The best indicator that the “replacement” benefits don’t come close to measuring up to the killed elite upgrade benefit can be found in the lobbies and villa rooms of the SVO properties. Gone are the floor-to-ceiling banners. Gone are the mini-folding paper tents, and gone, even way before the economy tanked, were the people flocking to buy new developer units to achieve SVO elite status (except of course for the smaller subset of those still pursuing 5 Star to achieve SPG platinum status).
So everyone singing the praises of their extended Starpoint conversion windows, and 10% Starpoint bonuses, and 4000 StarPoint bonus when buying a $27,000 African Safari, remember that those benefits are resting on the crushed excitement and faith many of us once had in SVO. After SVO promised us something meaningful and abruptly took it away, it had the nerve to throw us those “benefits,” which are really just scraps SVO deemed worthless enough to throw our way.
-nodge