# Diamond Resorts International



## marybeth123 (Mar 19, 2009)

We are thinking about buying a timeshare at Polo Towers in Las Vegas.  I see they are a member of Diamond Resorts International.  I'm wondering if there are any DRI members that can tell me how easy it is to exchange to other DRI resorts - especially Hawaii.  How happy are you the DRI company?  Any info - good or bad - will be appreciated.

Thanks :rofl:


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## csalter2 (Mar 22, 2009)

marybeth123 said:


> We are thinking about buying a timeshare at Polo Towers in Las Vegas.  I see they are a member of Diamond Resorts International.  I'm wondering if there are any DRI members that can tell me how easy it is to exchange to other DRI resorts - especially Hawaii.  How happy are you the DRI company?  Any info - good or bad - will be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks :rofl:



Hello Marybeth,

I am not sure why some of the regulars have not chimed in to help you. I have not stayed at Polo Towers but am a member of DRI and The Club. I have not had problems with exchanging into other resorts especially if I planned well in advance. I have been to The Point in Poipu, Scottsdale's Village Mirage, Cypress Pointe in Orlando, and the Marquis in Palm Springs to name a few. Also, there is the Club Select program which you can review and you can use points or cash to reserve and utilize from members who have timeshares in other properties. I own a Marriott property in Hawaii, if I want to place my week in Hawaii into DRI's Club Select, I can do so and receive additional points. 

Some have had problems with the maintenance fees (MF) hikes over the last year. However, as I read this forum, it seems to be an issue for several of the companies particularly with today's economy. 

I also like the fact that we can use points with Interval International. You can really pull some nice resorts although for a fee to exchange into Marriott and Westin properties which are a little more upscale. The DRI properties are improving all of the time since DRI took over. That may be a reason for the MF increases. 

The two main complaints people seem to have are with MF and with customer service issues that don't seem to be resolved as efficiently as they should. I must say that the complaints I have heard of are not major. There are some who claim to have issues with making reservations at some of the other resorts. I have not had that be an issue for me. 

Overall, I like DRI. I like the flexibility that comes with the membership. If you may otherwise not use points that could be lost if you don't use them, you can put the points toward airfare, cruises, attractions or spas and other amusements. I am not saying these are the best uses of your points because your points only get the highest values for them when they are used for lodging. However, it beats losing them all together. You can only save a year's worth of the points.

One last thing, the properties generally are nice size units. They are usually bigger than many of the timeshare units that are more modern. Just an FYI


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## dougp26364 (Mar 22, 2009)

Keep in mind that, if you buy at Polo Towers, you will not automatically be a member of THE Club unless you either buy from the developer (DRI) or, pay to become a member. What it takes to join THE Club seems to be a moving target. It's been reported that there is a one time joiner fee of $2,995 to join. Lately, those that have bought resale seem to get a variety of stories from DRI salesmen. Most state that you can't buy without buying additional points. I've seen prices ranging from $4,000 for 1,000 points and up this last week. At any given momemt it just seems to be either whatever the salesman wants to tell you or whatever DRI decides is right for DRI at the moment. 

*You must become a member of THE Club or one of DRI's trust based ownerships to make internal exchanges,* but once you are a member, exchanges are pretty easy for resorts managed by DRI but can be more difficult for resorts that are only affiliates (not managed by DRI) and have limited inventory. When I look, I've seen good availability in Hawaii.


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## dougp26364 (Mar 22, 2009)

csalter2 said:


> Hello Marybeth,
> 
> One last thing, the properties generally are nice size units. They are usually bigger than many of the timeshare units that are more modern. Just an FYI



Of note, Polo Towers 2 bedroom units are just a little over 900 sq. ft. I believe this is smaller than the industry standard for most 2 bedroom units. If you're talking in general, the DRI resorts we've been to, and it's only been 3 other resorts, the units have been of typical size. They certainly haven't been noticably larger than many of the units we've stayed in. 

For comparison, you can click the Webshots link in my signature below. There you will find photo's of many of the units we've stayed at in the last 5 or 6 years. It will give you an idea of units sizes and amenities and a way to compare the 5 DRI resorts on that page. The DRI resorts I have photo's of are, The Suite's at Polo Towers (older decor, they've been extensively refurbished since those photo's), The Villa's at Polo Towers, Greensprings Plantation (renamed by DRI), Gatlinburg Town Square (an affiliated resort not managed by DRI) and The Suite's at Fall Creek (deluxe unit).


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## pgnewarkboy (Mar 22, 2009)

csalter2 said:


> Hello Marybeth,
> 
> I am not sure why some of the regulars have not chimed in to help you. I have not stayed at Polo Towers but am a member of DRI and The Club. I have not had problems with exchanging into other resorts especially if I planned well in advance. I have been to The Point in Poipu, Scottsdale's Village Mirage, Cypress Pointe in Orlando, and the Marquis in Palm Springs to name a few. Also, there is the Club Select program which you can review and you can use points or cash to reserve and utilize from members who have timeshares in other properties. I own a Marriott property in Hawaii, if I want to place my week in Hawaii into DRI's Club Select, I can do so and receive additional points.
> 
> ...




Ditto for me!   I also think that is in this market, you might be able to drive a hard bargain for a good deal on on club membership if you are willing to spend the time and emotional effort.  Buying timeshare, cars, or anything else fairly expensive usually means big commissions for the salesperson.  The more time a salesperson spends with you translates into lost time he could spend with someone else that might buy.  Consequently, it has been my experience that each passing hour used of the salesperson's time creates a greater need for the salesperson to make a sale- any sale with you.  Its not easy to do.  You have to be willing to spend the time and listen to the bs.


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## Bill4728 (Mar 22, 2009)

Just a couple of quick points:

If you buy DRI, I'd always buy resale first, then if you want into the club, you can buy more and get your resale week into the club, this will cut the cost of buying DRI points in half. 

But, you may consider buying resell points in the US collection /trust. You will not get into the "club" but you will be able to use your points at any of the 19 resorts in the trust.


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## RIMike (Mar 22, 2009)

*Hawaii*

I have not been, but I notice often that Hawaii is available to me as a "The Club" member.  If you are a club member, I think that Hawaii is available a good bit of the time.


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## Werner (Mar 23, 2009)

MaryBeth,  Hawaii is not in the US Collection.  The two Hawaii resorts, Ka'anapali Beach Club on Maui and the Point at Poipu on Kaua'i are in the Hawaii Collection along with Polo Towers and Sedona (Az) Summit.  

I don't envy your task.  Modern timeshare systems are enormously complicated, even within just one resort.  At at a DRI developed resort like Polo you can buy a deeded week resale, buy the Hawaii Collection (aka Trust) (which includes Polo) resale, join or not join DRI's "the Club" to get access to the rest of the DRI resorts, buy the Hawaii Collection from DRI and automatically get into the Club.  (I don't think DRI wants to sell deeded weeks any more so you may only be able to buy them resale.)    If you also look into other timeshare companies and systems you will likely hit information overload very quickly.  Also, there are no definitive sources of information other than forums like this whose members generally cover the gamut of all types or ownership in all types of systems.  Sorting it all out is a daunting task.  

Good Luck,


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## dougp26364 (Mar 23, 2009)

Werner said:


> MaryBeth,  Hawaii is not in the US Collection.  The two Hawaii resorts, Ka'anapali Beach Club on Maui and the Point at Poipu on Kaua'i are in the Hawaii Collection along with Polo Towers and Sedona (Az) Summit.
> 
> I don't envy your task.  Modern timeshare systems are enormously complicated, even within just one resort.  At at a DRI developed resort like Polo you can buy a deeded week resale, buy the Hawaii Collection (aka Trust) (which includes Polo) resale, join or not join DRI's "the Club" to get access to the rest of the DRI resorts, buy the Hawaii Collection from DRI and automatically get into the Club.  (I don't think DRI wants to sell deeded weeks any more so you may only be able to buy them resale.)    If you also look into other timeshare companies and systems you will likely hit information overload very quickly.  Also, there are no definitive sources of information other than forums like this whose members generally cover the gamut of all types or ownership in all types of systems.  Sorting it all out is a daunting task.
> 
> Good Luck,




It might be pretty hard to find a Hawaiian Trust Polo Towers unit on the resale market right now. The Hawaiian Trust just became an option to Polo Towers owners in the last couple of years. While it could happen, I can't imagine anyone who paid the $2,995 conversion fee or bought more points willing to resell that unit for a fraction of what they paid for it. 

Originally all Polo Towers weeks were sold as deeded weeks. Towers 1 & 2 were sold as fixed unit/fixed week deeds while The Villa's were sold as floating deeded weeks. Polo Towers has been essentiall sold out for at least 5 years. It could be a little longer than that. I'm pretty sure that Polo Towers was sold out before Marriott began pre-construction sales for their resort Grand Chateau. Until a few months ago, Marriott's sales offices were actuall in Polo Towers. There is a silent partnership that exisits (or at least existed at one time) between Polo Towers and Marriott called Hard Carbon (or something to that effect). Grand Chateau was originally a DRI owned design. DRI sold the branding to Marriott but retained at least some portion of ownership through this silent partnership. 

And before anyone askes, Polo Towers never will be a DRI resort and I seriously doubt that Grand Chateau will ever be listed in any of DRI's collections. Rumor was that there were difficulties between Marriott and DRI.


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## marybeth123 (Mar 23, 2009)

*DRI*

Thanks everyone for all your input - I think I have a lot or research ahead of me!


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## dougp26364 (Mar 23, 2009)

marybeth123 said:


> Thanks everyone for all your input - I think I have a lot or research ahead of me!




There is a poster on Timeshareforums who is weighing the difference between two Hawaiian Trust properties. One is Polo Towers. I'm assuming that there must be a few resales for the Hawaiian Trust out there for Polo unless this person is looking at buying retail from DRI.


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## happytraveler1 (Mar 25, 2009)

*clubmember*

are you aware that if you join Diamond  Trust, you give up your Deed to your week and they charge a yearly fee.  This by the way has been increasing. The fees are high to join either just Club or Club Trust.


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## itgrafix (May 5, 2009)

*3500 Points Diamond Resorts*

I'm contemplating purchasing a timeshare that states its with Diamond Resorts but the home resort is in Sedona. I wanted to know if this is a good deal or not and if I could find out how I could become a member of the diamond resorts to go international, since I saw they have Europe as well.

I do enjoy travel in Europe so am looking for that flexibility but I also don't mind having Sedona as home resort as it is not that far to go to other places.

I want to research before jumping in to avoid mistake as I did with my first timeshare and want to make sure this is truly a good purchase so any help will be appreciated. I'm still getting used to timeshares in general and am a "newbie"


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## csalter2 (May 6, 2009)

tgrafix said:


> I'm contemplating purchasing a timeshare that states its with Diamond Resorts but the home resort is in Sedona. I wanted to know if this is a good deal or not and if I could find out how I could become a member of the diamond resorts to go international, since I saw they have Europe as well.
> 
> I do enjoy travel in Europe so am looking for that flexibility but I also don't mind having Sedona as home resort as it is not that far to go to other places.
> 
> I want to research before jumping in to avoid mistake as I did with my first timeshare and want to make sure this is truly a good purchase so any help will be appreciated. I'm still getting used to timeshares in general and am a "newbie"



You will need to clarify what exactly you are buying. Are you only receiving 3500 points? Is it a deeded property? Are the points in which trust? DRI has different kinds of timeshare opportunities. 

If you are buying the points resale, you will have to pay for them to be brought into the Club where you can get the flexibility that you are referring to. It will cost about $3000 but they may ask you to buy more points in addition to the ones you have. Frankly, 3500 points will not get you much vacation especially during peak times. You will need to go to http://www.diamondresorts.com/index.aspx[/URL] You can get an idea of how many points you will need to reserve units. 

I would wait until you have a good grasp of what DRI or any timeshare company.


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## dougp26364 (May 6, 2009)

DRI has had quite the mess to clean up from the former developer Sunterra and part of that clean up has included some pretty substantial fee's increases. It's anyone's guess as to what will happen this coming year. I still expect at least moderate increases for the next few years if for no other reason than to bring cash reserve collections into line with where they should have been years ago. 

As mentioned, flexibility is dependent upon you being a member of THE Club. Some resorts are in a trust and, if you buy a trust based interest, you'll be able to exchange between the resorts included in that particular trust. If you're buying a US based resort, that won't include any of the European resrots.

To join THE Club and have internal exchange privledges to Europe, at a minimum you'll have to pay a joiner fee of $2,995. Reports I've read lately indicate that you may have to be insistant to get that deal as the sales staff is going to want you to buy additional points at developer prices (close to $5/point) and get the membership thrown in for free. I believe that DRI is moving towards points packages of 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 but I could be wrong on this. 

While I have not been an enthusiastic supporter of DRI, DRI has made improvements this year that make me feel better about my ownership with them. I will still be keenly interested in what happens with MF's this coming year and if they finally decide to begin collecting an appropriate amount for cash reserves. 

As for flexibility, I find a good points based exchange system to be the most flexible right now. Check with me in 10 years to see if I still feel this way. Things tend to change and what works best today probably won't be the best thing on the market tomorrow.


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## JoeMid (May 6, 2009)

dougp26364 said:


> There is a poster on Timeshareforums who is weighing the difference between two Hawaiian Trust properties. One is Polo Towers. I'm assuming that there must be a few resales for the Hawaiian Trust out there for Polo unless this person is looking at buying retail from DRI.


This doesn't make sense to me.  If the property is the Hawaii Trust, then the property is the Hawaii Trust.  If the property is Polo Towers then the property is Polo Towers.   DRI is the one that puts deeds into the Hawaii Trust, once a deed is incorporated into the Trust that deed no longer exists for anyone to purchase as an individual entity.

What you may mean is, they are weighing the difference in two properties that are ALSO properties that are represented in the Hawaii Trust.  This makes little difference in the scheme of things.


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## JoeMid (May 6, 2009)

dougp26364 said:


> DRI has had quite the mess to clean up from the former developer Sunterra and part of that clean up has included some pretty substantial fee's increases. It's anyone's guess as to what will happen this coming year. I still expect at least moderate increases for the next few years if for no other reason than to bring cash reserve collections into line with where they should have been years ago.


What an optimist, I expect identical close to 25% increases across the board, just like last year.


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## JoeMid (May 6, 2009)

dougp26364 said:


> And before anyone askes, Polo Towers never will be a DRI resort


What?  Polo Towers is THE DRI resort, it's all they really had before swallowing Sunterra.


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## dougp26364 (May 6, 2009)

JoeMid said:


> This doesn't make sense to me.  If the property is the Hawaii Trust, then the property is the Hawaii Trust.  If the property is Polo Towers then the property is Polo Towers.   DRI is the one that puts deeds into the Hawaii Trust, once a deed is incorporated into the Trust that deed no longer exists for anyone to purchase as an individual entity.
> 
> What you may mean is, they are weighing the difference in two properties that are ALSO properties that are represented in the Hawaii Trust.  This makes little difference in the scheme of things.



Trust resorts are not 100% trust owned. DRI is presenting current deeded week owners with the oportunity to convert those deeded weeks into an interest in one of the DRI trusts. 

We recently attended an owners update where the sales pitch was to convert our Polo Towers weeks into an interest in the U.S. Trust (not the Hawaiian trust). We passed as I saw not need to increase my MF's from a little over $2,000 to $2,800 PLUS pay another yearly $200 fee for the trust management.

What I fear is that DRI will attempt to get all resort MF's to equal the trust based fee's. For that matter, the trust based fee's aren't making a lot of sense to me. I thought the trust based fee's were suppose to be an average of all the resort MF's in the trust. If this is so, then how can the different trusts have the exact same MF per point? Granted I don't know the MF's of each and every resort but, something just doesn't seem right. I would think there would be some slight varience between the different trusts in MF's. 

FWIW, they presented Polo Towers as being in the US Trust and not the Hawaiian trust. I just can't believe that the average of the resorts in the US Trust was equal to the average MF's of the resorts in the Hawaiian Trust. That still seems a little odd to me.


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## dougp26364 (May 6, 2009)

JoeMid said:


> What an optimist, I expect identical close to 25% increases across the board, just like last year.




Yes, I know I'm an optimist. If they jack that rates that much, it may be time to just let these properties go and move on. I don't need the 26,500 points and, while I would need to replace these two units with one unit, I would be money ahead to bite the bullet and do it. I'd much rather put a few thousand into a Marriott resale than to continue to face 25% increases with DRI. 

What I WOULD like to see is cash reserve funding go up and go up considerably. Polo Towers has had an issue with their water treatment facilities and I fear this will incure another special assessment at this property. If it does, it will be the third special assessment in 12 years. IMHO, that is a very STRONG indicator that the collection of cash reserve funding is far below where it should be. If there is an increase but the lions share of that increase goes into cash reserve funding, I'll feel differently about the subject. 

I have sent an e-mail, one to which the HOA/BOD has not responded to, that they consider increasing the cash reserve funding 100% this year (approx. $35) and then at least 50% for the next two years. That would put the cash reserve funding at approx. $155 by the end of the third year, which would bring it in line with both the Marriott and Hilton resorts in Vegas. By then I'm sure that even that figure will be behind those two leaders in the industry and they will likely need to increase cash reserve funding another 50% in the fourth year. Still, even with this agressive schedule of cash reserve funding increases, Polo Towers would still suffer from years of what I consider inadaquate cash reserve funding.


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## dougp26364 (May 6, 2009)

JoeMid said:


> What?  Polo Towers is THE DRI resort, it's all they really had before swallowing Sunterra.




Hmm, I don't remember writing that. Trust me (no pun intended), I know Polo Towers is THE DRI resort. I've owned there since 1998 and have suffered through 2 special assessments at the resort due to inept management.

EDIT: I had to go back and find the exact quote *And before anyone askes, Polo Towers never will be a DRI resort and I seriously doubt that Grand Chateau will ever be listed in any of DRI's collections. Rumor was that there were difficulties between Marriott and DRI.
*

What I meant to say was that *Grand Chateau will never be a DRI resort.* Even though it was S. Cloobecks design, at one point he had decided to get out of timeshare developement and sold the branding rights to Marriott, essentially destroying any possiblity that Grand Chateau will ever be a DRI resort. 

Conversly, there were rumors that Polo Towers would become a Marriott resort. Boy do I wish those rumors had been true but, Polo Towers does not meet Marriott standards and, just like Grand Chateau will never be a DRI resort, Polo Towers will never be a Marriott resort.

Unless.........DRI gets enough units converted into their trust based ownership and they decide to sell that property off like they did with Carlton Court in London. But that's just WILD speculation on my part.


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