2015 Program Changes [merged]

[Bigrob]

One other piece of advice for those with a fair number of contracts and points - you may want to take a screen print on August 3rd. There may be some "glitches" especially if you have a fair number of contracts/points in various statuses.

 

[uscav8r]

Wyndham is overly complex and this makes it worse.
...
If they take my usability away, they can have their points back a and the loan that came with it.

I disagree with your first statement, but I guess it depends on your point of view. For all practical purposes, this change actually SIMPLIFIES the system for a majority of owners. Now a regular owner has one less points category to understand and deal with.

Unless you are a megarenter or high-volume owner who will conceivably book a chunk of a given resort at a given time and then rely on the cancel-rebook game (which has already become an iffy proposition), the effect will be transparent.

I think there may be a 2nd/3rd order effect, whether intended or not: megarenters may put more effort (even more than is already the case) into buying up contracts at specific resorts (or CWA) to get into the unaffected ARP zone. This, in turn, will further drive up resale prices (although the impact may be a bit muted due to the already inflated prices and lack of inventory). Regular owners may find themselves priced out of the ARP resale market. And if things get TOO pricey, they will start looking at other, higher-end systems (HGVC, Marriott, Starwood) as financially viable alternatives to Wyndham.

As Bigrob alluded in another unrelated thread, driving commercial renters to ARP and reducing their cancel-rebook chances essentially slows down their capital turnover rate as the capital (i.e., points) is tied for longer periods of time until a return is realized (rental funds received). Whether this is enough to dissuade them from continuing/expanding their businesses remains to be seen. It certainly is causing some angst amongst the ranks as shown by this thread.

But as in all things, if there exists enough financial incentive to do business, the megarenters who can adapt will survive and those who cannot adapt will suffer and/or leave.

 

[55plus]

I received the email today and read it thoroughly. It meets the needs and wants of the majority of owners - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. For once Wyndham got it right...

 

[uscav8r]

So, I did call in to check on this, and got some interesting clarifications:
...
2. AFTER August 4th, any reservation you cancel, the points will go back to where they came from to make the reservation, NOT to the use year of the reservation. The examples I was provided included:

A. Reservations made from a credit pool will go back to the same credit pool
B. Reservations made from a contract will go back to that contract and to the same use year of that contract - so if you borrow points to make a reservation in the express window, with the intention of cancelling the reservation and making a different reservation NOT in the express window - you will no longer be able to do this.

Bye bye, Poor Man's Points Accelerator. Now the only option is to rent points from Wyndham, and even then, only for up to 1 night of a reservation in the SRP.

Cancel a Credit Pool booking and retain potentially several years of life? This is actually a boon for those who use the credit pool continuously (offset by the "unlimited" ARP bookings that are given up by pooling, of course).

 

[antjmar]

Why does ARP reservations get a pass? Usually when someone uses their ARP to make a reservation those are for the highest demand times.

Probably since you have a deed which guarantees you the week or points at that resort and the ARP booking.

"

 

[Sandy VDH]

Getting rid of cancelled points. I am very happy with.

Limit bookings to 10% of inventory, does not impact me at all.

Happy with the change, as it is written.

 

[Ty1on]

Are you sure about this? My understanding has been that until sold, Wyndham has both the responsibility (maintenance fee) and right to use unsold points. Otherwise, in new resorts the reserve funds would be seriously underfunded, maintenance fees would be astronomical until a large percentage of the resort was sold, etc.

The developer (not the Club) owns the unsold points and pays their MF, you were correct. What I read separates the two, but for all intents and purposes, it is under the same umbrella.

 

[bnoble]

AFTER August 4th, any reservation you cancel, the points will go back to where they came from to make the reservation, NOT to the use year of the reservation.

I'll miss the ability to convert pool credits into something that can be deposited to RCI, and the ability to borrow into express, cancel, and rebook into Standard. But, on balance, this does make things simpler, and the ability to keep credits in the credit pool might provide some value.

Edited to add: thinking about this more, you can still accomplish borrow-for-standard by credit pooling the required future year's points, so the flexibility is still there, it just costs a few bucks to do.

 

[CO skier]

2. AFTER August 4th, any reservation you cancel, the points will go back to where they came from to make the reservation, NOT to the use year of the reservation. The examples I was provided included:

A. Reservations made from a credit pool will go back to the same credit pool
B. Reservations made from a contract will go back to that contract and to the same use year of that contract - so if you borrow points to make a reservation in the express window, with the intention of cancelling the reservation and making a different reservation NOT in the express window - you will no longer be able to do this.

It would seem this will also end the practice of rolling cancelled points forward to future use years by those with multiple use years in the same account.

(Not everyone had their contracts aligned to a single use year, and some re-acquired multiple use years after the use year consolidation.)

 

[alexadeparis]

Probably since you have a deed which guarantees you the week or points at that resort and the ARP booking.

"

Correct. ARP reservations are deeded rights and Wyndham cannot change the privileges on those. It may unintentionally create some demand for the resale contracts in hot ARP resorts, even the smaller contracts will be snapped up.

 

[Bigrob]

It would seem this will also end the practice of rolling cancelled points forward to future use years by those with multiple use years in the same account.

(Not everyone had their contracts aligned to a single use year, and some re-acquired multiple use years after the use year consolidation.)

That is correct. Also, according to the agent I spoke with, the system will automatically make reservations with points that expire earliest - ordinarily what you'd want, unless you're making a booking close to the expiration of those points, in which case you might want to save those points for reservations that come earlier in their use year. So depending upon what you're making the reservation for, you may need to call in to restack where the reservation was made from. At least you don't have to call in to restack to use cancelled points instead of regular (since the system irritatingly pulled from regular use points before cancelled points).

 

[Ty1on]

It would seem this will also end the practice of rolling cancelled points forward to future use years by those with multiple use years in the same account.

(Not everyone had their contracts aligned to a single use year, and some re-acquired multiple use years after the use year consolidation.)

So the use-year consolidation was a one-time shot?

 

[Bigrob]

Getting rid of cancelled points. I am very happy with.

Limit bookings to 10% of inventory, does not impact me at all.

Happy with the change, as it is written.

the one thing you may miss is not being able to roll points forward anymore.

 

[CO skier]

Correct. ARP reservations are deeded rights and Wyndham cannot change the privileges on those. It may unintentionally create some demand for the resale contracts in hot ARP resorts, even the smaller contracts will be snapped up.

None of my UDI deeds mention anything about Advance Reservation Priority.

 

[CO skier]

So the use-year consolidation was a one-time shot?

It was hit-or-miss then, and it still is.

 

[Sloane S]

Has anyone else considered this "Nightly Limit" of 10 units like this: I reserve 20 units at Royal Vista using ARP for check in February 20th. on January 2nd I cancel and rebook 10 units. On January 3rd I cancel and rebook the remaining 10 units.

The policy states "Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book at a single resort of 10 units". I have only booked 10 per night.

 

[Ty1on]

Has anyone else considered this "Nightly Limit" of 10 units like this: I reserve 20 units at Royal Vista using ARP for check in February 20th. on January 2nd I cancel and rebook 10 units. On January 3rd I cancel and rebook the remaining 10 units.

The policy states "Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book at a single resort of 10 units". I have only booked 10 per night.

I'm thinking it would work like this:

February 20, 20 units.
January 2, you cancel rebook 10 units, total 20
January 3, you cancel/rebook 10 units, total 20
Sometime between Jan 2 and whenever, 10 units are cancelled because you have exceeded the 10 unit limit.
After that, you have 10 units booked.

I have a feeling that if you are "paying full fare" for the rooms, they're fine.
I really think it's Cancel/Rebook they are going after.

 

[Sloane S]

I'm thinking it would work like this:

February 20, 20 units.
January 2, you cancel rebook 10 units, total 20
January 3, you cancel/rebook 10 units, total 20
Sometime between Jan 2 and whenever, 10 units are cancelled because you have exceeded the 10 unit limit.
After that, you have 10 units booked.

I have a feeling that if you are "paying full fare" for the rooms, they're fine.
I really think it's Cancel/Rebook they are going after.

Sure, but the email states there is a nightly limit on the number you can book. I only booked 10 units per night.

It doesn't state that there is a an overall limit on the number of reservations that can be in place at one time. That was how Bluegren implemented theirs: "To give all Club members fair access to available inventory, a maximum of 100 advance reservations (or 500 nights), with no more than 10 reservations in a single destination or region, may be confirmed and/or pending at any given point in time. Should you exceed the maximum reservation or nightly allowance, reservations will automatically be canceled on your behalf to bring you into compliance."

 

[CO skier]

Has anyone else considered this "Nightly Limit" of 10 units like this: I reserve 20 units at Royal Vista using ARP for check in February 20th. on January 2nd I cancel and rebook 10 units. On January 3rd I cancel and rebook the remaining 10 units.

The policy states "Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book at a single resort of 10 units". I have only booked 10 per night.

The Nightly Unit Limit applies to the nights in the reservations, not the number of reservations that may be made at the same resort in any given day.

In the above example, the second group of 10 overlaps the first group, so 10 reservations are out of compliance with the new rule and subject to cancellation.

 

[Bigrob]

Has anyone else considered this "Nightly Limit" of 10 units like this: I reserve 20 units at Royal Vista using ARP for check in February 20th. on January 2nd I cancel and rebook 10 units. On January 3rd I cancel and rebook the remaining 10 units.

The policy states "Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book at a single resort of 10 units". I have only booked 10 per night.

Pretty sure it won't work like that. If you cancel and rebook the first 10, those are the 10 that will get canceled, and you'll be left with 10 remaining (full fare) reservations. When you go for the second round of cancel rebook, assuming they are still available and don't get snatched, you'll be able to cancel and rebook those.

If you already have the max number of units, anything you do after that will result in a reservation being cancelled (last in first out). Therefore, you will want to make sure if you're replacing an existing reservation, that you "have room", especially if you've found a particularly good reservation.

I don't think this is directed at cancel/rebook per se; I think it's directed at those that grab 50-100 reservations when they find out about a championship fight in Las Vegas, for example. (I wasn't smart enough to be one of those). Some event gets announced and all the units are immediately swept up by mega-renters who rent there, and regular owners are boxed out. That's the target.

If it limits cancel/rebook and eliminates points rolling, those are just added benefits from Wyndham's perspective.

 

[csxjohn]

You're right, it states

" Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book "

I am 99.99% positive that since units are not all booked at night they are talking about nights booked. In your case will have 20 nights booked no matter when you made the bookings.

As always I could be interpreting this wrong.

 

[Sloane S]

The Nightly Unit Limit applies to the nights in the reservations, not the number of reservations that may be made at the same resort in any given day.

In the above example, the second group of 10 overlaps the first group, so 10 reservations are out of compliance with the new rule and subject to cancellation.

I could see how it could be interpreted that way as well, since the language is slightly ambiguous. BG was at least very clear in their explanation.

 

[cyseitz]

I haven't received this email from Wyndham. Are there others who haven't received it yet?

I have not gotten that...Maybe they sent it to those who book 10 or more on the same dates??

 

[CO skier]

I don't think this is directed at cancel/rebook per se; I think it's directed at those that grab 50-100 reservations when they find out about a championship fight in Las Vegas, for example. (I wasn't smart enough to be one of those). Some event gets announced and all the units are immediately swept up by mega-renters who rent there, and regular owners are boxed out. That's the target.

Under the new rule, 9 mega-renters and maybe 10 regular owners book those 100 reservations in the first few minutes or hour instead of 1 or 2 mega-renters booking the 100 nights.

I don't see how general availability was increased by much, as stated in the original email.

 

[CO skier]

Has anyone else considered this "Nightly Limit" of 10 units like this: I reserve 20 units at Royal Vista using ARP for check in February 20th. on January 2nd I cancel and rebook 10 units. On January 3rd I cancel and rebook the remaining 10 units.

The policy states "Nightly Unit Limit on the number of units an owner can book at a single resort of 10 units". I have only booked 10 per night.

You are onto something with the ARP exemption.

10 one bedrooms and 10 3-or-4 bedroom Presidentials may be reserved during ARP (20 units for the same nights).

At 60 days, cancel and rebook the 1 bedroom for 50%, then cancel a Presidential and upgrade.

There are now 18 ARP units and 1 unit subject to the new rule.

Repeat this 10 times (unlikely, but theoretically just as possible as before the new rule), and the result is 10 Presidentials booked for 50% of the 1 bedroom price plus 10 1 bedroom units back in inventory -- exactly as what can occur now. Here, again, I do not see how availability was improved under the rule.

If 3 mega-renters are specializing in a certain resort and reserving 30 (or 60) units per week at their resort, under the new rule the 3 mega-renters just specialize in the other two resorts, too, and each mega-renter makes 10 (or 20 ARP) reservations at each of the three resorts. Once again, there is no more availability under the new rule than what is available currently.

I am still trying to understand where all this "increased availability" from the new rule will be found. It seems to be more of a PR campaign than anything substantial. The effects on the credit pool points and ending rollover points appear to be the most significant -- and maybe these effects were unintended.