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Barbados Online Booking & Availability

escanoe

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Has anyone heard anything on when the Crane in Barbados will be available for online booking? For those of you that have called to check on availability and have enough points to spend, how hard is it to book?
 

escanoe

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Bumping this. I suspect there is an untold story about what is happening with the inventory becoming available here.
 

Helios

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I am curious about this as well.
 

Sandy VDH

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There is not much availability, and the points are crazy high. It is likely cheaper just to pay to rent from the resort itself. Even the cash price on HGVC is stupid high, and it about 3 times the price that resort charges to rent directly from them.
 

escanoe

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How many units and of what size does HGVC currently have open?
 

Sandy VDH

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How many units and of what size does HGVC currently have open?

As of Dec 31 2018. 23 units according stats published by HGVC. Don't know how much that has changed in 2019.

Size I have no idea.
 

alwysonvac

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The last TUG member update I saw was back on May 30th in the Crane thread (see @zerocylinders post from that thread below).

Update: I would strongly recommend that anyone thinking of buying The Crane wait a while. There is almost NO availability. We have a Platinum 2BR (the 19,200 unit). After trying several times to book various weeks in 2020 and becoming somewhat exasperated, the HGVC representative told me that only 4 2BR units show up on his system, and only 1 2X (the other 19,200 unit which is interchangeable for home week purposes FYI). I did not get numbers on the other units, but availability even of one bedrooms seems pretty limited (I can get that 9 months out since its not my home unit, but nothing was available in any platinum week either). I am guessing that this means either: (1) construction is not complete (see below), and HGVC only has a few show units to sell (most of which are probably taken with marketing offers to try to sell), OR (2) the move into the Crane is much more limited than the offering documents suggested or maybe HGVC isn't getting the reaction it expected from buyers and has halted the project. I have a call into the HGVC rep who sold us the unit to see if they can give us more info, but it is very strange that 9 months after they announced the units were available, I can't get a reservation for 2020.

I did nab a reservation in 2019, but I can't make it (I basically took the only week I could find with availability as soon as they told me the units were available). My son will be taking it with some friends, so will have a trip report in a few weeks. I am going to have him look around to see if there is construction going on actively also. It will also be interesting to see if the unit he gets put into is in the newly constructed area of the Crane that HGVC purchased, or instead are just rehabbed units in the older Crane constructed buildings.

Another reason to avoid purchasing until we know more is the maintenance fee (around $3,500 for my unit). On a price per point that is actually pretty good, but you can currently rent a similar unit from the crane for about $2,200 per week so the Crane is not a good option for renting. How similar those older units are to the new construction HGVC units I don't know - I am hoping that my son will report back that the new units are much nicer than the older Crane ones, but not sure at this point.

Anyone with better information than me, please post!
 

CalGalTraveler

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Another option is to trade via RCI for fewer points. You won't get the best unit or peak season though.
 
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pianodinosaur

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We traded 4800 HGVC points for a two bedroom unit at The Crane in late October, 2010, via RCI. However, the Crane is very difficult to exchange into via RCI.
 

escanoe

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We traded 4800 HGVC points for a two bedroom unit at The Crane in late October, 2010, via RCI. However, the Crane is very difficult to exchange into via RCI.

I assume the HGVC portion of the Crane will be getting its own RCI listing? I’ll be that doesn’t have much availability.
 

RNCollins

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I just posted in the Sightings forum the availability at the Crane. There are a total of 7 (studio & one bedroom) units available now.
 

CalGalTraveler

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Nice sightings but in Sept/Oct which is their low season. Even though this isn't in the hurricane belt, wouldn't it get the associated heavier rain and wind at the perimeter?
 
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zerocylinders

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Just an update .. still no availability in the 19K units (2 bedrooms with pool / penthouse) as far as I can tell from the phone rep (Elite). Since they are still not online, it is impossible to really browse availability. However, I sent my son to scout the property when I got the only availability I could find for this past June. He went with a couple of friends and said that most of the HGVC units were still under construction. It looked like the HGVC unit he was in was in a single building that was possibly older than the ongoing construction units, but had been recently rebuilt / refurbished probably to match the layouts of the new units that are under construction? It is all supposition, and my HGVC corporate rep went silent on me when I complained to her. I really think it is crappy that HGVC sold these units at a super high premium cost, and is assessing current year maintenance fees, when there are only a couple of units built. I am so disappointed in this situation that I was moved to purchase my first Marriott unit to get better access to Caribbean. In addition, my son said that the junk seaweed was really bad on that side of the island making it impossible to enjoy the shoreline due to the smell. The trip to the other side of the island takes 45 minutes so is not really feasible (a lot of Caribbean islands have this issue but still...) As I said before I would strongly advise to avoid purchasing anything (direct or resale) at HGVC Barbados at this point in time until there is a clearer picture on availability AND online booking.
 

alwysonvac

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Just an update .. still no availability in the 19K units (2 bedrooms with pool / penthouse) as far as I can tell from the phone rep (Elite). Since they are still not online, it is impossible to really browse availability. However, I sent my son to scout the property when I got the only availability I could find for this past June. He went with a couple of friends and said that most of the HGVC units were still under construction. It looked like the HGVC unit he was in was in a single building that was possibly older than the ongoing construction units, but had been recently rebuilt / refurbished probably to match the layouts of the new units that are under construction? It is all supposition, and my HGVC corporate rep went silent on me when I complained to her. I really think it is crappy that HGVC sold these units at a super high premium cost, and is assessing current year maintenance fees, when there are only a couple of units built. I am so disappointed in this situation that I was moved to purchase my first Marriott unit to get better access to Caribbean. In addition, my son said that the junk seaweed was really bad on that side of the island making it impossible to enjoy the shoreline due to the smell. The trip to the other side of the island takes 45 minutes so is not really feasible (a lot of Caribbean islands have this issue but still...) As I said before I would strongly advise to avoid purchasing anything (direct or resale) at HGVC Barbados at this point in time until there is a clearer picture on availability AND online booking.

Thanks for the update.
 

zerocylinders

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Here is some more information, not great, that I pulled from the POS provided to me after we closed (unfortunately, I did not really read through it until recently; my mistake). Extremely limited development.

There are only 38 Suites located in 2 buildings. Each Suite is divided into weekly internals, so there would theoretically be 38 x 52 = 1976 weeks available. However, the POS states that there are only 1211 Vacation Ownership interests available. I believe that is because some of the Vacation Intervals are actually combining a one bedroom and a studio so those Vacation Interval units take up two Suites for one week.

Here are the raw numbers of Vacation Intervals from the POS; each Vacation Interval is one week, and takes up 1-2 Suite units:

112 x Studio garden view

80 x 1 Bed/1 Bath

187 x One bed/two bath deluxe

142 x One bed/One bath garden view and pool

104 x One bed/One bath with rooftop plunge pool

124 x One bed/One Bath deluxe with rooftop plunge pool

145 x One bedroom / two bathroom deluxe with ocean view

28 x One bedroom / two bathroom deluxe with ocean view and 28 foot pool [NOTE: I think that this is the same unit as below used in the 2 bedroom 19K point unit that we purchased; which I think explains why only 28 intervals are available in this configuration - they wanted to sell more of the doubled up lockoff intervals at a higher price]

112 x One bedroom / two bathroom deluxe with ocean view and plunge pool
[NOTE: I think that this is also part of the "penthouse" configuration where a studio lockoff is added; however that "penthouse" configuration does not seem to be a formal POS Vacation Interval; unlike the other one with the 28 foot pool the doubled up penthouse unit does not appear in the POS, which might explain why I could not buy the "penthouse" but nonetheless I can use it for my home week]
132 x Two bedroom / two bathroom with garden view and pool

45 x Two bedroom / three bathroom with ocean view and 28 foot pool [this is what we bought]


A few takeaways from analyzing the above numbers...

1) Availability in the 2 bedroom units will always be extremely limited. The unit we bought appears to only be sold for 45 weeks out of the year?! We can also use our home week in the "penthouse" unit not listed, which consists of the 112 one bath / two bedroom deluxe units with plunge pool, locked off with an adjacent studio. Since there are an identical number of Studio units, I am assuming that each studio is adjacent to one of these.. so there are only 2 of these in most weeks week, with a total of 3 available in 8 weeks of the year (52 weeks x 2 units + 3 x 112 units over the year) - at best. Of course, the availability of these units to me (and the other 44 folks who buy the 19K unit) depends entirely on the owners of the one bedroom AND studio units not reserving their home week; so in reality these units may not be available as home weeks with a 12 month advance reservation window to us even though in theory we could use our home week for these.

Since there is only generally only one Vacation Interval available per week in the most expensive setup (2 bed/3 bath ocean view and pool) (and 7 weeks where none are available) then for the home week, that means that the 45 owners vacation unit owners are fighting for the same 1 unit and the same weeks - an 7 weeks where there is no availability at all in home week. I am also curious which 7 weeks were excluded - and whether those will be sold as fixed weeks - not mentioned in POS.

The owners of 1 bedroom / 2 bath deluxe units (187 intervals), and 1 bedroom / 2 bath gardenview with pool (142 intervals), are probably most likely to be able to find a home week 12 months in advance, though still pretty limited.
 
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