If true, that would make the “skim” on Vistana close to 30% based on the pictures of the point costs in pictures that have been posted.
This is probably far from the actual skim.
I wrote a detailed explanation in
post 727 in this thread about how skim should be viewed (and the 1 Like it got was from you!)
Without repeating that long post, I'll just say that, the way I see it, the skim should be computed relative to the
average points required to book a week in your season. It would not be fair to compare it to the most expensive week in your season. When you use the "average points" for a week in the season that means that if all owners converted to points then all the points would be enough to book that entire season. Anything less is "skim". Anything more would not be feasible and probably not legal...
Here is an illustrative example for 2BR WKV Platinum. The deeded Platinum season runs from Week 51 to week 21 the following year. The points required to book those weeks are (from what I can tell, based on blurry photos here and I also may be off by a week here and there):
Week 51 | 3800 points to book |
Week 52 | 5400 points to book |
Weeks 1-2 | 2950 points to book |
Week 3 | 3800 points to book |
Weeks 4-14 | 5400 points to book |
Weeks 15-17 | 3800 points to book |
Weeks 18-21 | 2950 points to book |
So, you have 23 weeks in the season. The average points required to book a week in this season is 4413. It converts allegedly to 4050, so the skim is about 8.2%. This would be slightly higher than the traditional 5%-7% on the Marriott weeks.
But note that you can still "come out ahead" if you convert to points because you can book maybe 8-10 nights with 4050 elected points during some weeks (1, 2 & 18-21) in your season. Can you call that "anti-skim"? Not really... - since the "fair value" is around 4413 points, anything less they offer, is "skim".
There are other reasons besides the 8% "skim" for a 2BR Platinum WKV owner to be pissed off though - namely that it's superior to own 2 one-bedroom units over the 2BR lockoff (which was not the case in Vistana) and also the inferior conversion value relative to rental value.