Developer deal or ripoff?

[DaveNV]

I recently attended a Consolidated Resorts TS presentation in Hawaii, for their expansion of Tahiti Village in Las Vegas. Don't worry - I didn't buy anything. But one couple we'd seen at our resort, and later spoke with while collecting the free gifts, did buy from them. They were ecstatic.

They casually threw some numbers around (I'm remembering something like $29,000 or some such - for ONE WEEK???), PLUS the developer was "kind enough" to take a couple of other TS weeks they owned "off their hands." The wife of the couple called it "trading in" of their other weeks, and said she'd done it several times before. I don't know if their other weeks were also Consolidated Resorts weeks, or with someone else.

Is this sort of practice common? It wasn't the time or place to discuss how ripped off I felt they were, since the wife was adamant about the great deal they'd gotten. But it seems to me that in addition to the outrageous price of $29K (or whatever it was) for a week south of the airport in Las Vegas, they also gave away the other TSs they paid for previously, at whatever financial loss. What is that developer going to do with those "traded in" weeks? (Or is that a source of income and inventory for postcard companies?)

Am I missing something here? I don't see how they got any kind of advantage deal at all.

Dave

 

[Polly Metallic]

I agree that it was no deal. They got rid of a few maintenenace fees, no doubt, by trading in their other weeks, but they could have accomplished the same thing by selling the weeks on their own. And $29,000 is a ridiculous price, particularly if that was AFTER the trade-ins. Some people just have no business sense at all.

 

[Timeshare Von]

I have never had a domestic US timeshare developer do the "trade-in" with existing owned inventory. We did have a similar pitch in Mexico by two resort sales departments. On paper, they show you an inflated retail purchase price, with an equally inflated trade-in value for a net of where I believe any Joe/Josephine off the street could have gotten to with enough dickering and negotiations. It's just like a used car you trade in, in theory, if you're not careful.

I believe that the resort receiving the trade-in will then turn around and dump it off to some wholesale type resaler (the type you find on eBay) to unload it. They don't care what they get, so long as they cover some administrative costs to sell it. For all I know, the retail resort just gives it away to be sold on the secondary market.

As a buyer, I was offered a resale from Fairfield (March 2005) as part of a large packaged transaction. I was told that the fixed week they were offering in this package came in under a trade deal, but I don't know that I believe them. I can't imagine FF/Wyndham ever taking in existing FF inventory as a trade.

Oh yeah . . . I think they got ripped off!

 

[johnmfaeth]

A lot of Hawaii trade-ins end up as Holiday Group inventory I've been told by their folks over the years. The developer's who took them view them as worthless, they know any savy person could have bargained to the same end without the tradeins.