Diamond : Hawaii Collection vs US Collection?

[dakotafamily]

Can someone please explain to me the advantages of having a Hawaii Collection or US Collection? What are the main differences? Thanks!

 

[Purefct]

If you bought the contracts from DRI or Sunterra then you are in "The Club" so the only difference is that if you make a reservation 11-13 months in advance then you may only make reservations at the specific resorts in those contracts (an owner of US Collections is not able to make a reservation 11 months in advance in Hawaii, an owner of the HI Collections will not be able to make a reservation in Williamsburg/StMarteen/etc). If you want to make a reservation 10 months or less in advance, you will not experience any difference between the contracts.

If you are a resale purchaser, you are restricted to using the specific rights of the contract you purchased unless you go to DRI and buy more ownership, whereupon DRI usually will convert your resale purchase back into The Club participation. If you do not do the deal with DRI, then the floating week at Sedona Summit can only be used internally at Sedona Summit and not at any other DRI resort. The US Collections points bought resale can only be used at the 21 or so resorts in the US Collections family. The HI Collections points contract can only be used at the four or so resorts in the HI Collections family. The Powhatan 4BR LO fixed week fixed unit can only be used with no other access internally to DRI resorts.

In most cases your resale purchase can be exchanged externally with exchange companies. Some people have mentioned difficulty with convincing DRI to allow them to exchange Collections reservations but I have a friend who is resale with US Collecitons and after moderate exertion managed to get their US Collections resale contract linked to an II membership to exchange. The primary difference for them is they have to pay for their II membership while members of The Club receive complimentary II membership. I'm not certain if the hurdle for resale owners of Collections contracts are they are unwilling to join II for a year to then find out after the fact they can link their Collections account to their II membership, or when they are speaking with DRI the CSRs simply state they are not eligible for II membership (it's the complimentary membership they are not eligible for), or since the CSR doesn't see an II account linked with the member's Collection contract the CSR says it can't be done. I recommend contacting II, signing up for a membership where you tell II you will be linking your DRI Collections contract, and see how it goes. On the one hand you might pay the annual fee and then II might charge $40-$60 to "research" your eligibility and then tell you your account is now linked (or they were unable to do so), and on the other hand you might pay your annual fee to II, then talk DRI into connecting your DRI account to your II membership. Either way, in my experience if you don't have the II membership in place DRI is unlikely to make any attempt to enable you to exchange thru II.

 

[dakotafamily]

We are currently Diamond Resorts US Gold Members and we have another US Regional Membership. We use the St. Maarten Royal Palms a lot and some ot the other resorts. This past year we were in Maui and took a timeshare tour. They were very high pressure and offered to combine all of our timeshares and spend another $3000 with them to convert all of our memberships into 1 and become DRI Platinum members. That being said and from what I understand, we would not be able to get St. Maarten and many others and also would the Hawaii taxes be a lot higher?? Thanks for the helpful information.

 

[Purefct]

When you say "Diamond Resorts US Gold Members and we have another US Regional Membership" do you mean you are in The Club where you have US Collections contract or contracts with 30,000-49,999 annual points, plus a resale US Collections contract of some amount of points? What specifically do you own which is participating in The Club and what specifically is not participating in The Club?

I've done that, buy from DRI and in some cases they combine multiple contracts into a single contract. I like that a lot, especially because when you sell a Collections contract you are allowed to break it a part (at least in the past this was allowed). So you can sell the whole thing and there is only one transfer fee or you can sell what you need to sell. In the past DRI was more willing to combine multiple deeded contracts into a single Collections contract, but one time in 2008 I think they allowed me to combine a couple of contracts into the HI Collections contract I bought. So maybe they'd let you combine your US Collections contracts into HI Collections with your purchase of the HI Collections contract.

The benefit of doing this is you only pay one base fee (for the HI Collections). I think the base fee is now called an operational fee. Currently I think you are paying two (one for the US Collections in Club and one for the US Collections not in Club) and if you merely bought HI Collections you would have three base fees. Are base fees about $250 or $300 in 2011? So you could pay one roughly $300 base fee if all your contracts were combined into the HI collections and of course it would all be in Club, which is way better than merely adding another contract where your three base fees would be $750-$900 total. Or as I believe you have now $600 for the two separate accounts holding your contracts in and not in Club.

I haven't looked at the 2011 billing yet, but based on 2010 here is what I understand the difference in cost between US and HI collections contracts to be:

HI ($228+$9.50=) $237.50 Operational Fee, $245 The Club Dues if in Club, $0.1127 fee per point owned
US $197 Operational Fee, $245 The Club Dues if in Club, $0.1102 fee per point owned
- NOTE: I can't remember if the $245 Club dues are for The Club or for being in Collections, then if you are in The Club there is an additional $50 fee.

So yes, HI Collections is more expensive, although I don't consider the additional $40 Operational Fee significant, and the additional $0.0025 per point is an additional $125 if you had 50,000 pts (enought to be Platinum).

What do you get for $165/yr more? What do you lose? Well, if your priority is HI then the additional 3 months to reserve could be important, and if you travel to St Maarten/etc perhaps the additional 3 months booking time is important. I tend to travel less than 10 months in advance so the important thing to me in the past was eliminating the redundant operational fees. Overall though, if you can buy the same point values in US Collections for less than HI Collections, and whomever sells you the additional US Collections brings your resale contract into Club, you win twice since the purchase costs less and you only have one base/operational fee. And especially since resale value is terrible for timeshares, it doesn't matter which contract you buy from DRI, except the topic of if you need the additional 3 months to book units!