I stayed at HGVC Flamingo during Labor Day week on a Dex exchange and never heard from the Hilton people inviting me to a presentation.
I'm going to Point at Poipu next week, and got the call from "HONOLULU". They left a voice mail on my landline and then called my cellphone. It was obvious who it was.
After hemming and hawing a bit, they invited me to a presentation to explain the new stuff. I told them I was on TUGBBS and knew a lot about HGV Max from the discussions here.
Plus, I lost a lot of money in the stock market and didn't have a lot of money to blow on a timeshare program of dubious benefit to me. Why do I need to explain this stuff to them every time I go to a Diamond property?
I expect them to try again when I get there. As far as I can tell, their new "gentler" approach isn't much different than the old approach.
Our experiences at Point at Poipu -
About five years ago - pre HGVC - as existing owners we were routed to a different sales team. Time obligations was reduced to 60 minutes, and the pitch was much more low key than on the main sales floor.
In August of this year, the entire DRI sales force appears to have been completely replaced. The person we met with had come from Marriott, and it was obvious that he wasn't nearly up to speed on the system. Presentation was still decidedly low key (aka, no pressure).
The main focus of the sales presentation was oriented toward getting involved with HGVMAX. They presented two main points of entry in to HGVMAX. One was to simply buy some points in HGVMAX. The other was to buy a resale deed and link that with HGVMAX as an entry point. For the resale deed option, they showed us a "menu" of currently available resale deeds - we identified two deeds from the list that seemed to make the most sense for us to consider (purchase price, number of points, and current annual feesEach deed option had a specific point value, purchase price, and current annual fee.
They had no problem with us taking the information and spending several days researching and looking things over - with the caveat that transactions that involved purchasing a resale deed were linked to the availability of that deed. So if we came back several days later and someone else had purchased that deed, then those particulars would no longer be available.
the only element of more pressured sale was that HGVC used the classic ruse of directing us to another person for a "QA" review of the sales presentation, which was just a ruse to try to sell us "Discovery Package" of points, good for 18 months at a specific set or resorts. That was a wrinkle that Diamond didn't use with existing owners. (I know DRI pushed that heavily on the non-owner sales floor.) We ended up purchasing the package, because the resorts that were listed included ones that we were likely to use, and the purchase price penciled out as compared with renting a unit or buying hotel room accommodations at those areas.