At the "Owners Update" we did this week at Hyatt Sirena del Mar, they actually listened to what we wanted (Priority status and enough points to reserve a 2-bdrm at Sirena) and they offered us something they never have before - that we could purchase 180K Hyatt pts from them; they would then convert our 240K Welk pts to Hyatt pts, so we would have a total of 420K Hyatt points. This would make us Priority 5, so we could book 18 months out, rather than 15 months. They would then combine the two contracts into one contract to reduce the total maintenance fee to $3,300/yr (the MFs for two separate contracts would be over $4K).
I told the sales rep I'd do it for a price of $10K. However, the price was $29,700, and they said they couldn't come down even $1, so I declined. But, I have to say I was intrigued by the offer. They said this was a "one time" offer, something that Lawrence Welk's grandson (Welk Resorts President and CEO Jon Fredricks) insisted be offered to Walk members. They said our sales rep didn't offer it to us last year, so legally, they had to do it now, and it would never be offered to us again. I'm not sure any of that is true. I doubt they had any legal obligation to offer it to us, and who knows if they'll offer it again, but I haven't heard of it, and it certainly wasn't offered to us before.
Has anyone else been offered this in an owners update - conversion of Welk points to Hyatt and combining the old Welk and new Hyatt contract to reduce MFs?
And, I don't suppose I can accomplish this by purchasing additional Hyatt points re-sale, right?
We are at Serena Del Mar right now and went to the presentation yesterday morning...we have a fixed week and fixed unit at Serena and it's clear that they don't want us to have the fixed unit. They are telling us that there are libality risks if you own a fixed unit and if someting happens with a fixed unit (like a hurricane) then you are resposible for the cost incurred. They want us to convert that fixed unit to points (poinst in the world of hyatt program) and add our additional points that are part of the (Beyond program) that would be converted (3 to 1) to the world of Hyatt where the points can be used for all inclusive cruises, flights etc. Our sales person showed us on the website where we could a one week mediterranean cruise for 300 points. The sales person kept telling us that this would be the entrance into the world of Hyatt program, but then when they came back with the financial proposal it should that we already have a world of hyatt account number. We would be exchanging all of our equity for a down payment of 44, 000 and moving our maintance fees up 7500 per month. We have hear a similar pitch a few times, and we arI
I wouldn't recommend that. It can be hard to book, so fixed week and unit can be a benefit, especially if it's Christmas week! What kind of unit do you own? What week? And what are your maintenance fees now?
