Perryking - I read your post and went into a sale presentation. Hopefully this will address some of the good questions you brought up.
What I was told by the sales agent was that you can convert a week one at a time to WOH, but why would you? He told me the best way one would do that was to spend $133 for each week to convert to HPP ($133x3weeks=$399). Then after all your 3 weeks are in HPP, convert the points to WOH for one fee of $133. Of course, you could do one week at a time for a WOH conversion, but why would you want to incur 2 additional $133 fees. So in the 3 week scenario, in order to play in the WOH pool, you'd have to pay $532 a year for 3 weeks. They told me that I'd have to buy 1000 points to hyattize 2 weeks and 1500 points to hyattize 3 weeks.
BTW, the WOH conversion fee was clearly $133, not $127.
I also asked about the status and how it's determined. They said that status is based on how many points you convert to HPP that year. So if you had 6600 points of 3 diamond weeks that you could potentially convert to HPP and get that highest tier privilege, but you chose only to move 2200 points because you wanted to use your other 2 weeks, then you'd be at that lower tier level that year and all the privileges for that year would be the category associated with that. So then if in year 2, you converted all 6600 and also that the past year's 2200 rolled over to year 2, then those 2200 points would be subject to the privileges for that lower category of conversion while the 6600 would be subject to the privileges of that high tier category. It sounds like it's awfully hard for a person to keep up with things though I'd guess it's easy for a computer to keep track.
I was trying to think of a borrowing scenario and how that would work out based on your tier status when you have mixed bag of points with different tiers all combing to make one reservation. (I thought of this later so I never got to ask).
I also learned that you get 1 free housekeeping fee waiver for a low tier and 2 for the next tier and 3 for the next and 4 for that final tier. All I could think is that if you're a short term stayer, that's a lot of $60 fees that you'd have to pay. Housekeeping credits can not roll over like your points can.
I kind of feel bad for HPP owners regarding their wait request limits. In the legacy program, everyone has the right to request 18 mo out. In HPP the only way to get that is to have/convert 6600 points. The lowest tier only gets to request at 14 months out. They have to pay for something that legacy owners got for free.
Our conclusion like many of you was that the buy in was too high, the MF was too high for what you're getting. The WOH at 50:1 was break even at best (and our calculations were pretty generous to hyatt), but with all the fees, certain devaluation of WOH points in the future as with all airline miles and hotel points, and most likely us getting more likely a 43 or 45:1 conversion, it didn't make sense. We'd be better off cash paying as needed.
We thought about buying in at this time due to others depositing their weeks just to get more access to inventory, but I am not convinced the trust has weeks that I seek. What makes me feel even more strongly about this is that this summer, I get the feeling that they're only targeting current owners at the sales presentation. Our non-owner friends just got back from a trip to WOR using our points and never got approached for a sales presentation this past week (at check in or a call). This was quite different from our experience at WOR a month ago where we were asked at check in and then with another call. Upon hearing this, we thought back to the highlands inn presentation, and there were only owners there too. It may be a coincidence.
But my guess is that Hyatt is making a big push right now to only target current owners at presentations to tempt them into buying HPP to fund trust weeks to try to get decent inventory. I see why it may be tempting for resale owners that's not into maximizing value to hyattize to get WOH benefits, but I don't see a big draw for developer purchased owners to pay that much just to make more specific day stays (ex Fri-Sat only stays).
Sorry if I was rehashing some stuff. This thread is really long, and I'm sure I've missed reading some posts.
What I was told by the sales agent was that you can convert a week one at a time to WOH, but why would you? He told me the best way one would do that was to spend $133 for each week to convert to HPP ($133x3weeks=$399). Then after all your 3 weeks are in HPP, convert the points to WOH for one fee of $133. Of course, you could do one week at a time for a WOH conversion, but why would you want to incur 2 additional $133 fees. So in the 3 week scenario, in order to play in the WOH pool, you'd have to pay $532 a year for 3 weeks. They told me that I'd have to buy 1000 points to hyattize 2 weeks and 1500 points to hyattize 3 weeks.
BTW, the WOH conversion fee was clearly $133, not $127.
I also asked about the status and how it's determined. They said that status is based on how many points you convert to HPP that year. So if you had 6600 points of 3 diamond weeks that you could potentially convert to HPP and get that highest tier privilege, but you chose only to move 2200 points because you wanted to use your other 2 weeks, then you'd be at that lower tier level that year and all the privileges for that year would be the category associated with that. So then if in year 2, you converted all 6600 and also that the past year's 2200 rolled over to year 2, then those 2200 points would be subject to the privileges for that lower category of conversion while the 6600 would be subject to the privileges of that high tier category. It sounds like it's awfully hard for a person to keep up with things though I'd guess it's easy for a computer to keep track.
I was trying to think of a borrowing scenario and how that would work out based on your tier status when you have mixed bag of points with different tiers all combing to make one reservation. (I thought of this later so I never got to ask).
I also learned that you get 1 free housekeeping fee waiver for a low tier and 2 for the next tier and 3 for the next and 4 for that final tier. All I could think is that if you're a short term stayer, that's a lot of $60 fees that you'd have to pay. Housekeeping credits can not roll over like your points can.
I kind of feel bad for HPP owners regarding their wait request limits. In the legacy program, everyone has the right to request 18 mo out. In HPP the only way to get that is to have/convert 6600 points. The lowest tier only gets to request at 14 months out. They have to pay for something that legacy owners got for free.
Our conclusion like many of you was that the buy in was too high, the MF was too high for what you're getting. The WOH at 50:1 was break even at best (and our calculations were pretty generous to hyatt), but with all the fees, certain devaluation of WOH points in the future as with all airline miles and hotel points, and most likely us getting more likely a 43 or 45:1 conversion, it didn't make sense. We'd be better off cash paying as needed.
We thought about buying in at this time due to others depositing their weeks just to get more access to inventory, but I am not convinced the trust has weeks that I seek. What makes me feel even more strongly about this is that this summer, I get the feeling that they're only targeting current owners at the sales presentation. Our non-owner friends just got back from a trip to WOR using our points and never got approached for a sales presentation this past week (at check in or a call). This was quite different from our experience at WOR a month ago where we were asked at check in and then with another call. Upon hearing this, we thought back to the highlands inn presentation, and there were only owners there too. It may be a coincidence.
But my guess is that Hyatt is making a big push right now to only target current owners at presentations to tempt them into buying HPP to fund trust weeks to try to get decent inventory. I see why it may be tempting for resale owners that's not into maximizing value to hyattize to get WOH benefits, but I don't see a big draw for developer purchased owners to pay that much just to make more specific day stays (ex Fri-Sat only stays).
Sorry if I was rehashing some stuff. This thread is really long, and I'm sure I've missed reading some posts.
