Attended the sales presentation yesterday at Coconut Plantation where they have just reopened the newly renovated old sales center, since we were offered a $100 credit on our bill to attend. Previously we had been told that incentives to go to such presentations were NOT offered to those of us who had bought on the secondary market. Apparently they have decided they need to reach all possible sources of sales and also to entice us to consider selling back to Hyatt so that they will have more access for the new pure points folks to come to the original HRC properties.
The salesperson, Max, was the most straightforward and honest salesperson we have encountered in many such sessions over the years we have owned Hyatt. He is retired from selling at Disney for 35 years. I know that you can usually count on chicanery from the sales weasels, but this guy was refreshingly candid. He wanted to know if we would be interested in buying another 2000 point week for $ 19,000, explaining that this was a very good price and that once Hyatt received OK from the state of Florida the price would jump to $ 41,000. When we pointed out that to someone who had paid developer price in the past this would look pretty good, but to us who had bought our week 2 here on eBay for $ 2500 it was ridiculously high, he agreed and stopped any attempt to sell us anything.
He did say that Hyatt would be interested in buying back from us our Diamond and Platinum weeks at Beach House but that would have to be investigated through corporate by contacting owner services and did not know any price numbers. ( We are not interested in selling.)
We asked about the new points program and once again were told that the sales people are still in the dark about the details. He assumes that legacy owners will be offered a chance to participate for some kind of a fee like Marriott, but did not have any number to share. He did agree that the new points folks would not have any trading access to the legacy owned units, except through the Hyatt owned units at the properties. There will be tiers of ownership based on how many points you buy, with those owning more points having more perks and advantaged access to the inventory than those who own less.
The new building # 4 at Coconut that is to be started in the next couple of months and the new construction at Wild Oak will be sold only through the new points trust ( no deeded weeks.). He agreed with Kal that now is the time to buy a deeded week if you can find one and get past ROFR. He also thought that resale prices of high point weeks will rise as Hyatt competes with resale buyers for deeded weeks.
The renovated sales center is quite large and nicely appointed. It is obviously designed for a pretty large sales force to sell the new points program around the new building here. Their model of the eventual campus here shows 14 total buildings, which seems very ambitious for the present market.
