Hyatt Pure Points System Owners Update

[MaryH]

If they combine Hyatt and SVO, that might be interesting... Although the 12 month window of the Hyatt can be a little limiting at times.

 

[Guest123#]

Perhaps the Hilton club? According to some recent posts under Hilton, the Hilton club is up for sale????? I doubt ILG has enough dough left over. That would be a nice addition if it were to come true.

My guess would be on Starwood (now Vistana Signature Experiences). I did a google search and it looks like the sale was finalized to ILG in mid-may.

 

[lizap]

I don't see this happening.

If they combine Hyatt and SVO, that might be interesting... Although the 12 month window of the Hyatt can be a little limiting at times.

 

[Guest123#]

Calling all Hyatt Owners

DW and I went through an owner's update last week at Pinon Pointe. Also had a relative with us who went through the typical sales pitch separately.

Would love to hear of other peoples experiences.

In our case the owner's sales rep started off by asking our timeshare history, and in particular what if any questions we had for him. Once I demonstrated a good working knowledge of not only HVC but the TS industry as a whole, I told him our main interest in attending the update was to learn how things were going to change under ILG's (Interval Leisure Group) ownership.

He said, I think you will be happy with some of the new and exciting things happening now and that ILG is involved.

He did however, say that before we get into that aspect of our ownership that he needed to let us know that Pinon Point is virtually sold out, and that their current push was to sell the new Maui Property (as he handed me a listing of unit costs and MFs for Maui :hysterical.

He then said, that given my knowledge and practice of optimizing through the use of the "Highest Value/ Lowest MF model," that Maui probably wasn't something we would likely be interested in, but let him know after we had a chance to look over the pricing schedules. Both he and the closer were nice guys. The whole experience was relaxed and without high pressure tactics.


He then launched in to the great new Pure Points Program (PPP) that ILG had started marketing just the week before. Essentially, the new model going forward would be strictly a "pure points based program," rather than the current HVC model of "deeded weeks w/points based exchange program." He touted the new program as offering greater flexibility, more trading opportunities...yadda, yadda, yadda. He then tried to pitch selling some of the existing deeded weeks inventory in the existing properties, to "up" our total points availability (and thus a stronger trading position) in anticipation of the great new resorts that would become available under the new PPP.

We are also deeded week owners in the Marriott group and enrolled in their Destination Club Points conversion program. I immediately started having nightmares of MVCI's 2010 transition to the Destination Club Points program. The pitch from our HVC guy was almost vebatum the dialog heard from MVCI sales reps .

So, I asked him how week owner trading power (legacy points i.e. the 2000 we have for our Platinum 2Bdr Lock-off) would be treated as compared to the new PPP points. His answer was just like MVCI's had been back in 2010..."points are points."

So I asked how had ILG managed to construct the program to avoid the problems of commingling deeded week points (Legacy), with deeded trust points (Trust). He had no clue what the issue was and felt my concerns were baseless...again he felt "Points are Points."

I then explained that MVCI found out that they could not legally commingle points (as they are based on property interests vs trust interests and the respective underlying deeds prohibited such a transaction), and had to create two separate points programs within their Destination Club program (refered to as "buckets" on the TUG MVCI forum) this resulted in a trust bucket and a legacy bucket.

I further pointed out that the owners of points in one bucket could not directly book a unit in the other "bucket" so the promise of full reach of all properties was misrepresented. When MVCI was confronted with this legal barrier they had to create a MVCI internal exchange program that created a third "bucket" the exchange "bucket." So for a MVCI owner to exchange across the legacy/trust boundary, their interest (unit or points) had to be surrendered to the exchange bucket for trade. Only those interests deposited in that exchange bucket were available for an owner to book if they were trying to trade across from the legacy properties to the trust properties, or vise a versa. I also pointed out that it cost more points for a legacy owner to trade into their own home property than the points they received for their property (referred to as the Skim).


He really had nothing to say, except I should bring up my concern with his associate (the closer).

I did bring up the issue with the closer but didn't mention MVCI. He had no idea what I was talking about, had never even considered such concerns, and suggested I direct my questions to HVC management for a direct response.

He also asked that if I do send such an email, that he be copied on it and any responses, so that he could learn more. When I asked who to address the email to, his response was just to send it to customer support.

As an after thought he mentioned that they had just hired a new executive that was well versed in points based systems, having worked for one of their competitors. I asked who that might be...his answer was Jeff Hansen a former MVCI Exec who had been a major player in the MVCI change to their points program.

I don't know Jeff but I surely recognized the name. Hopefully Jeff brings lessons learned from the MVCI debacle and can help make HVC's program less problematic...but then again maybe my nightmares are well justified .

A big problem that evolved over the course of time at MVCI was that sales people were peddling sales of trust points to legacy owners with the understanding that those points could be combined with the legacy points to expand their trading power. For example, they would push a legacy owner into buying an additional 1000 points to add to the existing 2000 legacy points they had. They stated that these combined points could then be used to trade for a high value property, a cruise or great explorer package. It turns out that legacy points and trust points cannot be combined . So the legacy owners found themselves holding 1000 trust points that had minimal trading power and high MFs. In many cases they only derived decent trading power by banking the points from year to year until they could combine enough to be useful. As recently as last year an MVCI sales person tried that pitch on us. We told the sales person what our understanding was that the points could not be combined. She then brought in a more senior member of the sale team to resolve the issue. After hearing our concerns, that senior sales team member said that he was an owner of both trust and legacy points, and that from his own personal experience, he could confirmed that trust and legacy points can't be combined. Maybe MVCI has found a way to fix that problem since then, but if they have we are unaware of it.


Our relative that went through the non-owner sales pitch came back to the unit with a price sheet labeled something like "Hyatt Pinon Pointe Bronze Points Package." As I recall, cost was $43,000 for 2600 points and the MFs were going to be appreciably higher than the current Pinon Pointe MFs. This was also a phenomenon experienced at MVCI. The trust based MFs must represent all property interests held in the trust, so MFs are an average of the MFs for all held units plus the additional administrative costs incurred as a result of having to manage the internal trading program between the buckets."

Another phenomenon that was seen at MVCI is that they discovered that some of the new points owners were mad because they had trouble trading into the older (sold out) resorts because deeded week owners were not typically surrendering their weeks into the exchange busket. MVCIs response was to aggressively start exercising ROFR so that they could buy those deeded week and transfer them into the trust. We are currently seeing a similar trend of HVC exercising ROFR.

If you want to read more about the problems at Marriott check out their forum focusing on threads in the 2010-2012 time period...but needless to say there are a number of disgruntled owners (both legacy and trust) over on that forum.

This morning I made a phone call to the Hyatt corporate office (1-727-803-9400) to inquire about the new rumored points system. The purpose of the call was to see if I could get anyone to squeak out any new information out of them. I told them I was highly considering purchasing a Hyatt week, but had heard about the new rumored points system that my "friend" was telling me about, who happens to own both Hyatt and Marriott. And my "friend" was telling me all about the Marriott debacle back in 2010 when they did something similar. I asked her how they were going to deal with/ work around that issue that you cannot combine legacy points with trust points? The lady basically responded saying that she had no idea or knowledge of what I was talking about. I responded to that and asked why are the sales people at the resorts talking about it then? She then proceeded to transfer me to member services (1-800-Go-Hyatt). When speaking to the member services rep., I went thru the same dialogue as with the 1st rep. from the corporate office and by no surprise he was clueless, and proceeded to transfer me back to the corporate office. A lady answered the phone and I went thru the dialogue again and she turns out to be the lady I talked to the first time, (big surprise).... Then she led on to that she does know about it and is in the "loop" but can not discuss any of the details. She proceeded to say that "discussions are happening about how to co-mingle the points"...and "Hyatt is still a property based resort meaning that you have to invest in a particular resort". I took that as they are not selling "trust" points yet as a whole for the entire club. Anyways, I ended the conversation by telling her to pass along my concern about the complexity of co-mingling the points and I see this having greater impact on the Hyatt system then what Marriott had seen, by the simple fact that Hyatt is a much smaller system to begin with.

Not sure if she will pass my concern along or not, but maybe if enough/more people call.., maybe they will stop and slow down and not mess this one up! and maybe mention Jeff Hansen's name, the former MVCI exec. they hired?

Good day!

 

[lizap]

I seriously doubt someone answering the phone is 'in the loop'..

This morning I made a phone call to the Hyatt corporate office (1-727-803-9400) to inquire about the new rumored points system. The purpose of the call was to see if I could get anyone to squeak out any new information out of them. I told them I was highly considering purchasing a Hyatt week, but had heard about the new rumored points system that my "friend" was telling me about, who happens to own both Hyatt and Marriott. And my "friend" was telling me all about the Marriott debacle back in 2010 when they did something similar. I asked her how they were going to deal with/ work around that issue that you cannot combine legacy points with trust points? The lady basically responded saying that she had no idea or knowledge of what I was talking about. I responded to that and asked why are the sales people at the resorts talking about it then? She then proceeded to transfer me to member services (1-800-Go-Hyatt). When speaking to the member services rep., I went thru the same dialogue as with the 1st rep. from the corporate office and by no surprise he was clueless, and proceeded to transfer me back to the corporate office. A lady answered the phone and I went thru the dialogue again and she turns out to be the lady I talked to the first time, (big surprise).... Then she led on to that she does know about it and is in the "loop" but can not discuss any of the details. She proceeded to say that "discussions are happening about how to co-mingle the points"...and "Hyatt is still a property based resort meaning that you have to invest in a particular resort". I took that as they are not selling "trust" points yet as a whole for the entire club. Anyways, I ended the conversation by telling her to pass along my concern about the complexity of co-mingling the points and I see this having greater impact on the Hyatt system then what Marriott had seen, by the simple fact that Hyatt is a much smaller system to begin with.

Not sure if she will pass my concern along or not, but maybe if enough/more people call.., maybe they will stop and slow down and not mess this one up! and maybe mention Jeff Hansen's name, the former MVCI exec. they hired?

Good day!

 

[Guest123#]

If not, I bet their supervisor is....

Call and voice your concerns.....everyone!