Something that has been in my mind a lot is that Airbnb and VRBO are direct competitors to timeshares (except in some ocean resort areas - and since I'm not much of an ocean resort person, that may not even be the case.)
Given the obvious - that vacay rentals can be and often are cheaper or comparable in price to the timeshares and often far larger and nicer places, how does it benefit II or MVC, etc, to make it more expensive to use their timeshare model? E.g., I was resigned to paying a ridiculously large maintenance fee on a Hyatt ts in order to use the points to do II trades. Then II basically doubled the required Hyatt points for the trades and I'm giving back my Hyatt. I think most tuggers would agree that we love what we can do with our timeshares but that is in major part because we can do things far less expensively or stay in far nicer places when we put the research in to using the ts week or points to best advantage and we are primed to do far more advance planning than the average vacationer. Thus we are the prime audience to explore the advantages of vacation rental. My kids would never consider inheriting my timeshares because they plan vacations a few days to weeks out - and get fine prices through vacay rentals.
Am I not seeing vacation travel correctly? Don't Airbnb and VRBO, etc, impact timeshare value? A couple of years ago I got an airbnb for half the cost (MF plus exchange) of a ts reservation in Santa Fe, NM. Same can be said of Palm Desert/Springs, etc. Frankly it just bewilders me that II or any other exchange company or major TS company would make it more likely that I would want to explore vacation rentals rather than trade with them. I still get great deals using RCI for the places I personally want to go. But with II increase in cost for even off season Getaways in places like Palm Springs, vacay rentals make far more sense.