This chart is so wild to me, I can't believe that a Week 51 at Mountainside would be considered the same demand as a week in late August.
There's plenty of hidden factors in trading power, TDI is just one of the factors and we don't know the weighting of the factors, so those could be adjusted too.
Some of the factors are variable, so at any one time you might know and then not know another time. When that is the case its not actually helpful to "know" because you really don't know anyway. II do set out what goes into trading power in their Document library, but not the specific algorithm. If there wasn't the ability for them to flex who can see what to enable things to get shifted that wouldn't otherwise be, they would have to use other channels and not all resorts want their inventory showing up as ACs or getaways, so they'd have to invent something else. Somehow the system has got to be able to respond to changes in supply and demand that occur less than every couple of years. The recent changes to the TDI charts is unheard of and certainly wrong-foots people. I'd rather that not be something that happens more regularly, but if the number of points system now in use has increased, it might be the only way they can flex to respond to market changes.
I don’t completely agree with this. There are a lot of permeations on how points can work. The “fixed grid” systems have the fault you are describing. But others don’t. For instance, RCI Weeks TPU system is completely transparent on how much trading power you get. But there is significant variation on what that trading power may get you when executing a trade. If there is a big over supply of something (Vegas, Branson, Massanutten) the trading power to get into it is not fixed and can be massively discounted. This isn’t all that different than II and when they make it easy to match something when they have a lot of of it in inventory — but it is more transparent in RCI weeks.
Yep, they could inventory something different to deal with the issue, but as far as I know the points systems in II are a fixed matrix of at least 2 dimensions and sometimes 3 or more. I only know of Worldmark that has a discount at short notice.
RCI has major issues with allowing Diamond, Bluegreen, Hilton to charge extra fees on top of the exchange fee of $299 and the trading power we pay.
I usually blame the resorts for the resort fee but not the exchange. This impacts me less than you since I own HGVC and don’t trade into it through RCI.
No, II don't "sell" or "push" for their points systems. Some independent resorts utilise it as the generic currency in II to use to exchange their weeks in. Other brands, like Hyatt and Welk and DVC have their own version of a points system with difference nuances about how it works. There is one brand that is currently marketing CIG points, Club Interval Gold points (one of the 2 generic II points systems), as a way to exchange in II without having to "own" and without enduring costs. You buy a set number of points for a set amount to be used over 3 years and the resort gets to dump their surplus inventory into II in the process of allocating you points. Any additional chatter is about the marketing of that, not anything fundamentally different in II. Their approach is very similar to the MX vacation clubs that have been around for many years, but the term with this is much shorter and you can top up if you want. All of the brands that use points in II deposit weeks as the inventory that goes into II so II is still a weeks based system.
Other than shortstay exchange, which is not new, there is no reserving a few nights here and there in II.
Could be, but that's no different from a low cost weeks trader or lock-off being cheaper than using a full unit, there are always pros and cons. That's why people own multiple different brands to trade off the relative costs and benefits of how they use what they own.
Always good to keep reviewing options for using ownership/membership as your needs change and the systems change. For most I suspect the basics haven't changed, but there will always be niche areas where there is new or decent value.
It isn't anything I've noticed before either so it is new and could just be that travel patterns have actually changed so this is needed to reflect this.