twinmommy19
TUG Member
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- Aug 10, 2011
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If there's another thread on this already, I apologize. I'm curious what others think of this new program. If you haven't seen it yet you'll notice there is a brand new browse option for "hotel exchange".
At first look - I grade the program a B+ as it stands right now.
How it appears to work - There's only a deposit first option to browse hotel trades and you can't place requests - only instant exchange. For one exchange fee you can reserve up to 4 rooms for any number of nights you want. Lots of hotels appear to be participating. Your deposit is seemingly assigned a monetary value behind the scene. If that value is greater than the negotiated rate for the number of rooms / nights you searched for, you pay only the exchange fee. If not, II tells you what the surcharge would be for the difference.
Pros - From what I see so far, this option isn't completely worthless like the cruise trade where you are always going to be paying something extra out of pocket beyond the exchange fee and usually you'd spend less overall to just book a cruise deal elsewhere not through II. I browsed a bunch of random dates - and using my decent trading gold non-franchise 2BR deposit, I could get a couple nights covered for multiple rooms in a nice NYC hotel for example at no extra cost to me beyond the exchange fee. Seems like II has negotiated better deals with certain hotels than others - at best my decent trader appears to get around $700-800ish of cost covered. Of course, if you are even reasonably flexible, you can easily get better value than this with a traditional exchange in almost every scenario. No question. However - if you are like us, there's only so many week long vacations we can fit in a year and some years we have non TS trips planned (we're going on a Disney cruise this year for example). Good job to II allowing multiple rooms to be reserved for one exchange fee. A night or two with friends or family in a nice local city hotel is a pretty neat option.
Cons - Not every hotel exchange is going to be a good deal but IMO II needs to make sure the OOP cost does not exceed the cost of booking a getaway for the same dates on their site. They need a script to at least default the price to the getaway cost minus the exchange fee. It's different with the cruise exchanges IMO - sure you can book them cheaper through a 3rd party, but right now II is charging an exchange fee for the right to pay more than the getaway cost for a prime season trip to Grand Cayman (as an example). Not cool - but probably just an early glitch. Will give the benefit of the doubt.
At first look - I grade the program a B+ as it stands right now.
How it appears to work - There's only a deposit first option to browse hotel trades and you can't place requests - only instant exchange. For one exchange fee you can reserve up to 4 rooms for any number of nights you want. Lots of hotels appear to be participating. Your deposit is seemingly assigned a monetary value behind the scene. If that value is greater than the negotiated rate for the number of rooms / nights you searched for, you pay only the exchange fee. If not, II tells you what the surcharge would be for the difference.
Pros - From what I see so far, this option isn't completely worthless like the cruise trade where you are always going to be paying something extra out of pocket beyond the exchange fee and usually you'd spend less overall to just book a cruise deal elsewhere not through II. I browsed a bunch of random dates - and using my decent trading gold non-franchise 2BR deposit, I could get a couple nights covered for multiple rooms in a nice NYC hotel for example at no extra cost to me beyond the exchange fee. Seems like II has negotiated better deals with certain hotels than others - at best my decent trader appears to get around $700-800ish of cost covered. Of course, if you are even reasonably flexible, you can easily get better value than this with a traditional exchange in almost every scenario. No question. However - if you are like us, there's only so many week long vacations we can fit in a year and some years we have non TS trips planned (we're going on a Disney cruise this year for example). Good job to II allowing multiple rooms to be reserved for one exchange fee. A night or two with friends or family in a nice local city hotel is a pretty neat option.
Cons - Not every hotel exchange is going to be a good deal but IMO II needs to make sure the OOP cost does not exceed the cost of booking a getaway for the same dates on their site. They need a script to at least default the price to the getaway cost minus the exchange fee. It's different with the cruise exchanges IMO - sure you can book them cheaper through a 3rd party, but right now II is charging an exchange fee for the right to pay more than the getaway cost for a prime season trip to Grand Cayman (as an example). Not cool - but probably just an early glitch. Will give the benefit of the doubt.