Orange Lake Global Access... The Program as described to me.

[BocaBum99]

After 3 days of trying, I finally reached the Global Access line for Orange Lake and I collected facts concerning this program that I believe will be helpful to this board.

I am quite sure that others have also expressed the identical information, but there was so much back and forth going on in other such threads that I couldn't figure out what was real vs. what wasn't. So, I decided to call for myself and then report what I found here.

The quick summary is that OLCC has become an RCI Points resort with a different point table for River Island, the North/East Village and West Village. Obviously, River Island has the highest values and the West Village has the lowest values. In addition, OLCC has added two other features above and beyond a standard RCI points membership. The first is internal exchanges and the second is direct exchanges with the Marcus Vacation Club.

The first feature of internal exchanges is the ability to book units by the day or week at Orange Lake for a $40 internal exchange fee. I asked if the fee were the same for weekends vs. weeknights, they said yes. But, I expect that to change. That doesn't make any sense.

The point table for an internal exchange is equal to 2 times the RCI Point value. Not sure why they did this. I guess they did it to make it seem different than RCI Points.

There is currently only one resort in the Marcus Vacation Club which is in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. It only costs $40 to do a direct exchange there. My sales rep said that they plan on adding additional resorts to this direct exchange capability.

The cost for converting a week into the program is $1295. Developer purchases will include this fee (or it will be waived more likely). The annual fee is $89. (Actually, since RCI Points charges $99, he probably had the fee incorrect is my guess). The other RCI Point fees and rules and regulations apply. So, owners who used to be able to use points for deposit for their OLCC weeks will no longer be able to do so.

The owner services person told me that he gets a small commission if I convert. But, they get much more for new deals. This is consistent with my experience in the business. You always provide a commission to people selling timeshare products. Their title is irrelevant. If they are trying to get you to cough up your credit card for a purchase, then they are in sales.

I will be getting a powerpoint and word document that describes the highlights of the program in more details. I will add more information if I learn something I haven't posted yet.

 

[PerryM]

Lead into Gold is not enough for me

How many owners belong to OLCC? I’m going to guess 500 condos * 52 weeks = 25,000 owners. Conversion to RCI Points costs $199 and they sell it for $1,295 for a profit of $1,096. Let’s say they give $96 for commissions and sales literature and training of the slick sales reps = $1,000 profit per owner * 25,000 owners =$25,000,000 to the owner of OLCC.

Where do I sign up to do something similar? This is much better than turning lead into Platinum.

 

[BocaBum99]

How many owners belong to OLCC? I’m going to guess 500 condos * 52 weeks = 25,000 owners. Conversion to RCI Points costs $199 and they sell it for $1,295 for a profit of $1,096. Let’s say they give $96 for commissions and sales literature and training of the slick sales reps = $1,000 profit per owner * 25,000 owners =$25,000,000 to the owner of OLCC.

Where do I sign up to do something similar? This is much better than turning lead into Platinum.

I forget the exact number, but I think OLCC has over 3000 condos. There are over 100,000 owners.

 

[BocaBum99]

I called RCI and they said that OLCC has become an RCI Points resort and will be activated later in the year. So, until then, they don't have a point table yet.

My commission based salesman has title of "Owner Specialist". AKA wolf in sheeps' clothing.

Also, in the brochure I got, they allow you to rent global access points from OLCC at the rate of $5/1000 Global Access Points for use either with RCI Points or internally. Since the conversion rate is 2 global access points for 1 rci point, that means you can purchase the equivalent of 500 RCI points for $5. That is a ratio of $.01/rci point. That is a very good deal. RCI charges double that. I bet they just took the rci charge as is and forgot to double it. I predict they will double the cost in a few months when they figure out their mistake. You can only purchase up to 50% of your current ownership.

My initial assessment is that this program is not very appealing to those who know how to get cheap RCI points. The $MF/RCI point ratio will be decent. But, you will be able to find cheaper RCI points elsewhere. This program inherits all of the attributes of RCI Points that I don't like (e.g. high exchange fees, extra housekeeping, etc).

It will be good for people who buy at Orange Lake to trade back in. Owners will save $124 per internal exchange. But, that is only for those who do like for like exchanges. Those with higher point values may do better unless they make the mistake of buying from the developer.

I'd love to review their data. My guess is a significant percentage of owners at OLCC exchange back into the resort, so the program will be very appealing to them.

Those of us who have been accustomed to trading into OLCC with cheap weeks or exchanging an OLCC studio for a 2 or 3 bedroom unit will probably be able to continue that practice although they may end up receiving a higher percentage of units in the West Village and Golf Villas. This is because I don't really see anything in this program that will alter the balance of owners who exchange out of OLCC to other resorts. That won't happen until there is a much larger internal direct exchange program that gets heavily used. If owners are exchanging out, then someone has to exchange in or rent excess supply from RCI.

The Orange Lake CEO is from HGVC. I guess he is following their model by creating an internal point system and affiliating with RCI as both a points and weeks resort.

A new problem that OLCC will need to deal with internal Supply and Demand for points usage. Since they have already pre-determined point values for each village, they could hose themselves with owners if they set the points values incorrectly.

For instance, lets say that a 2 bedroom Golf Villa is 50000 points and a 2 bedroom River Island is 150000 points. Let's further assume that the River Island purchaser decided to deposit their 2 bedroom unit and only use Golf Villas. That means that will get a 3 for 1 trade. I am quite certain that OLCC sales guys will be selling this fact. Let's further state that an OLCC Golf Villa owner doesn't want to pay for 3 maintenance fees to get into a River Island 2 bedroom unit. Well, OLCC just hosed the supply and demand equation and this will result stock outs of Golf Villas in the system.

If this imbalance occurs, you can expect OLCC to start exercising ROFR on some of the 2 bedroom Golf Villas and deed and sell them into the Global Access program. If this starts happening, it's possible that resale prices will start rising over time. It will be interesting to see what happens.

 

[JLB]

Would your answer to my question elsewhere, How will this effect 99.99999% of timeshare owners, those who do not own at OL, but like to trade to OL through RCI Weeks?, be not much if at all?

 

[BocaBum99]

Would your answer to my question elsewhere, How will this effect 99.99999% of timeshare owners, those who do not own at OL, but like to trade to OL through RCI Weeks?, be not much if at all?

Based on my best guess, this program will not have much impact on exchangers into OLCC for a while. That's because their program description implies that the only inventory that can be used for Global Access will be developer's inventory, converted weeks and new purchases.

Since there are over 100,000 owners, it will take OLCC a significant amount time to convert owners. At a $1295 price point, this will be a significant barrier to conversion. If they ran a promotion for $299, they could get a lot of conversions.

From an availability point of view, I believe the following will happen. First, there will be a lot of inventory in RCI Points for OLCC that never existed before. That inventory will only be available to RCI Points owners and will not be accessible to RCI Weeks owners. So, that will drain some inventory that used to go to RCI weeks. So, the single biggest impact to RCI weeks exchangers will be the conversion rate. If you like RCI weeks, call up OLCC and have them raise the conversion fee to about $4995.

The second is that OLCC will probably be successful in implementing its inventory controls to increase the number of poeple exchanging into the resort and staying in the West Village vs. the North/East and River Island. Because they have to implement a system that discriminates based on point values, doing it for the rest of the resort will be easy. I don't believe this will eliminate exchangers from being placed in River Island or the North/East Village. It just means that owners and points members will get preference. I see that as implementable.

This is just my guess. We'll see what actually happens.

 

[JLB]

Of course for as far as we can now see, the next two years, there is plenty of availability at OL through Weeks.

 

[Jimster]

OLCC

I posted this previously but the information I read on the OLCC development is that by the time they sell out- they expect 200,000 owners. They are currently well over 100,000. OLCC is the world's largest single TS.

 

[short]

Of course for as far as we can now see, the next two years, there is plenty of availability at OL through Weeks.

But once OLCC becomes a points resort, points members will no longer be able to do a last min. exchange for 9000 points. Right?

So any exchange will have to be made from a week for week exchange and be subject to the 1 in 4 rule?

Short

 

[wbtimesharer]

Marcus Vacation Club at Grand Geneva-Coming under the Orange Lake umbrella

[Edit note: This post was posted elsewhere on the BBS. I moved it to this thread because of its direct application to the subject under discussion. Dave M, BBS Administrator]

Hey folks,

As I type, I am staying at the Marcus Vacation Club at Grand Geneva in Lake Geneva, WI. Decided to take the family up for a timeshare tour and to check the place out. When we arrived at the presentation this morning, we found it odd that there were only 3 couples there including us.

The salesman, Ziggy, was wearing a Orange Lake tag which I found interesting seeing as how Marcus was the management company. Well it turns out that a couple of months ago, Marcus decided it wasn't a timeshare company and went looking for a partner to take it over. They found it in the form of Orange Lake, yes THE Orange Lake of Orange Lake Country Club in Florida.

According to Ziggy, Orange Lake is in the process of acquiring resorts across the country including the Keys, Vermont, New York, Myrtle Beach, and out West. It appears they intend to form a points club much like Bluegreen, Fairfield, Marriot, etc. At this resort, buildings 5 and 6 which haven't had many or any units sold will be sold as Orange Lake property plus they are going to break ground on new units very soon. I take that with a monster size grain of salt coming from a TS salesperson.

Here is the real kicker, all current owners of MVC are going to be offered the option of coverting their units to the Orange Lake Points system for the measly sum of $1200 or be left to hang with RCI. When buying from OLCC, there will also be a "conversion" fee that most likely will get "waived" and Ziggy wasn't sure that the fee would be tied to the deed or to the sales transaction as in not transferable to a buyer. Like Bluegreen, there will be a yearly membership of around $80 and would cover the RCI membership and all of your RCI points/weeks would be handled through their system. According to Ziggy, being a Orange Lake Points member will have much higher value than RCI because you can get airline tickets, cruises, cheap rentals at all 1 of Orange Lake properties, etc. He didn't seem to hear me when I mentioned you could already do that with RCI.

So, he proceeded to try and sell me a unit. However, the unit wasn't at the resort but at OLCC. It appears the ink hasn't dried yet on the transer papers and they can't sell MVC/OLVC property at Lake Geneva yet. Of course, he did point out that they were at about 30% sales to presentation right now without the customer even seeing OLCC units. Now why did I know he would say that.

Needless to say, when he offered me a 1 bedroom for 12,000 and 2 bedroom for 19,000, we politely told him that it was just a bit outside our price range by about 10 - 15 thousand and thanked him for his time and the $50 Marcus dollars.

We are currently staying at the Timber lodge with passes to the their waterpark. While the park is nice, the 1 bedroom unit we have is like stale toast with no oven, lights not working, and doors made out of cardboard. According to the Ziggy, these units were sold as condo's for about 190K and up with most going off of blueprints. Not sure what the monthly association fee is but I gotta believe that it is $500 or higher. The kicker is that Marcus handles the rentals for owners with a 60/40 split Owner/Marcus. If you are a MVC timeshare owner, you don't even get free access, but have to pay $21 per person per day to use it. I asked Ziggy if OLCC was going to start acquiring some of these units to gain access to the waterpark. His response was "NO Clue"

I hope this long winded dialogue is useful to someone.

Thanks

Bill

 

[PerryM]

And they're off....

This will be fun to watch – not only do OLCC owners lose 50% (just a guess) of their money when they buy from the developer, now the developer wants to charge them $1,295 for what cost’s them just $199 or a 550% profit to join RCI Points.

I can’t wait until OLCC suffers the same malaise that infests RCI Points – the developers gouging the owners and instead of making millions like Wal-Mart (small profit – large volume) OLCC will follow the RCI Points model of years and years of dragging owners into the system.

But, the owner of OLCC stands to personally make 100,000 owners * $1,000 profit or $100 Million dollars profit from this ONE venture. I guess I’d start to dream of the largest private jet I could squeeze out of those timeshare owners of his.

Like I said, this will be fun to watch the race between RCI Points and OLCC Points to see which can move the slowest towards the finish line.

 

[BocaBum99]

I think that OLCC may spend more time creating their own internal direct exchange organization. That would be fun to do and fun to sell.

Today, Global Access = RCI Points. Tomorrow, it could be a lot more if they do it right.

The first thing I would do as Product Manager for Global Access is create direct exchange affiliations with all of the mini-systems and exchange inventory. Then, an OLCC owner can get a direct exchange to Marriott's, Hilton's, Starwoods, Disney's, Fairfields, Bluegreen's, WorldMark's, etc. All for a $40 exchange fee.

If Global Access included that feature, I'd go buy a few OLCC resale units and convert them into Global Access points. Heck, they can even increase the exchange fee to $50.

 

[JLB]

The talk about severing from RCI continues.

I wonder why my crystal ball said OL just signed a long-term agreement with RCI?

Maybe it's a faulty crystal ball, like the one Rocky and Bullwinkle used.

"Eany meany chili beanie. The Spirits are about to speak!"

Then there was Bullwinkle and the magic hat. "Watch me pull a River Island unit out of my hat." (studio in West Clubhouse) "Oops, wrong hat!"

 

[timetraveler]

The bottom line is that this will take quite awhile to implement. With excess of 100,000 owners, you are going to have a very large segment (especially the older folks) that will not be willing to convert. They are the ones that return to their owned week(s) every year. OL has an absolutely staggering amount of owners that internal exchange every year, and or show up for their own week.

The owners that want to return, but not during their owned week would have to make several trips to re-coup the conversion fee. I know the program is already meeting with resistance with regards to that segment. The 1295 price tag for them, in their opinion is too steep.

At present it seems those people will continue to deposit their RCI weeks.

Plus they will still be given priority status over non owners on OL exchanges.

I agree Boca, if OL would drop the initial fee to a couple hundred bucks....the entire owner base would probably convert.

It would then be very interesting to see what type of mini system evolved with other independent points systems, as you mentioned....ie. Marriott, starwood, disney, etc.

 

[jerseygirl]

Marriott, Hilton, Starwood, and Disney have great resorts in Orlando already. What would be the incentive for them to join?

PS Great info Boca -- finally! I don't understand why there was such a big deal about posting what's very routine points-conversion info!

 

[BocaBum99]

Marriott, Hilton, Starwood, and Disney have great resorts in Orlando already. What would be the incentive for them to join?

PS Great info Boca -- finally! I don't understand why there was such a big deal about posting what's very routine points-conversion info!

Variety is the spice of life.

 

[fotojo44]

OLCC Global Access

Just returned from our annual 2-week stay at OLCC. We've owned at OLCC since 1992 and currently own 4 weeks there. They are pushing Global Access really "hard", almost as hard as "new" sales. Here's the kicker, they're also using it to sell both new and resale inventory. How? by waiving the $1,295 per week conversion fees and closing costs for those that bite. Seems to be working, so they say. By the way, we're told by the OLCC folks that the $1,295 is going up to $1,995 in September, they seem to think that $1,295 is a REAL good deal!!! Go figure. Problem is, all the pool scuttle-butt says otherwise. A very large number of unhappy folks, as far as I can determine.

We went to their Global Access "information" session (Not a sales pitch they assured us. . .yeah, right!!! My arm still hurts!) because the points system has some real advantages for us. They claim that 60% of their owners have already joined the points system, my educated guess is that that DOESN'T count the thousands of folks who bought on the resale market over the years.

Speaking of OLCC resale weeks, two of our four weeks were purchased through resale some years ago. I was told that to convert those two weeks to points would cost us an ADDITIONAL $5,000 per week, yeah, you read that right! Sooooo, to convert the four weeks we already own to Global Access points would cost us a whopping $15,180, yup, you read that right as well! When Hell freezes over for the third time, I might consider that proposal! So buying up OLCC resale weeks in order to convert them to points probably isn't going to be your best value.

Someone speculated that there might be a 3 to 1 differential between equivalent units when comparing River Island to the original West Village golf villas. Not true. Our weeks each would have 159,000 OLCC points whereas the River Island unit we were quoted had 174,000 points. I'm sure the water view units would be somewhat higher in point value (and price).

I think I read that OLCC owners could easily exchange into OLCC through RCI, not anymore! We own weeks 16, 51, 29 & 30. For the last couple of years we've tried to exchange weeks 16 & 51 through RCI for weeks 29 or 30 so that our children and grandchildren could join us there. This year we got lucky, last year we actually were forced to RENT two weeks because we were unable to exchange into our HOME resort. In fact, this is the very reason we purchased weeks 29 & 30 (same unit) some years ago, difficulty in exchanging into our home resort.

As an aside, we have "never" been able to exchange our large two bedroom OLCC Gold Crown units for equivalent units outside OLCC. The problem is getting worse and my suspicion is that "points" conversions are only going to make it worse. Any suggestions as to what we might do to avert the impending disaster?

 

[BocaBum99]

Good info fotojo.

The Global Access program is clearly set up to stimulate new developer sales. It will probably work for a while. If everything you say is true, then RCI weeks owners have absolutely NOTHING to worry about. There will be plenty of OLCC inventory in RCI weeks for the next 10 years.

If you want to trade into OLCC, just buy a cheap RCI Points resort and do points for deposit using resort with $MF/RCI Point less then $.005/point. If you used Bluegreen, you can do that.

So, that 2 bedroom River Island exchange would be 174000 Global Access points = 87000 RCI points. At $.005/RCI Point, you get $435 plus $99 for exchange. Total cost = $534. Since the MF alone for a 2br River Island is over $800, if I recall correctly, that is a better route to go.

I love it when resort developers do stupid things to try to prop up their over priced inventory. It creates loopholes elsewhere for us tuggers to exploit.

Anyone want to set up a kiosk outside OLCC to sell these points instead?

 

[BocaBum99]

Better yet, buy one of those Christmas Mountain Village UDIs that Bruce loves off eBay for about $3500. If you book 10 weeks per year, your cost per week is about $117. Deposit 2 red weeks and you will receive 87000 RCI Points. Just enough for a River Island 2 bedroom unit.

Total cost for the reservation: $117*2 + $26*2 + $99 = $385.

So, this fancy new program at OLCC will cost a non-owner, $4500 in capital ($3500 for the UDI and $1000 for the cheap point resort) and $385.

Why would anyone want to do this conversion again? I guess to be double dipped by OLCC.

 

[fotojo44]

OLCC Global Access

Thanks BocaBum,

Yeah, everything I said is unfortunately true!!! I still "steam" when I think about it.

It had occurred to me to buy into a "cheap" points resort and deposit into RCI, BUT I'm really a novice when it comes to points resorts (been simply a "weeks" guy all these years). Got any advice on where to look for "reputable" sources?

 

[BocaBum99]

I would check out www.austimeshare.com. This is where I bought my very first timeshare. Jerry Naugle is great to work with.

I lke that Murray Valley deal for RCI point entry. The price is good because it includes the closing costs, the RCI Points fees and first year's maintenance fees... I think.. Double check.

 

[fotojo44]

OLCC Global Access

Thanks Boca,

I'll look into that and let you know how we make out.

 

[JLB]

Wow!

 

[gjw007]

Boca;
Thanks for the information.

It sounds like this is based on the RCI Points system but it appears to be more along the lines of HGVC's program where the owner is not actually a RCI Points owner but gets the membership to RCI through the resort where you call the resort, tell them that you want to exchange your points for an external exchange, the company deposits them with RCI giving you an equivelent amount of points, and then makes the trade for you if you have enough points. Is this correct? Is so, a question arises whether you must deposit the points before the trade is made or after you are able to confirm the trade. The first is a blind trade where you pretty take what is given wheras the second you can say no if you didn't like the trade and not lose the value of your points.

If this is not correct, then what is the linkage between OLCC GoGlobal points and RCI Points other than being modeled after it? If it is RCI Points, then the reservations should be made through RCI and not OLCC. If there is no linkage, for those with RCI Points, will this mean it is treated as RCI Weeks with the standard Florida grid (talk about devaluing their own points value if this were the case) and still allow the small point value exchange for 45 days or less. Three are so many questions, so little information.

This brings up another interesting question. RCI Points was based on converting existing units into a points value. Is the next step to sell the resorts based purely on points (no specific unit ownership) such as DVC or HGVC? The model appears to resemble HGVC with the yearly membership fees, etc. than it does DVC.

 

[PerryM]

Yes, greed is alive and well at OLCC

$2,000 per week to join their points club, if you bought from the developer and $7,000 if you did not.

Greed is alive and well at OLCC – just as I remember our sales tour many years ago.

Good to see OLCC duking it out with RCI Points as to who can implement the most greedy system. My bet is on OLCC – they seem to be a step lower on the evolutionary scale than RCI Points.

My guess is that 5% of their owners have converted and will top out at 25% in two years – just a guess.

My guess is also that the folks who implemented the system will be gone at the end of the year – the owner of OLCC wants even more and conversions will grind to a halt as the word spreads.

Typical timeshare BS.