Owners update in Austin

[Eric B]

Just finished an owners update in Austin - just under 60 minutes. The body snatchers touted the "New Travel + Leisure Benefits" as something we would need to learn about. When it finally came time to sit down with the owners advocate (aka salesperson) we were told that we could book into Sports Illustrated and Accor Resorts now by going through TravelUp and would be able to use points. Told them thank you very much for the information and moved on with our $125 Uber voucher.

Body snatchers said that there wouldn't be an expiration date on the Uber voucher - they were wrong. It expires at the end of next month. Long enough to get us a few trips to/from the airport, so that's okay. (Much more pleasant and respectful than our last update (in St Thomas) where the sales manager sat down with us to spare their sales folk and told us we had to sit at his desk for 90 minutes because we were wasting their time. Had fun playing with the stuff at his desk for about 15 minutes then he let us go so he could actually use it.)

 

[Floridaman76]

I did an update this morning too, at Governors Green. Just went for the $150 card, whatever. One of the completely odd statements they made in the group presentation was that "Wyndham is building a new resort in Tuscaloosa, AL in partnership with Sports Illustrated".

First, I don't believe any of the stuff they say, but Tuscaloosa, AL? If this is true, Wyndham has really missed the mark, other than a few weekends a year for Alabama football, there is zero market for a timeshare here, and I am outraged if this comes to be true that they didn't use development dollars to build a resort in a more worthwhile place.

Alabama? Come on now. They also made a vague reference to building in "college towns", I can't see it, unless they are buying some clapped out motels and converting them, but I don't see this as good use of money right now.

I was in and out in 20 minutes, once they heard "resale", I think they got the picture that a sale was not in the cards.

 

[jrb916]

I did an update this morning too, at Governors Green. Just went for the $150 card, whatever. One of the completely odd statements they made in the group presentation was that "Wyndham is building a new resort in Tuscaloosa, AL in partnership with Sports Illustrated".

First, I don't believe any of the stuff they say, but Tuscaloosa, AL? If this is true, Wyndham has really missed the mark, other than a few weekends a year for Alabama football, there is zero market for a timeshare here, and I am outraged if this comes to be true that they didn't use development dollars to build a resort in a more worthwhile place.

Alabama? Come on now. They also made a vague reference to building in "college towns", I can't see it, unless they are buying some clapped out motels and converting them, but I don't see this as good use of money right now.

I was in and out in 20 minutes, once they heard "resale", I think they got the picture that a sale was not in the cards.

https://www.si.com/college/alabama/...-sports-illustrated-first-college-town-resort

T&L announced a marketing deal w/ SI, but do not know what is happening now w/ SI being bought by venture capitalist, etc.

 

[amycurl]

Wasn’t the “college town” timeshare model already tried and failed? Didn’t ILX build one or two of these before they were purchased by Diamond? “Varsity Clubs of America” I think it was called. We did a getaway week in AZ one year; it was three nights in Phoenix, three in Tucson, and two in Payson. The Tucson resort was a Varsity Club; I think there was one near Norte Dame.


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[paxsarah]

I'm also not convinced that the SI location(s) will be bookable with Club Wyndham points until I hear it somewhere other than secondhand from a sales presentation. Note that in the article posted above, while the partnership is between SI and T+L, there is zero mention of Wyndham. Note that one of the SI resorts in the Dominican Republic is already open, and there's been zero mention of it at all in terms of integration with Club Wyndham. I need to hear it from T+L, not sales.

 

[Eric B]

That was my take away, too, especially when they said it was bookable through TravelUp, which only takes money, not points.

 

[carlbarry]

I did an owner's update a few weeks ago at Bonnet Creek.
Well, not really an owner's update, because when I checked in I was told my file says I'm not interested in buying more points. BUT: Did I get the emails? The ones about it no longer being Wyndham, but Travel + Leisure? And how I can now bank points for 3 years with no fee? Etc.
No? Strange? I should take this update to tell me about Travel + Leisure.
So I bit, because I know they have great snacks (Otis Spunkmeyer muffins and such).
I'll skip the laughable part of the presentation where they tell you to buy points now and freeze the future cost of a vacation because the needed points will never go up--but leave out the part about the maintenance fee going up.
Anyway, after they tried to sell more points, they gave me my gift.
1000 points on my Wyndham credit card.
When I logged in to add the points, I discovered that 1000 points has a value of about $3. Yes, THREE dollars. Well, at least I grabbed a few muffins and bottles of orange juice.

 

[Eric B]

Oddly enough, they let us do another update on our second weekend here. (Two separate weekends for ACL.) Incentive was essentially the same, a $125 Uber voucher with a duck tour ticket. For some reason the Uber voucher won't add to my Uber account; instead I get an error saying I already have the voucher in my account and have $xx.xx left on it. Marketing is working on figuring out what's going wrong with that.

This one took a bit over an hour, explaining how Wyndham works. They finally got to the sales pitch for an "equity conversion" that would make us eligible for a program called "CWP" that would make us eligible to collect Wyndham Rewards points by attending updates and doing surveys as well as the ability to pay MFs at a rate of $50 per 10,000 points (Wyndham Rewards (hotel) points, not Club Wyndham points, of course). The rep explained to us that we must have turned down this great offer a year or so ago because our ownership printout showed we were qualified for it, but we have a "suppression code" of "C" on the account. Despite the fact that this would be such a fabulous deal and result in Club Wyndham covering all of our future maintenance fees in the future in exchange for just attending future updates and doing some surveys, we declined and they didn't waste our time putting together an actual sales proposal.

Still trying to figure out how Wyndham would source the necessary funds to pay my maintenance fees to the resort HOAs where I own when the only thing of value they would get from me is doing surveys and attending updates — have they figured out how to harness the electric impulses from our bodies during updates to power the machines as they did in The Matrix? Anyway, it's clearly not my problem because I took the red pill and got out of there as quickly as I could.

 

[paxsarah]

This is just simply what already exists - Wyndham Rewards points (instead of gift cards or attraction tickets) are offered as a gift for attending updates. Wyndham Rewards points (very paltry amounts) can be earned by doing online surveys, by any Wyndham Rewards member. Wyndham Rewards points can be converted to maintenance fees at the rate you cited, by any Club Wyndham owner with a WR account (not a very good cash rewards rate for a credit card, IMO). You would never pay all of your maintenance fees through these methods unless you have the smallest of ownerships.

 

[Eric B]

(I knew that.)

 

[dioxide45]

Still trying to figure out how Wyndham would source the necessary funds to pay my maintenance fees to the resort HOAs where I own when the only thing of value they would get from me is doing surveys and attending updates — have they figured out how to harness the electric impulses from our bodies during updates to power the machines as they did in The Matrix? Anyway, it's clearly not my problem because I took the red pill and got out of there as quickly as I could.

The way this works is Wyndham Rewards sells reward points to third party companies. It may be a financial institution who turns around and gives them out to people who spend on the credit card. The credit card company earns merchant fees and interest. Hopefully more than it cost them to purchase the Wyndham Reward points from the Wyndham Hotel company. The same thing happens when Club Wyndham or Worldmark gives someone Wyndham Reward points for taking a timeshare presentation. Travel + Leisure has purchased those points from Wyndham Rewards.

Now for surveys, the same is happening. The survey company (usually a third party) is purchasing points from Wyndham Rewards. They have people do the surveys and the data collected is then sold to other companies for various purposes. Wyndham Rewards has made money by selling the points. The survey company makes money selling the data. If you use the Wyndham Reward points to pay maintenance fees, Wyndham Rewards sends Travel + Leisure cash. That cash is less than what they sold the Wyndham Reward points for.

In essence, it is this buying and selling of points which could really make the point loyalty programs their own corporate entities and could be spun off of the brands which they are tied to and operate as a separate publicly traded company.

 

[Eric B]

I understand the theory but still think it would be akin to an economic perpetual motion machine. Might work if funded by sales like VIP benefits, but making that much by selling survey results. How many thousands of dollars annually would a company really be willing to pay for one person’s survey answers in real cash?

 

[Eric B]

Overheard discussion between Sales Managers and Body Snatches as we were heading out this afternoon, "... when you do that, our chance of a sale goes from 20% to 2%...." My ears were burning. Don't feel bad, though, as they established a policy since our last visit of only giving one key card to the room and telling people checking in that they must see the "concierge" to get wrist band keys if they need more keys to the room. I wouldn't waste their marketing time/budget if they didn't waste mine and instead treated me like a respected guest with an option to visit the Body Snatchers if I cared to.

 

[dioxide45]

Overheard discussion between Sales Managers and Body Snatches as we were heading out this afternoon, "... when you do that, our chance of a sale goes from 20% to 2%...." My ears were burning. Don't feel bad, though, as they established a policy since our last visit of only giving one key card to the room and telling people checking in that they must see the "concierge" to get wrist band keys if they need more keys to the room. I wouldn't waste their marketing time/budget if they didn't waste mine and instead treated me like a respected guest with an option to visit the Body Snatchers if I cared to.

At Grand Desert we didn't have an issue getting multiple keys at the front desk. Though they told us we needed to go to the marketing desk to "finish" our checkin. I walked out of the lobby (because I wanted to confirm with my wife, who was in the car, what day we could do a presentation). One of the marketing people chased me out of the lobby saying I had to finish my checkin. Quite the turn off given that I was willing to sign up for a presentation, which we did end up taking only to be told by the sales manager that we should just say no to the marketing people since we bought resale.

 

[Eric B]

A couple straight off the street started chatting with us in the elevator in Austin this morning, asking if we were owners. They were coming in for a tour/sales presentation and looking for owner opinions first. Told them about TUG and how much less expensive resale is without much change in usefulness. Hopefully we’ll see them here soon….