Owners Update Wyndham St Thomas

[Eric B]

Had our update this morning on St Thomas. This made it 3 updates in 2 weeks, including a Vistana and a Marriott one. Surprisingly pleasant talking about snorkeling, etc., with the sales staff. They are unsurprisingly annoyed with the marketing folks lying to people about the new app, T&L, Sports Illustrated resorts, etc, resulting in nonbuyers attending.

Not much in the way of mistruths to report. Sales person said they could get to Jost Van Dyke in 10-15 minutes from St Thomas, which would mean a boat going 40 knots or so - might be possible in a cigarette boat, I guess, but seems unlikely unless you charter and pay for the fuel. We didn’t believe it, but it wasn’t really material to a sale.

 

[OutSkiing]

Had our update this morning on St Thomas. This made it 3 updates in 2 weeks, including a Vistana and a Marriott one. Surprisingly pleasant talking about snorkeling, etc., with the sales staff. They are unsurprisingly annoyed with the marketing folks lying to people about the new app, T&L, Sports Illustrated resorts, etc, resulting in nonbuyers attending.

Not much in the way of mistruths to report. Sales person said they could get to Jost Van Dyke in 10-15 minutes from St Thomas, which would mean a boat going 40 knots or so - might be possible in a cigarette boat, I guess, but seems unlikely unless you charter and pay for the fuel. We didn’t believe it, but it wasn’t really material to a sale.

We wish there was a cheap ferry between Puerto Rico and St Thomas to make it more practical to combine stays at the two idlands in one trip. We’ve done the plane hop before but it added quite a bit of travel cost.

 

[dioxide45]

Had our update this morning on St Thomas. This made it 3 updates in 2 weeks, including a Vistana and a Marriott one. Surprisingly pleasant talking about snorkeling, etc., with the sales staff. They are unsurprisingly annoyed with the marketing folks lying to people about the new app, T&L, Sports Illustrated resorts, etc, resulting in nonbuyers attending.

It always seems to be an odd dynamic between marketing and sales. Marketing tells you lies to get you to go to a presentation because they get paid for butts in the seats. Sales doesn't like low quality prospects. The reality is that it's just a numbers game and they both know how it is played.

 

[Eric B]

It always seems to be an odd dynamic between marketing and sales. Marketing tells you lies to get you to go to a presentation because they get paid for butts in the seats. Sales doesn't like low quality prospects. The reality is that it's just a numbers game and they both know how it is played.

That's the problem with setting up competing incentive systems - marketing is paid for butts in seats, sales is paid for closing sales that work better with higher quality prospects, and guests are paid to be the butts in the seats. All three know how it is played and sales doesn't really like those of us guests that are happy to just go for the incentives. Wyndham management knows it's a problem but doesn't have a better solution - they used to let you ask to be on a do not tour list, but I understand that isn't the case any more. They just want the traffic through sales because they can't do much without it.

 

[CYRUS2400]

they used to let you ask to be on a do not tour list, but I understand that isn't the case any more.

They still have the list, however. I was put on it in 2021 for reasons unknown to me. I always played nice when in meetings, but, I'm clearly not a good mark. Any combinations of these factors could get you on the list.

- too many visits in a short period (not as many as others, however)
- last offer turned down was PR with Founders back in early 2021
- no resale contracts to be trashed
- own CWA and a Hawaii deed
- most recent purchase was from TeleSales
- have (and use) 2 PICs
- Grandfathered VIPP
- wrote to Michael Brown once to get a PIC issue fixed (fixed promptly, I might add)

I really enjoyed updates and loved the gifts. The list exists, just not sure how one gets on it. :-(