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RCI - Extra Vacation, Last Call availability

O

OddYear

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While looking around in RCi in recent times, I wondered if there was any connection between what showed up in Extra Vacation (EV) and what in Last Call (LC).

I had thought that EV probably fed LC for 'Last Minute' vacations. In other words, unbooked resorts in EV were moved to LC when the check-in date was less than 45 days away. But it does not seem to be so. I saw several resorts where there was availability in EV for check-in 3 weeks from now (or earlier) but they were not seen in LC. At times, other units/dates were available in LC but for some, there was nothing in LC at all.

What is the source of the resorts for each of these 'buckets' (EV and LC)?
 
OddYear said:
While looking around in RCi in recent times, I wondered if there was any connection between what showed up in Extra Vacation (EV) and what in Last Call (LC).

I had thought that EV probably fed LC for 'Last Minute' vacations. In other words, unbooked resorts in EV were moved to LC when the check-in date was less than 45 days away. But it does not seem to be so. I saw several resorts where there was availability in EV for check-in 3 weeks from now (or earlier) but they were not seen in LC. At times, other units/dates were available in LC but for some, there was nothing in LC at all.

What is the source of the resorts for each of these 'buckets' (EV and LC)?
Click to expand...
You'll never find out. Like all things RCI, there's no peeking behind the curtain.
 
OddYear said:
But it does not seem to be so. I saw several resorts where there was availability in EV for check-in 3 weeks from now (or earlier) but they were not seen in LC. At times, other units/dates were available in LC but for some, there was nothing in LC at all.
Click to expand...
As with anything, RCI will price what they think the market will bear. If they think there is more value in a particular week than an LC price, they aren't going to fire sale them, even if there are a few that go unrented.
 
For a unit to become available through last call it has to be 45 days or less and it has to have been deposited as an exchange and it has to have an exchange trading power of at or less than whatever the rci threshold is at the moment. It usually is somewhere between 10 and 7. So even last minute if the trading power on the weeks side is over the threshold it will not become available as a last call. I think the last time I looked the threshold was 8 but I will check several now to see if that looks to still be the case. If you have a traditional rci weeks account you can see for yourself what the trading power is if it isn't listed as last call. If you have points or a points grid like wyndham or hilton to exchange into rci you will only be able to see if it is eligible for last call and not at what the trading power currently is for ones not available.


And the answer is trading power of 7 or less on a scale of 1-60. Resorts with a trading power of 8 were not showing available as a last call.e
 
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OddYear said:
While looking around in RCi in recent times, I wondered if there was any connection between what showed up in Extra Vacation (EV) and what in Last Call (LC).

I had thought that EV probably fed LC for 'Last Minute' vacations. In other words, unbooked resorts in EV were moved to LC when the check-in date was less than 45 days away. But it does not seem to be so. I saw several resorts where there was availability in EV for check-in 3 weeks from now (or earlier) but they were not seen in LC. At times, other units/dates were available in LC but for some, there was nothing in LC at all.

What is the source of the resorts for each of these 'buckets' (EV and LC)?
Click to expand...
In the US today, for the next 45 days, there are 843 possible exchanges, 1059 possible extra vacations, and 175 possible last calls (as a subset of those 843 exchanges with a trading power of 7 or less).
 
We make heavy use of Last Call & Extra Vacation Getaways (which we think of as bonus weeks) because our annual points allocation is too paltry for regular straight-points reservations.

My impression after several years of relying on Extra Vacation Getaway, etc., is that Extra Vacation Getaway availability is about the same as Last Call availability, except that Extra Vacation Getaways are about $50 cheaper than Last Call reservations.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
 
tschwa2 said:
If you have a traditional rci weeks account you can see for yourself what the trading power is if it isn't listed as last call. If you have points or a points grid like wyndham or hilton to exchange into rci you will only be able to see if it is eligible for last call and not at what the trading power currently is for ones not available.


And the answer is trading power of 7 or less on a scale of 1-60. Resorts with a trading power of 8 were not showing available as a last call.e
Click to expand...


I don't have direct/outside access to RCI. Only exchange access through my Wyndham ownership. So I can't see the power that you're referring to.
 
Another intriguing thing I saw was a 2BR available for 77K points on sale under which 165K was scratched. Per the resort chart, it's in a Prime week and per this RCI chart, it should need 205K points, not 165K. Had it been a different resort and a different week, I'd have grabbed it and not looked the gift horse in the mouth. :D

RCIExchChart.png
 
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AwayWeGo said:
My impression after several years of relying on Extra Vacation Getaway, etc., is that Extra Vacation Getaway availability is about the same as Last Call availability, except that Extra Vacation Getaways are about $50 cheaper than Last Call reservations.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
Click to expand...

I saw a few resorts where EV was cheaper than LC. Same week, same size unit.
 
AwayWeGo said:
My impression after several years of relying on Extra Vacation Getaway, etc., is that Extra Vacation Getaway availability is about the same as Last Call availability, except that Extra Vacation Getaways are about $50 cheaper than Last Call reservations.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​
Click to expand...
My experience as a RCI weeks owner is completely different. Right now, there are 62 Extra Vacations resort options in Colorado and only 3 Last Call resort options.
 
CO skier said:
It is like the airlines -- there is no rhyme or reason to the pricing. That is why it pays to constantly check for what you want.
Click to expand...

True. Can't check frequently. So I tried the "Ongoing Search" option but found that the Date range doesn't start from "now". I tried to see if there were any rules about search periods but couldn't find any. The earliest month it displayed for the search was Nov.
 
OddYear said:
True. Can't check frequently. So I tried the "Ongoing Search" option but found that the Date range doesn't start from "now". I tried to see if there were any rules about search periods but couldn't find any. The earliest month it displayed for the search was Nov.
Click to expand...
Ongoing Search is for exchanges, not cash options such as Extra Vacations and Last Call.
 
CO skier said:
Ongoing Search is for exchanges, not cash options such as Extra Vacations and Last Call.
Click to expand...

Yes, I tried Ongoing Search from the pointsexchange path. I don't think the Ongoing Search button shows up under the EV/LC paths.
 
OddYear said:
Per the resort chart, it's in a Prime week and per this RCI chart, it should need 205K points, not 165K.
Click to expand...
Only if you assume the resort chart (is it a Wyndham resort?) applies when determining the season for the Wyndham/RCI points grid. It doesn't. RCI determines the season through some undisclosed magic and the only way to find out the season for a particular date is to look at the (pre-discount) points requirements for various exchanges in RCI. 165k is correct because RCI set it at 165k.

The only thing that's systematic about the season is that the season for every resort in a certain region is the same for the same date. That's why it was so reliable back when DVC was still in RCI that a week's exchange in a 1BR was almost always 105,000 points - because for whatever reason, RCI had determined that 40+ weeks out of the year in Orlando were "high" season, with very few prime, and a handful of value weeks. So I could stay in Disney's Saratoga Springs or Wyndham's Cypress Palms or the lowest rated timeshare in Orlando for the same week, and any one of them would be 105k. The same with Star Island, Reunion, Bonnet Creek, etc. - so you wouldn't be able to use their points charts to determine the season in RCI, because each of those points charts vary from each other and everything in Orlando in the RCI/Wyndham portal shares a season.

This is also why sometimes the points costs for Wyndham resorts in RCI are so low that even when taking the exchange fee into account, it's cheaper to book them through RCI - but sometimes not. Every time you have to do the math. Because the seasons are completely unrelated to each other.
 
paxsarah said:
Only if you assume the resort chart (is it a Wyndham resort?) applies when determining the season for the Wyndham/RCI points grid. It doesn't. RCI determines the season through some undisclosed magic and the only way to find out the season for a particular date is to look at the (pre-discount) points requirements for various exchanges in RCI. 165k is correct because RCI set it at 165k.

The only thing that's systematic about the season is that the season for every resort in a certain region is the same for the same date. That's why it was so reliable back when DVC was still in RCI that a week's exchange in a 1BR was almost always 105,000 points - because for whatever reason, RCI had determined that 40+ weeks out of the year in Orlando were "high" season, with very few prime, and a handful of value weeks. So I could stay in Disney's Saratoga Springs or Wyndham's Cypress Palms or the lowest rated timeshare in Orlando for the same week, and any one of them would be 105k. The same with Star Island, Reunion, Bonnet Creek, etc. - so you wouldn't be able to use their points charts to determine the season in RCI, because each of those points charts vary from each other and everything in Orlando in the RCI/Wyndham portal shares a season.

This is also why sometimes the points costs for Wyndham resorts in RCI are so low that even when taking the exchange fee into account, it's cheaper to book them through RCI - but sometimes not. Every time you have to do the math. Because the seasons are completely unrelated to each other.
Click to expand...


Good points. I am sure I make all kinds of incorrect assumptions. If I were to understand the workings of all these setups, I will need more vacations to recover from the effort of trying to figure it out. :LOL:

I did manage to get a week in a 2BR at Wyndham Kona (Royal Sea Cliff) via RCI points exchange more than a decade ago. I don't recall the details but it was a last minute trip. There is no way I could have got that with my ownership points.
 
OddYear said:
....So I tried the "Ongoing Search" option but found that the Date range doesn't start from "now". I tried to see if there were any rules about search periods but couldn't find any. The earliest month it displayed for the search was Nov.
Click to expand...

A Live Chat Agent on the RCI site told me that "... in order to start an ongoing search, the reservation date must be at least 90 days away and it will not match or put anything on hold once we are within 60 days to check in..."

I could not find anything like this on the RCI site, nor could the Chat Agent provide me a link/reference of where this is written. Only said that they go over this in their meetings.
 
The 60-day limit is known here at TUG. I guess it would be nice if it were written somewhere, but it doesn't really matter because that's what it does and it is unlikely to change.

There used to be a way to override it (stating that you'd accept a "close-in" match) but they took that option out. I suspect that's because when a week matches, it stays on hold several days, and if you ultimately let the match expire, the inventory is dead for the period of the match. With a close-in week, that dead time is much more valuable than something far in the future that still has plenty of time to attract attention. That's all a guess though.

After a point, you can't even do a one-day hold on a week--that might be 30 or 45 days instead of 60. But you would still normally get the end-of-next-day window to cancel a confirmation
 
@bnoble, I can understand not wasting a valuable resource by allowing people to hold it who then don't consume it, and, in the process, keep others from using it.

How about this simple solution - for reservation date sooner than 60, 30 or whatever low number of days from today, all that the system does for Ongoing Searches is inform the owner of a match found. It's up to you to book it or not. Nothing is held for you. As soon as it gets booked, another mail gets sent that it's gone. You snooze, you looz. But at least it's fair and not wasteful. And it doesn't require people to check frequently for availability.

@paxsarah , I landed on that page while searching various ways but didn't (and still don't) see it anywhere. I am logged in.
 
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