Releasing March SO Reservation

[jabberwocky]

WKORVN 2 BR March 13-20, 2021. Is a 148,100 SO reservation.

Any tuggers want to pick this up? Will be releasing tomorrow. PM me if you would like to coordinate.

 

[rad.travel.dad]

What resort?

 

[jabberwocky]

WKORV-N

 

[CPNY]

WKORVN 2 BR March 13-20, 2021. Is a 148,100 SO reservation.

Any tuggers want to pick this up? Will be releasing tomorrow. PM me if you would like to coordinate.

Do you find that it becomes available immediately?

 

[sjsharkie]

Do you find that it becomes available immediately?

It doesn't always come back immediately in multiple experiences for me.

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[CPNY]

It doesn't always come back immediately in multiple experiences for me.

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Same here that’s why I asked.

 

[jabberwocky]

I’ve done a cancel and rebook a couple of times and it’s come back immediately in the past. Might be a YMMV situation.

 

[controller1]

When I cancelled my WKORVN reservations for September 2020 they came back available immediately.

 

[daviator]

Vistana maintains a waitlist for elite owners (3*-plus, if I remember correctly.) So if someone is waitlisted for that week, releasing the week will go to someone on the waitlist, it will not come back into general inventory.

When you're on the waitlist and somebody releases a week, you get notified immediately by Vistana and (as I recall) you have a short window, 48 hours I think, to accept the reservation, otherwise it rolls down to the next person on the wait list, once the wait list is exhausted then it would be returned to general availability.

 

[jabberwocky]

It’s widely believed here on TUG that the waitlist feature is a manual one. Others have reported testing whether it goes back into the general pool or not.

https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/releasing-1bd-dlx-wkv-mar10-17-back-into-vsn.267243/post-2089270

I can confirm that the week was released immediately, showed as available to be booked and was rebooked right away. This was a prime week so it should have been picked up by the waitlist if it was active. There was no availability prior to my releasing it.

 

[Sea Six]

Curious why you are releasing this. Afraid the travel restrictions won't be open by then? That's the very reason why I'm not in a hurry to book something new. I don't see Hawaii opening up any time soon. Their economy is going down the tubes and they don't seem to care.

 

[controller1]

I can confirm that the week was released immediately, showed as available to be booked and was rebooked right away. This was a prime week so it should have been picked up by the waitlist if it was active. There was no availability prior to my releasing it.

And I can confirm that these weeks were also released immediately and were unavailable prior to my cancelling: Westin Ka'anapali North OF Available Late Sep/Early Oct

 

[jabberwocky]

Curious why you are releasing this. Afraid the travel restrictions won't be open by then? That's the very reason why I'm not in a hurry to book something new. I don't see Hawaii opening up any time soon. Their economy is going down the tubes and they don't seem to care.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. Too much uncertainty surrounding the quarantine and lockdown restrictions. We don’t know what testing will look like or how it will be implemented.

Even with pre-flight testing, there is a strong likelihood that a false positive could come back and ruin our plans. Even if there is a 95% accuracy rate with the test, the probability of just one of us in a family of six getting a false positive is around 26.5%. That’s too much risk for me to spend thousands on airfare.

We don’t have as much risk with Cancun - no testing or quarantine right now. I still have my backup booking for SDO if things go south with Mexico.

I will likely be going to Maui next year - we’ve booked our home resort week plus our WFlex for August. Hopefully that will give them more time to get things figured out.

 

[YYJMSP]

It’s widely believed here on TUG that the waitlist feature is a manual one. Others have reported testing whether it goes back into the general pool or not.

https://tugbbs.com/forums/threads/releasing-1bd-dlx-wkv-mar10-17-back-into-vsn.267243/post-2089270

I can confirm that the week was released immediately, showed as available to be booked and was rebooked right away. This was a prime week so it should have been picked up by the waitlist if it was active. There was no availability prior to my releasing it.

Helios? and I did a bunch of coordinated waitlist/book/release tests a few years back, and the waitlist never came in to play -- the released weeks at various resorts always came back into inventory right away even when we were holding waitlists on those properties. it definitely behaved like a completely manual process with a huge window where the units were back in the general pool...

 

[LMills]

WKORVN 2 BR March 13-20, 2021. Is a 148,100 SO reservation.

Any tuggers want to pick this up? Will be releasing tomorrow. PM me if you would like to coordinate.

Sorry, I'm not good with just abrievations. Is this Kierland? Why not try to rent?

 

[jabberwocky]

Sorry, I'm not good with just abrievations. Is this Kierland? Why not try to rent?

This is one of the resorts on Maui. We bought our timeshares primarily to use and I'm not sure renting is worth the hassle. I don't entirely feel comfortable renting a SO reservation - although the points for this one did come from banked SO from our WKORV-N week when we bought it in 2019.

We'll be able to use the SO in August likely.

 

[pacman777]

Vistana maintains a waitlist for elite owners (3*-plus, if I remember correctly.) So if someone is waitlisted for that week, releasing the week will go to someone on the waitlist, it will not come back into general inventory.

When you're on the waitlist and somebody releases a week, you get notified immediately by Vistana and (as I recall) you have a short window, 48 hours I think, to accept the reservation, otherwise it rolls down to the next person on the wait list, once the wait list is exhausted then it would be returned to general availability.

are you Elite and have you used the waitlist process recently speaking from experience? Unless they changed it, I thought it was a non-automated process that was hit or miss where an agent would just check to see if availability opened up randomly once in awhile.

 

[daviator]

are you Elite and have you used the waitlist process recently speaking from experience? Unless they changed it, I thought it was a non-automated process that was hit or miss where an agent would just check to see if availability opened up randomly once in awhile.

I am a four-star elite member. I’ve use the waitlist several times, the most recent was about a year ago. It almost always comes through for me, there was only one time when I waitlisted and nothing ever opened up. So I’m under the impression that it works reasonably well. Of course, I have no idea if the process is automated or manual or if released weeks immediately go back into general inventory, it seems like it’s really lousy if that’s the case – isn’t it also possible that in many cases, nobody is waitlisted? If nobody is waitlisted, it’s totally reasonable that released weeks would flow right back into general inventory.

This is probably a hard situation to test through trial, somebody would have to hold a reservation which they don’t want during a period when everything is full, then somebody else would need to waitlist that week, then the first person would need to cancel and see what happens.

Next time I am talking to Elite owner services, I’ll ask them if they know. They are often pretty forthcoming about stuff like this. Then there are times when you sense they are trying to keep you away from stuff they aren’t supposed to talk about.

 

[YYJMSP]

I am a four-star elite member. I’ve use the waitlist several times, the most recent was about a year ago. It almost always comes through for me, there was only one time when I waitlisted and nothing ever opened up. So I’m under the impression that it works reasonably well. Of course, I have no idea if the process is automated or manual or if released weeks immediately go back into general inventory, it seems like it’s really lousy if that’s the case – isn’t it also possible that in many cases, nobody is waitlisted? If nobody is waitlisted, it’s totally reasonable that released weeks would flow right back into general inventory.

This is probably a hard situation to test through trial, somebody would have to hold a reservation which they don’t want during a period when everything is full, then somebody else would need to waitlist that week, then the first person would need to cancel and see what happens.

Next time I am talking to Elite owner services, I’ll ask them if they know. They are often pretty forthcoming about stuff like this. Then there are times when you sense they are trying to keep you away from stuff they aren’t supposed to talk about.

Helios and I did just this exact test a few years? back -- we made multiple reservations and wait-list bookings (one would reserve, the other would wait-list on an unavailable week, repeat in the other direction, etc). We waited a few days to make sure we had the reservations and confirmed wait-listed requests. Then we started to play. We found every single one of the reservations that we cancelled went back in to the pool immediately, instead of being held back for the wait-list. These tests were all done after hours, so the manual process in the VSE office that periodically looks for things on the wait-list to grab them didn't come in to play.

I agree that the wait-list does somewhat work, but it's partly through luck. I've had times where i did wait-list, and most of the bookings came through the wait-list in the end; however, i've had more times where if i checked myself in the evening, the booking i wanted was sitting there available to be grabbed (which i did) and the unit never came up on the wait-list...

 

[jabberwocky]

Helios and I did just this exact test a few years? back -- we made multiple reservations and wait-list bookings (one would reserve, the other would wait-list on an unavailable week, repeat in the other direction, etc). We waited a few days to make sure we had the reservations and confirmed wait-listed requests. Then we started to play. We found every single one of the reservations that we cancelled went back in to the pool immediately, instead of being held back for the wait-list. These tests were all done after hours, so the manual process in the VSE office that periodically looks for things on the wait-list to grab them didn't come in to play.

I agree that the wait-list does somewhat work, but it's partly through luck. I've had times where i did wait-list, and most of the bookings came through the wait-list in the end; however, i've had more times where if i checked myself in the evening, the booking i wanted was sitting there available to be grabbed (which i did) and the unit never came up on the wait-list...

I do like how it currently works since you can add/drop a few days off of a reservation if you need to or have plans change.