Starwood reservation change suggestion

[Troopers]

Here's a suggestion for Starwood....create a resort owner priority reservation list. Currently, owners of a resort have 12 to 8 months to book their villa in their season. At 8 months, it's a cattle call for all of SVN. I think it would be great if owners of a resort (independent of season owned) is able to put on a priority waitlist at say the 9 month mark. This priority waitlist would be filled at the 8 month plus one day before the cattle call at 8 months. Owners of a resort get priority over owners of other resorts. So, a Gold week owner at WKV gets dibs over a WMH owner for a highly desired week, assuming it's available. If could work the other way too, a Platinum week owner at WKV gets dibs over a WMH for less desirable week.

Why would Starwood implement this? Because this will make it easier for them to sell those tough to sell units in those awful seasons.

This would also drive up resale prices because of this benefit.

The dealkiller may be that this will require Starwood to implement this in their current not so advanced reservation system.

Ok now tell me what's wrong with my thinking.

 

[LisaRex]

An owner of a silver week at WMH wouldn't have enough StarOptions to book the same villa in a gold or platinum week, so it would only apply to multiple week owners. It wouldn't matter in Hawaii because all of us are platinum owners.

As a single-week owner, one of the things that drew me to Starwood (vs. Marriott) is that single week owners were on a level playing field with multiple week owners in terms of making reservations. Level playing fields are good because then everyone knows that they have a chance, even a slim one, at the other resorts. You take away that level playing field, especially at WSJ or Atlantis, and you'd really tick people off, including me. Besides, being able to trade into any SVN resort is one of the only few reasons left to entice people to buy voluntary resorts from the developer. If you made it more difficult, why would anyone buy, say, a silver desert or ski week?

Honestly, I think they need to lower their prices back to reality and offer real incentives to buy from the developer.