I just love it when SVO Management Inc. attempts to explain its crazy, "screw you the owner” policies in writing. Let's analyze what SVO said . . . ..
“As the management company for the SVO resorts we must ensure available rooms are occupied just as they would be in a traditional hotel and these partners help us to do that.” SVO Management, Inc. 1/14/2007
Since when does a sustaining sold-out timeshare, which collects what money it needs to run the place in the form of annual fees paid by its owners so it doesn't make any darned difference whether anyone actually uses the place or not, ever need to “ensure available rooms are occupied just as they would be in a traditional hotel . . ..?”
(Moreover, even if SVO’s position were true, wouldn’t the same logic apply to big dog SVN properties (WSJ, Maui, Kauai, Harborside) too, yet SVO has excluded them from this deal)
Most of the properties on the list have been sold-out for years. Accordingly, the need to “ensure available rooms are occupied” stems from SVO’s own personal need to fill seats in the SVO sales offices, not any need we owners have. SVO is just saying that it prefers new, fresh meat at its sales presentation instead of us owners, and when faced with essentially giving excess inventory away, it would rather give it to this fresh meat rather than honor its pre-existing obligations to us.
For the record, SVO Management, Inc.’s travel agent deal violates at least the following two pre-existing SVO obligations to us owners:
1. Sheraton Desert Oasis CCR’s (and maybe others) expressly set forth owner rights to “bonus time,” whereby we can rent excess inventory at heavily discounted rates; and,
2. As an incentive to induce us to purchase additional SVO timeshares, SVO promised us elite owners IN WRITING no less that excess inventory would be offered to us in the form of upgrades when available.
To promise us owners these things (in CCR’s and in written sales contract documents) and then turn around and offer this excess inventory to travel agent janitors and secretaries instead is just plain vindictive.
SVO Management Inc. appears to recognize that it has squandered virtually all good-will it had with us owners, and I certainly can’t dispute that conclusion. Hey Starwood’s parent company!!! Do you think that maybe a big part of the reason that SVO had a $150 million short-fall last year could have something to do with the fact that you have an utterly incompetent upper management team at SVO that makes boneheaded decisions like this?
Nevertheless, despite SVO Management Inc.’s contempt for us owners, it still has a fiduciary duty to look out for our best interests. Filling up our timeshares with travel agency employed janitors and secretaries on our nickel all while ignoring its earlier promises to us owners certainly falls far short of that duty.
Are any of those RCI class action attorneys out there reading this? We’ve got another case for you . . ..
-nodge
