WKV Devaluing

[ocdb8r]

Do they have ROFR at Lagunamar? Mostly inventory comes back in through loan and MF default and perhaps owner deedbacks.

You and @byeloe are likely correct on ROFR; I recall this being claimed on one of the resale weeks I purchased, but I don't recall ever seeing a "waiver" so it could have just been a misinformed reseller. I can't recall seeing it in any of the docs.

 

[timsi]

It was, but I heard about 25% of Lagunamar is in Westin Aventuras and Westin Aventuras is far from sold out.

According to the auditor's report, the developer owns about that much at Lagunamar. I do not get the impression they refer to Aventuras:
"Concentrations
As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, Lagunamar Cancun Mexico, Inc. (the "Seller") owned 3,584 and 3,216 VOIs or approximately 23% and 21 % of the available VOIs, respectively. The Association derived approximately 16% and 23% of its revenue from the Seller during the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively."

 

[rickandcindy23]

As far as skim goes, and how I heard it from Emmy (iconnections and Taffy19), if she booked her entire lockoff as back-to-back instead of the lockoff as one week, she can only book six nights in the studio. That was the skim. She said they didn't tell her and Peter that at the sales table, and they didn't see the points chart before they bought, so their plan to stay two weeks in their developer-purchased MM1 was a disappointment to her.

But I would say that Marriott cannot mess with the SO's as they have been in place for a very long time.

 

[dioxide45]

But I would say that Marriott cannot mess with the SO's as they have been in place for a very long time.

I think a bigger reason they can't mess with SOs is because they have conveyed weeks to the Westin & Sheraton Flex trusts using the current StarOption allocations. Sure they could perhaps file a notice to allocate more HomeOptions to the two Flex trusts, but they would also have to somehow bump up the number of HomeOptions for each owner in the trust. They can't magically create more points in the trust and then sell them. Then they would have to recalculate the ratio for Flex HomeOptions to Abound Club Points. The fact that StarOptions are engrained in the three Flex products makes is just about impossible for them to make changes now, regardless of the fact that they changed them in the past (pre Flex trusts).

 

[tomvc]

As far as skim goes, and how I heard it from Emmy (iconnections and Taffy19), if she booked her entire lockoff as back-to-back instead of the lockoff as one week, she can only book six nights in the studio. That was the skim. She said they didn't tell her and Peter that at the sales table, and they didn't see the points chart before they bought, so their plan to stay two weeks in their developer-purchased MM1 was a disappointment to her.

There is skim if you convert to Abound points and book back into your home resort, but they don't have to elect their MM1 for points. Just use as a regular week and lockoff to book a week in a studio and 1BR back to back.

 

[dioxide45]

There is skim if you convert to Abound points and book back into your home resort, but they don't have to elect their MM1 for points. Just use as a regular week and lockoff to book a week in a studio and 1BR back to back.

Exactly, skim has no impact when booking at your home resort unless you want to book a different season or unit type than you own. Since Hawaii is all Platinum, there is no skim.

 

[DanCali]

There is skim if you convert to Abound points and book back into your home resort, but they don't have to elect their MM1 for points. Just use as a regular week and lockoff to book a week in a studio and 1BR back to back.

As far as skim goes, and how I heard it from Emmy (iconnections and Taffy19), if she booked her entire lockoff as back-to-back instead of the lockoff as one week, she can only book six nights in the studio.

There is a lot throwing around the term "skim", and people refer to it in different ways. This is how I internalized the term myself since this thing launched back in 2010...

There is skim if you Elect MVC Club Points. (period)... It really doesn't matter what you do with the points. The skim happens because the number of points you get is less than the average points required to book the unit you own in the season you own. Since not all weeks in the season cost the same to book (unlike Vistana), the points you get may be enough for 5 nights during some of the weeks in the season you own or for 9 nights during other weeks but that's neither here nor there - even if you book 10 nights in your season with those points, you still got "skimmed" and it's not "reverse skim" as some called it in the early days. The skim is related to the fact that you got fewer points than the average needed to book a week in the season. It's not related to the number of nights you can book in your season.

Here is an example - At Newport Coast Villas the Platinum season runs from week 23-25 and 27-51 (basically 28 weeks from early June to Christmas, excluding 4th of July event week). 7 weeks in the season require 4225 points to book, another 7 weeks require 4725 points, and 14 of the weeks require only 2900 points. The average for those 28 weeks is 3688 points. Owners get only 3475 points, which is a 6% shortfall from the average - hence 6% skim.

Platinum owners can always (try to) book their home resort during the Platinum season. They can also elect points and book 5 nights in July (less than ideal, unless you couldn't reserve your VOI as week), or 8 nights that include up to 2 weekend nights anytime between September 15 and Christmas. And of course they can try to use points at 80+ other resorts. But either way they incurred skim at the moment they elected points because they only had 3475 points to work with instead of 3688.

Note that even if they awarded owners 3688 points when they elected points, they still couldn't book 7 nights in 14 of the 28 weeks. But if they did award 3688, there would be no skim because the total "points out" equal the total "points in". Some here may still call it skim if they couldn't book every week in the season, but I'm pretty sure it would not even be legal to give out any more points than that.

To me, that 5%-7% "skim" a transaction cost for electing Club Points. It doesn't exist in Vistana with Staroptions.