Wyndham is closing a handful of legacy resorts - dedicated chart/tracker located in the first post for this unfolding set of events

[Floridaman76]

It's been speculated that there's more to Wyndham's plan. The resorts leaving our system are the lower point resorts. That will mean more competion to get reservations at the remaining resorts which are also higher point resorts. Owners will need to buy more points to be able to book the stays they're used to having. VIP owners will find it much harder to get the discounts and upgrades in those windows and will need to be booking farther out at full points. They'll need to buy more points too. Virtually everything Wyndham does is to benefit sales, at least in some part if not all or mostly.

I've been saying this all along, ripple effects are far reaching:
1. Fewer resorts for roughly the same number of owners to compete for
2. Resorts with lower points values being removed, vacations at the remaining resort options will cost more vs what was there before
3. Resorts in specific area where there are no other (Wyndham) alternatives nearby mean staying in a hotel, or dealing with RCI or AirBNB to do the same vacation
4. More people in CWA means more people will now have 13 month ARP, they will be fighting for deeded owners at 13 months at resorts which have both CWA and CWS inventory
5. Fewer resorts means booking inside the discount or upgrade windows will be much harder, if not impossible
6. I believe this sets a bad precedent and template on how they can remove other resorts from the system arbitrarily, cheapening our ownership

That's just a handful of the issues and I do not see how this can be spun as any positive thing for owners.

Basically the ONLY people these changes help are:
- Wyndham
- People who own at one of these resorts who were looking to get out anyway

In most cases, people being force transitioned from their deeded property to CWA are getting the shaft from a MF perspective. In a few cases, they are lower, but I think that's the minority

 

[HitchHiker71]

I could be wrong about this but I'm under the impression that as administrators of the Trust Wyndham can drop a resort from the system. This wouldn't require the involvement of the resort BOD or voting by the owners. What happens afterwards would. Like continue as a stand alone timeshare resort, of which there are many in RCI. Join another timeshare group. Cease as a timeshare resort and sell to a developer.

This isn't an unprecedented move. There's a thread in the HIVC forum about the resorts it was recently announced are being dropped from their system. From what owners posted the resorts being dropped are some HIVC acquired when they bought out Silverleaf.

We'd expect that the decision for each resort should/would be for justifiable reasons. For some purported resorts the supposed justifications do seem questionable.

Good info - this aligns with the scuttlebut that we've heard about Wyndham not needing permission to do what they are doing in the manner in which they are choosing to.

I'm not familiar with what the rules are for getting unemployment. By telling the employees this far in advance does that get Wyndham out of having to pay unemployment? The sales staff and concierge people aren't necessary to the operation of a resort. Housekeeping and security are provided by contractors and aren't Wyndham employees. The essential Wyndham employees are the managers, front desk workers, and maintenance people.

It seems like some resorts no longer have the front desk open 24 hours. Most resorts have increased occupancy over Thanksgiving and Christmas. It will be interesting to see what their experiences are. Will standards be maintained until the last day? How much do people who are losing the jobs typically care towards the end?

There is no one answer to the unemployment questions since unemployment benefits are paid at the state level, not the federal level. State laws vary for unemployment in so far as how it is paid out and under what conditions. Some states will not pay unemployment if the applicant is still receiving severance and/or retention pay or any other type of pay from their previous employer, other states do. Wyndham, as a publicly held company, may have to provide WARN notices as part of these actions. Providing advance notice does not typically affect unemployment eligibility in any way. By providing more advance notice, if anything, Wyndham is likely hoping that most of the employees will find other employment prior to 12/31/2025, so they would see a lower utilization of unemployment benefits, except for those that may receive retention bonuses or additional severance for staying on board until the end, and again, depending on the state, the employee may or may not be eligible for unemployment benefits while receiving retention or severance payments.

 

[Rolltydr]

The city of Cookeville, Tennessee, has a population of approximately 35,544. The city of Crossville, Tennessee, has a population of about 12,265.

These are the two largest cities near FG, with Crossville being about 15 miles and Cookeville about 45 miles. I have no idea how many are FG employees there are but I wouldn’t think there are many jobs within an hour’s drive. Both Nashville and Knoxville are a little over an hour away.

 

[Roger830]

Wyndham most definitely pays the maintenance fees for every deed it owns. Wyndham collects maintenance fees from the Club Wyndham Access owners. The carrying costs for having "votes in the bag" is the difference between the total maintenance fees they owe on the deeds owned and what is collected from CWA members and any rentals associated with the intervals.

If fixed weeks maintenance fees are paid in advance, Wyndham would have to pay on the same schedule each year just like all the other owners in the HOA.

Of course Wyndham owns the deeds, both fixed weeks and udi in CWA.

I'm sure that nobody actually manually posts the data, it's all done by computer. This is basic data processing.

Added with edit: The fixed week hoa's most likely don't receive next years mf until January. There would a record for each hoa for the amount collected by CWA. I'm sure that there are other details that I'm not considering.

 

[dioxide45]

1. Fewer resorts for roughly the same number of owners to compete for
2. Resorts with lower points values being removed, vacations at the remaining resort options will cost more vs what was there before

I am not sure about #1. Fewer resorts means fewer owners. For each week removed from the system, it means one less owner week trying to make a reservation. Now if 100% of those owners opt to convert to CWA, that is a different story. However, Wyndham control the current unsold CWA and can rent it out, so that inventory is already being reserved within the system. I really see this as a neutral change in terms of availability and owners competing for inventory.
As for #2, this should also have a net positive on availability. The same number of points vying for higher point reservations would seem to soak up more points.

 

[comicbookman]

CWA is paid monthly and is a trust based ownership - basically it's similar to a RTU type ownership. How Wyndham handles the accounting of paying MFs to the HOAs for the various deeds the CWA trust holds is unknown to me, but I would imagine Wyndham pays the resorts in the same manner that individual owners pay for their ownership types - since I assume how the deeds are paid is defined in the contract itself - so if Wyndham owns the contract - Wyndham must pay according to the contractual obligation just like anyone else.

What I was trying to get at, poorly, is if I have fixed week at glade converted to points, which I pay ahead, and Wyndham gives me CWA points in exchange, have I paid my next years maint already? I would think so if CWA is paid like UDI, but no if it's paid like a fixed week. When I say paid, I mean by the owners, not how Wyndham pays the HOA's.

 

[dioxide45]

If fixed weeks maintenance fees are paid in advance, Wyndham would have to pay on the same schedule each year just like all the other owners in the HOA.

I think it depends. When you convert your week the rules seem to change. Club members seem to pay their fees monthly yet I am sure the HOA only collects annually. If you own a deeded week I suspect the maintenance fees are only due annually. When Wyndham is collecting monthly, do they remit to the HOA monthly or do they wait till the annual HOA billing and then remit the full payments in bulk?

 

[Floridaman76]

I am not sure about #1. Fewer resorts means fewer owners. For each week removed from the system, it means one less owner week trying to make a reservation. Now if 100% of those owners opt to convert to CWA, that is a different story. However, Wyndham control the current unsold CWA and can rent it out, so that inventory is already being reserved within the system. I really see this as a neutral change in terms of availability and owners competing for inventory.
As for #2, this should also have a net positive on availability. The same number of points vying for higher point reservations would seem to soak up more points.

For fixed or floating weeks owners, yes, for UDI, no.

Many of these resorts are a mixed bag of UDI and week owners. The UDI owners are confirmed that they will be transitioned to CWA. It's not readily clear if weeks owners will be given an equivalent number of CWA points or just given an outright exit.

Regardless, "weeks" owners were never competing against Club Wyndham owners for inventory in other resorts. Truth be known, they are not "club" owners at all, they didn't pay the program fee, unless they owned something other than their week in Club Wyndham.

These owners who get forcibly transitioned into CWA are no doubt competing for a lower number of units systemwide. That's not debatable. I guess the number of owners we end up with is debatable, and we will see eventually.

Most will probably make the debatably bad decision to move to CWA.

 

[dioxide45]

For fixed or floating weeks owners, yes, for UDI, no.

Many of these resorts are a mixed bag of UDI and week owners. The UDI owners are confirmed that they will be transitioned to CWA. It's not readily clear if weeks owners will be given an equivalent number of CWA points or just given an outright exit.

Regardless, "weeks" owners were never competing against Club Wyndham owners for inventory in other resorts. Truth be known, they are not "club" owners at all, they didn't pay the program fee, unless they owned something other than their week in Club Wyndham.

These owners who get forcibly transitioned into CWA are no doubt competing for a lower number of units systemwide. That's not debatable.

When I say weeks owners, I am referring to converted weeks. These have points associated with them and they are competing for inventory. But if everyone is converted to CWA, it just takes inventory away unsold inventory from what Wyndham can rent out. There is also the fact that the remaining resorts require more points to book. So same number of owners but they are now booking reservations that require more points thus they can reserve fewer rooms than they did before.

 

[CO skier]

It also occurred to me yesterday, regarding your point about how cheap BB is, that many of the legacy resorts require much lower points values to book. Since Wyndham cannot change the points values, if they want at a macro level to discourage use of resorts with lower points values, the only real option is to remove these resorts from the system over time. Using a certain logic, taking this approach means owners then have to use their points at the newer resorts that require higher points values to book, and that means owners are more likely to buy more points to cover the same amount of vacationing right? So if own 1.4mm points today and can vacation for 45 nights total using a mix of legacy and non-legacy resorts, tomorrow I may need 1.6-1.7mm points to cover those same 45 nights. Pure speculation on my part of course. Thoughts?

It's been speculated that there's more to Wyndham's plan. The resorts leaving our system are the lower point resorts. That will mean more competion to get reservations at the remaining resorts which are also higher point resorts. Owners will need to buy more points to be able to book the stays they're used to having. VIP owners will find it much harder to get the discounts and upgrades in those windows and will need to be booking farther out at full points. They'll need to buy more points too. Virtually everything Wyndham does is to benefit sales, at least in some part if not all or mostly.

Account growth seems more organic to me. Just for a complete change of pace, let us look at some data.

Wyndham is not removing “lower cost” resorts from WorldMark, yet the average account has grown by 70% over 15 years.

WorldMark Average Credits/Member

2010 – 11,400

2015 – 14,700

2020 – 17,500

2025 – 19,600

Much (most?) of this growth is due to sale presentations. In Club Wyndham sales to existing owners is 2:1 versus non-owners.

Some of this growth is due to owners just want to vacation at higher cost resorts such as Hawaii in both timeshare systems or Clearwater Beach, FL as a Club Wyndham example of a high cost resort that is in high demand. They are not “pressured” into these resorts because some legacy resorts are not available; they would just rather go to Hawaii than Fairfield Glade.

Wyndham does not need to do anything to "discourage use of resorts with lower points values," if for some strange reason they wanted to. Owners are not piling into “low cost” legacy resorts today; the fact that resorts may be on the chopping block due to low owner occupancy, also argues against the idea that owners make their vacation choices based on how many points it costs to stay there.

In other words, the "competition for other resorts" is already there.

The sales department, fortunately, is not involved in "reimagining" the affected resorts. That this "plan" is all some sort of machination to drive sales at any level, is a myth.

 

[Floridaman76]

When I say weeks owners, I am referring to converted weeks. These have points associated with them and they are competing for inventory. But if everyone is converted to CWA, it just takes inventory away unsold inventory from what Wyndham can rent out. There is also the fact that the remaining resorts require more points to book. So same number of owners but they are now booking reservations that require more points thus they can reserve fewer rooms than they did before.

That's true: re converted fixed weeks, I wonder what the percentage of weeks owners have converted points contracts.

I think it's gonna be a mixed bag of who exits vs stays.

 

[CO skier]

I've been saying this all along, ripple effects are far reaching:
1. Fewer resorts for roughly the same number of owners to compete for
2. Resorts with lower points values being removed, vacations at the remaining resort options will cost more vs what was there before
3. Resorts in specific area where there are no other (Wyndham) alternatives nearby mean staying in a hotel, or dealing with RCI or AirBNB to do the same vacation
4. More people in CWA means more people will now have 13 month ARP, they will be fighting for deeded owners at 13 months at resorts which have both CWA and CWS inventory
5. Fewer resorts means booking inside the discount or upgrade windows will be much harder, if not impossible
6. I believe this sets a bad precedent and template on how they can remove other resorts from the system arbitrarily, cheapening our ownership

That's just a handful of the issues and I do not see how this can be spun as any positive thing for owners.

Basically the ONLY people these changes help are:
- Wyndham
- People who own at one of these resorts who were looking to get out anyway

In most cases, people being force transitioned from their deeded property to CWA are getting the shaft from a MF perspective. In a few cases, they are lower, but I think that's the minority

From post #117

It will surely be overblown on social media.

 

[paxsarah]

I basically said something similar many pages back:

I find it interesting that if everyone were to take the CWA trade-in (I know they won't), we have the same number of individual owners now vying for a smaller number of units annually. I would guess the slack is made up through a decrease in Wyndham's rental business of the inventory it owns (because it will own less CWA inventory)? Is there another possibility I'm missing?

That's kind of funny to me because the optics to the owner base are that we'll have the same/similar number of owners competing for less total inventory, which seems pretty bad, and the explanation for why it won't be a problem is probably along the lines of "Don't worry - we were renting a crapton of units ourselves, but now we'll only be renting a half a crapton!" Which also sounds bad, because it would require Wyndham to talk about its own rental business.

 

[dioxide45]

I basically said something similar many pages back:

In the end there are still the same number of owners as inventory in the system. The difference is just in who owns the inventory. With unsold inventory, Wyndham currently owns it and rents it out or uses it for preview packages. If people convert to CWA the ownership just moves from Wyndham to the new owner. Now Wyndham can't rent out the inventory.

 

[CO skier]

I think it depends. When you convert your week the rules seem to change. Club members seem to pay their fees monthly yet I am sure the HOA only collects annually. If you own a deeded week I suspect the maintenance fees are only due annually. When Wyndham is collecting monthly, do they remit to the HOA monthly or do they wait till the annual HOA billing and then remit the full payments in bulk?

The maintenance fee obligations and payment timing does not change. If a fixed week is paid a year ahead, the monthly CWA billing for that underlying fixed week is a reimbursement of what Wyndham paid in advance.

 

[jp10558]

Some of this growth is due to owners just want to vacation at higher cost resorts such as Hawaii in both timeshare systems or Clearwater Beach, FL as a Club Wyndham example of a high cost resort that is in high demand. They are not “pressured” into these resorts because some legacy resorts are not available; they would just rather go to Hawaii than Fairfield Glade.

Wyndham does not need to do anything to "discourage use of resorts with lower points values," if for some strange reason they wanted to. Owners are not piling into “low cost” legacy resorts today; the fact that resorts may be on the chopping block due to low owner occupancy, also argues against the idea that owners make their vacation choices based on how many points it costs to stay there.

I might be one of the few people who would go somewhere because it's cheap, but even I am not clear why anyone would go to Fairfield Glade, especially on points. It was regularly showing up in last calls, and while I considered going there someday, I really struggle to say why after learning more. It had to be positioned as "go to the country" to local city residents is all I can think, because it has no national draw - anyone can go an hour or two out of their cities and find a bunch of "nothing" about anywhere in the US. Maybe not a Club Wyndham, but something rentable for sure.

 

[CO skier]

they get to pocket reserve funds, questions should be asked...

You know enough about real estate to know that is illegal. Why do even post this stuff?

 

[bnoble]

this aligns with the scuttlebut

It's not just scuttlebut. At least one of my converted-week contracts explicitly grants Wyndham the right to remove a resort from the points plan if the trust administrator deems the resort "unsuitable." If that happens, my conversion is undone, and it reverts to the underlying owned week.

if I have fixed week at glade converted to points, which I pay ahead, and Wyndham gives me CWA points in exchange, have I paid my next years maint already?

Probably, but it also probably won't be captured correctly. When I converted some weeks I should have paid some extra fees--I converted late in the year, and would no longer be billed the annual fee assessment once converted. I even pointed this out to them (I am one of those too-honest-for-my-own-good people), they acknowledged that was correct, and still never billed me for it.

 

[paxsarah]

In the end there are still the same number of owners as inventory in the system. The difference is just in who owns the inventory. With unsold inventory, Wyndham currently owns it and rents it out or uses it for preview packages. If people convert to CWA the ownership just moves from Wyndham to the new owner. Now Wyndham can't rent out the inventory.

Which is basically what I suggested, but I also think the optics are amusing.

 

[paxsarah]

Which is basically what I suggested, but I also think the optics are amusing.

I also was of the mind when Wyndham implemented Owner Priority periods and many owners were like, "Now all the inventory won't get taken by renters!" but that inventory is still going to get taken by *someone* and you still have to book before they do. I do agree that Owner Priority did likely add to owner occupancy rates (instead of renter/guest occupancy, and perhaps indirectly even exchange occupancy), but you're still competing against the rest of the owner base which maybe shifted to personal-use owners instead of renter owners (but also shifted to Wyndham as owner, who would also be renting). Now, it seems that this may actually facilitate another shift towards higher owner occupancy in terms of percentages (because Wyndham will presumably have less owned inventory to rent), but the optics are very bad, pretty much the opposite of the optics when they added Owner Priority. I didn't personally feel an effect from Owner Priority and I don't think I'll feel much effect from this in terms of competition.

 

[jp10558]

I also was of the mind when Wyndham implemented Owner Priority periods and many owners were like, "Now all the inventory won't get taken by renters!" but that inventory is still going to get taken by *someone* and you still have to book before they do. I do agree that Owner Priority did likely add to owner occupancy rates (instead of renter/guest occupancy, and perhaps indirectly even exchange occupancy), but you're still competing against the rest of the owner base which maybe shifted to personal-use owners instead of renter owners (but also shifted to Wyndham as owner, who would also be renting). Now, it seems that this may actually facilitate another shift towards higher owner occupancy in terms of percentages (because Wyndham will presumably have less owned inventory to rent), but the optics are very bad, pretty much the opposite of the optics when they added Owner Priority. I didn't personally feel an effect from Owner Priority and I don't think I'll feel much effect from this in terms of competition.

The optics are bad in terms of creating more competition, or something else?

 

[CO skier]

I do agree that Owner Priority did likely add to owner occupancy rates (instead of renter/guest occupancy, and perhaps indirectly even exchange occupancy), but you're still competing against the rest of the owner base which maybe shifted to personal-use owners instead of renter owners (but also shifted to Wyndham as owner, who would also be renting).

That particular myth was busted at the time Owner Priority Dates were established when it was determined that Wyndham (Extra Vacations) could not rent during Owner Priority Dates, even if an owner tried to submit the reservation to Extra Vacations.

 

[CO skier]

The optics are bad in terms of creating more competition, or something else?

I, too, am confused about "optics." There has not been any official announcement, only the news article. I did not see any optics in the article.

 

[Roger830]

In the end there are still the same number of owners as inventory in the system.

This is basically true at that point in time.

But if a large number of members have not been paying mf, then they are removed from CWA and there are more bookings available than owned points by members.

By closing resorts, deeds are removed thus correcting the imbalance.

 

[paxsarah]

The optics are bad in terms of creating more competition, or something else?

The optics are bad in terms of closing X number of resorts with no replacements, while potentially keeping the same number of individual owners in the system with the same number of points owned by individual owners. (Obviously, some will take this opportunity to exit partially or entirely and not take CWA as a replacement.) I've seen this point made by a number of owners in the FB threads, along the lines of "it's already hard to book what we want and now we'll be competing for fewer resorts," not to mention the ones whose favorites are among the potential cuts, and especially the northeasterners whose drivable options are really decreasing.

The reason that the math isn't as bad for owners as they initially perceive is that as Wyndham gives away CWA contracts to the owners from these resorts, it will be doing fewer rentals of its own. But the optics of having to explain that's why the math works out are also bad, because the average owner generally hates the fact that Wyndham rents (and I'm sure it will still be renting after all of this, just less).