I have no idea what the topic is

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Actually, if you think again, BG and RCI is very similar. Once BG sold its inventory to Boca or any new owner, they no longer own that property. The owners owns.

I don't know BG, so I will use FF.

Each year, my unit is assigned to FF in exchange of FF point (or FF money) which I can use to make reservation or to spend on whatever FF provide. I can use it to reserve the units that owner assign the user right to FF, and use it, rent it out, give to a guest, exchange. In this case FF has no different than RCI, once they sell the unit, they just serve as an excahnge company.

FF also has rental program. But not like BG, Owner does not get discount from that program.

In theory, FF don't own any unit except those they are developing and still in selling process.

RCI does not own any unit, but they get inventories from all different developers, and as owner we don't own these units too.

If I use my FF points to purchase anything except the FF resort interval gave up by FF owners, FF has to find a way to get cash out of it. The only way is to rent out a FF units that owned by an owner but assigned to them. In other word, I give permission to allow FF to rent a certain invertval my point can get.

Something in RCI.

Will FF steals something from the owner side and makes profit for its own company? Or they just rent out their part of units that give by them from developers? Or they exchange some devloper's unit to a unit owned by owner because it can rent higher? That is exact the same as question on RCI.

I believe BG works similar, so BG is just another RCI

Jya-Ning

You see it exactly the same way I do. When you look at the details, you see that they are exactly the same.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Jim I rather give the moderators a chance to play with the controls. Hint put a check in the right hand corner of the posts you want to move. Then scroll to the bottom of the thread and in the moderation box click on move posts. follow the directions from there.

I guess the moderators here have not seen this yet. I may have to send them an email. This has to be now the most thread going.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Boca:
This is off the topic, but I am very interesting in this off topic, so I will chip in.

No idea about BG system.

What 30% compose of? Did BG purchased other resorts and converted them to BG Club? The converted owner? Or just new owners that purchased a new BG Club?

I notice there is a differnce in BG model and RCI model. BG owner get cheaper rental then general public. If a RCI member can get Outbank from RCI in rent as same as BG offer as example, but when he checks all the RCI outlet rental side, he sees the cost is double or triple, then he will probably will praise it instead of feel he been robbed.

Jya-Ning

The 30% is both in number of owners and number of points. Last year, Bluegreen had about 770,000,000 points in the system. Now there are over 1 Billion points all supported by underlying deeds. That represents about 125,000 one week resort intervals. This is from resort expansion and new development from both development of new units and converting hotel units to timeshares. Bluegreen added about 30,000 owners last year each buying about 10,000 points each. That's about 80 new owners every single day of the year.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

I guess the moderators here have not seen this yet. I may have to send them an email. This has to be now the most thread going.

LOL. The only post off topic is the OP. LOL. Everything else is consistent.

[Jya-Ning Silver Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close Jya-Ning]

I guess the moderators here have not seen this yet. I may have to send them an email. This has to be now the most thread going.

Sorry, Frank

Jya-Ning

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

One thing you seem to avoid, Boca, is looking at this from the standpoint of resort/HOA economics.

Actually, I am looking at the economics in more detail than you can possibly imagine.

Bluegreen Timesharing is growing at 30% per year. With the slow down in single family home sales, timesharing sales is carrying the company. And, they are generating a huge surplus in maintenance fee receipts to the tune of about 18% over the underlying deeds.

What Bluegreen is doing is proving that resort group timesharing is a superior business model to standalone weeks exchange.

I am sure that other resort groups are having equal success.

So, despite your predictions of a collapse of timesharing, it continues to boom.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

The cruise exchanges, however do not contain ANY need for RCI to rent anything to pay for the cruise. RCI's cash portion come to more $$$ than cruise discounters charge for their cash price, so RCI has already made its profit from just the cash portion. Indeed some years ago in Endless Vacation, RCI Travel, a seperate division, had cruise for cash only advertised a few pages away from where RCI was flogging the same cruises as ''cruise exchanges'' with a HIGHER cash requirement than buying it from RCI Travel as a straight cruise!

Most off season owners were sold on the understanding that they could use their weeks for about anything RCI had left in the 45-day inventory. This is distressed inventory with a short shelf life, which cannot honestly be called a trade up. A late DEPOSIT of similar inventory also involves a big reduction in trade power, so a late confirmation of such inventory, logically, should too. This is one place that RCI rentals are depleting the inventory and causing bailouts. A 45-day window trade IS a fair trade, and these are the so-called ''trade-ups'' the points people whine on about.

If you want to look for trade up, the place to look is RCI Points, where rigged and frozen numbers underpoint certain types of resorts and overpoint others.

RCI's employees can track where inventory came from on their system, and we have heard from enough of them that they have tracked prime deposits that had nothing to do with cruises, points partners, or PFD, straight to the rental pool. One even posted some screen shots off of RCI's computers on another website.

The problem for resorts and their owners is that well managed and led resorts are on top of what is going on and are making adjustments. However, there are some that do not keep up with such things and will be caught flatfooting.
Do you approve od RCI blindsiding those resorts or should they have the honesty to tell their affiliates what is going on and where it will lead?

I have not had an RCI exchange that has had the unit assigned on arrival, but if they are now doing that, it is but another sign that something is fishy.

Actually, today developers deposit into RCI their developing units. It is in both week and point. Just like old days. Except the old days is only on week side. Also, you can exchange week to curise. So it is the same. Just in week system, you only get one token per week deposit. In point system, you get different ratio of tokens. Also, week exists before Internet, and few people know where RCI put their rental to. Nowadays, people can see rental from internet.

When you say it is not allowed in RCI weeks, none can prove it is not been don by that before. However, because it has week number and unit number, people assume it is impossible to do that.

Today, all my exchange from RCI says that the unit will only be assigned when I get to the resort. I will assume it is the same as rent. So there is no way to trace what their rental source is, therefore, you will always think they are renting the exchange weeks.

If HOA/developer don't trust RCI, they will pull theit affliation to other exchange company. If they just wait till all their off season weeks owner bail out and none willing to bail them out, that is their issue.

By the way, assume the exchange will prevent bail out of off season week owner basically admit the week trade is trade up not a fair trade. How can there any prime season owner want to deposit their week for exchange?

Jya-Ning

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

LOL. The only post off topic is the OP. LOL. Everything else is consistent.

Jim I think you are right Steve why did you post off topic for. Your post is the only post regarding travel.

Whats funny is look at how many posts and views we get once a topic goes astray.

I will fix this since it is easy to just move Steve's off post and put it back to the same spot. I will then be renaming this thread to I have no idea what the topic is and moving it to Jim's forum.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Bluegreen is a good example of one of the cons in a points system that so attracts developers. A points system allows them to keep selling a sold out resort.

They have an excellent resort in Charleston, a very hot timeshare destination, Lodge Alley Inn, and they of course use it to do tours. They argue that ''points are points'' and actually deed buyers weeks in Wisconsin or somewhere. Eventually, they will end up with a lot of people set on going to Charleston, and no new inventory built there, and it will be impossible to accomodate all of the members who were ''sold Charleston''. Is this honest or fair? At least when a fixed week resort sells out, the developer has to build more inventory to keep selling in the same location, which keeps the system honest. This is one of the built in scams in about any points system. Yes, they probably can make a lot of profits that way.

Actually, I am looking at the economics in more detail than you can possibly imagine.

Bluegreen Timesharing is growing at 30% per year. With the slow down in single family home sales, timesharing sales is carrying the company. And, they are generating a huge surplus in maintenance fee receipts to the tune of about 18% over the underlying deeds.

What Bluegreen is doing is proving that resort group timesharing is a superior business model to standalone weeks exchange.

I am sure that other resort groups are having equal success.

So, despite your predictions of a collapse of timesharing, it continues to boom.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Bluegreen is a good example of one of the cons in a points system that so attracts developers. A points system allows them to keep selling a sold out resort.

They have an excellent resort in Charleston, a very hot timeshare destination, Lodge Alley Inn, and they of course use it to do tours. They argue that ''points are points'' and actually deed buyers weeks in Wisconsin or somewhere. Eventually, they will end up with a lot of people set on going to Charleston, and no new inventory built there, and it will be impossible to accomodate all of the members who were ''sold Charleston''. Is this honest or fair? At least when a fixed week resort sells out, the developer has to build more inventory to keep selling in the same location, which keeps the system honest. This is one of the built in scams in about any points system. Yes, they probably can make a lot of profits that way.

This is a good debate. I am a big Bluegreen Point owner and I check availability almost every day. So, I can tell you with confidence that Bluegreen has good availability in most resorts. As always, popular destinations sell out first.

The argument you raise is a good one and comes true if the new resorts developed are under utilized. This has been an ongoing debate on the WorldMark boards where they have several resorts that are empty. And, since there is so little trust in Cendant, the owners there just assume that they will get screwed over.

I will acknowledge that there is a risk that the resort developer turns against the owners as devalues their ownerships. That's the risk with any currency system. If you don't trust the trustee, the system collapses.

So, I am watching Bluegreens actions like a hawk. And, they appear to be expanding in a rational way. I feel their expansion efforts are increasing my options, not decreasing them.

[BoardGirl Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BoardGirl]

That's just a case of buyer beware. The points are deeded. If you go to a presentation @ LAI and that's where you want your points, don't buy a deed to Branson! If you have a deeded week @ LAI you can reserve it ahead of the other members.

I personally don't think BG is selling what they don't have.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Peppertree/Equivest's points system did! They had almost sold out Outer Banks Beach Club I and II when they starting selling their points program out of the OBBC sales office. Of course they toured them at OBBC, and told them how many points it would take to get a summer week there. What they didn't tell them was that almost all of the summer weeks had already been sold as deeded weeks. Those who bought were actually deeded a week somewhere in the mid-west and told that ''points are points''. When they tried to use them for a summer week at OBBC, of course, they couldn't. There were a lot of angry people, naturally.

Now, when I did a tour at Lodge Alley Inn, I noticed that what they were pushing for the points packages they were selling was a resort in the mid-west. None of the numbers on their sales chart seemed to match up with numbers assigned to Lodge Alley Inn. I wonder how much of Lodge Alley Inn was already sold as deeded weeks before they started selling points there. If it was almost sold out, they would have the same immediate problem as Peppertree on the OBX. If they still had a fair amount of unsold inventory to slide into their points program, the problem would be slower to develop, but would do so over time.

Because of the ''points are points'' argument, it is very easy for a points developer to sell the same resort many times over while building cheaper resorts elsewhere to deed buyers. This is precisely what makes points attractive to larger developers.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

Bluegreen is very transparent with club operations. For Lodge Alley Inn, there are 89 units in the Bluegreen Vacation Club. This consists of 35 studios, 36 one bedroom, 13 one bedroom with 1.5 bath, and 5 two bedroom units. There are 4222 intervals committed to the club. This represents 3.67% of all points.

Boardgirl is correct. If someone wants to buy to stay at Lodge Alley Inn, they have 3 choices depending on their needs.

1) They can buy a deeded fixed week at the resort and use it every year.

2) They can buy points that are deeded at Lodge Alley Inn. Every contract for Bluegreen points specifies the underlying deed supporting the points. Owners have a priority reservation period for their deeded week that trumps anyone else from 12-11 months in advance of check in. That is equivalent to the rights you get owning a fixed week.

3) You can buy points anywhere else. If you are a Gold Preferred, you will have an advantage over everyone else not reserving their deeded week.

So, there are plenty of options for meeting a timesharers needs.

The Bluegreen point system is very well designed. It absolutely provides lots of options for meeting owners needs. And, they are all documented unlike other timesharing systems.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

If the numbers you have been given are correct, and two weeks a year are set aside for maintenance, then all but 200 weeks would be in the points program, which is the reverse of the situation at OBBC. That would mean a longer time before a squeeze became apparent with lack of enough inventory.

The choices you give are curious, because when I toured, they tried to sell their points, and even before we got to the sales table had been singing the praises of a resort in the mid-west. That was one reason that it did not surprise me that it was that resort where they tried to sell us points. They didn't quite come out with that at first, until I specifically asked where those points packages were located since they did not match up with the Lodge Alley Inn totals. At no point in the sales presentation did they offer either a deeded week or a points week based on a deeded week at Lodge Alley Inn.

I would be interested to know how many of those Lodge Alley Inn weeks have already been deeded.

Bluegreen is very transparent with club operations. For Lodge Alley Inn, there are 89 units in the Bluegreen Vacation Club. This consists of 35 studios, 36 one bedroom, 13 one bedroom with 1.5 bath, and 5 two bedroom units. There are 4222 intervals committed to the club. This represents 3.67% of all points.

Boardgirl is correct. If someone wants to buy to stay at Lodge Alley Inn, they have 3 choices depending on their needs.

1) They can buy a deeded fixed week at the resort and use it every year.

2) They can buy points that are deeded at Lodge Alley Inn. Every contract for Bluegreen points specifies the underlying deed supporting the points. Owners have a priority reservation period for their deeded week that trumps anyone else from 12-11 months in advance of check in. That is equivalent to the rights you get owning a fixed week.

3) You can buy points anywhere else. If you are a Gold Preferred, you will have an advantage over everyone else not reserving their deeded week.

So, there are plenty of options for meeting a timesharers needs.

The Bluegreen point system is very well designed. It absolutely provides lots of options for meeting owners needs. And, they are all documented unlike other timesharing systems.

[BocaBum99 Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close BocaBum99]

If the numbers you have been given are correct, and two weeks a year are set aside for maintenance, then all but 200 weeks would be in the points program, which is the reverse of the situation at OBBC. That would mean a longer time before a squeeze became apparent with lack of enough inventory.

The choices you give are curious, because when I toured, they tried to sell their points, and even before we got to the sales table had been singing the praises of a resort in the mid-west. That was one reason that it did not surprise me that it was that resort where they tried to sell us points. They didn't quite come out with that at first, until I specifically asked where those points packages were located since they did not match up with the Lodge Alley Inn totals. At no point in the sales presentation did they offer either a deeded week or a points week based on a deeded week at Lodge Alley Inn.

I would be interested to know how many of those Lodge Alley Inn weeks have already been deeded.

All of them are deeded points. I know because the numbers are in the annual report. The fixed weeks are not offered by the sales teams. You need to buy those on the resale market or from Pinnacle Vacations.

Bluegreen does sell points as points. Your criticism of that sales tactic is valid. But, it isn't really impacting owner usage yet. It could in the future.

Bluegreen really does sell the Vacation Club usage across all resorts.

Also, I think that Bluegreen cross sells points from other resorts so that they can offer a customer the number of points they want as opposed to the number of points they have at that specific resort.