Bluegreen booking engine

[hac Member Find all posts View Profile Close hac]

Just wondering if anyone knows the status of the changes Bluegreen was supposedly making to the booking engine?

Last year we were told that online booking for Direct Connections (Shell Vacation Club) would be available around the first of the year. As far as I can tell this has never happened. Wondering if it will ever happen?

We had also heard they would be looking into how they do the availability for a resort - there had been many complaints. If you are looking for a particular property, you are held to looking at only a 3 day window of time - instead of being able to do a search much like other vacation clubs and the exchange companies where you can enter a block of time - say like 4 months - and check availability for the whole 4 months. Marriott has a calendar and you can see the whole year - with what dates are available for check in. This doesn't seem like rocket science - the information is already online. Just seems like they need to set up some queries so people can search this way. I had heard this had been discussed - maybe it will be a topic of discussion at the Annual Board Meeting this year. It is really time consuming to have to click on a weekend at a time for the whole fall to see if a resort is available, with the size unit you want.

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

I do not recall any official BG pronouncement that they were working on any of this. I'd be interested in where you heard that they were, especially a Shell crossover -that's a lot of work to benefit a few. Why not call up Owner Services and ask?

You can expand your timeframe, you are not limited to looking at 3 day increments.

I will generally call if I'm doing a Whenever type quest.

I realize that it seems like "they just need to set up some queries" but I don't think that is the whole story, and would not cover all that you ask, and canned queries are not very flexible. I also think that their IT dept is much smaller than Marriott, so that's not an apples to apples comparison for what yuo think should be available. Don't forget that marriott has been in the hospitality industry a lot longer than BG.

[gandalf252002 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close gandalf252002]

I can confirm, that BG was supposed to be offering "Direct Exchange" and this was supposed to be available as of June 1, 2011. It was in the Direct Connections magazine, but then never happened. Apparently there are issues getting the system's to work together. Sounds like another Duke Nukem 3D to me (for those who are not familiar this was a Video Game, where release dates got pushed back for years and the answer was always "when it's done" and of course it never came out)

As for additional abilities with the reservation system, it would be nice to see and I've heared rumors when calling CS that things are coming. I think what HAC is looking for is the ability to see availability at a glance. Searching +/- 3 days requires 4 searches generally for a month. Yes, BG is smaller but I have seen non-chain smaller facilities have this feature. You should be able to view a monthly calender and see which days do not have availability. A perfect example of this would be the Woodbine Hotel and Suites system in Toronto.

The question is are they doing their programming in house or of the shelf?

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

In house, I'm nearly certain of it. I will always stop short of deciding how it "should" work as I have no information whatsoever about their database design so cannot say what is and is not possible. Please share their ERD with me.

Small non-chain resorts with ONE set of units? that would be EASY!!! But a giant system that includes inventories of different types, some resorts that BG owns, some that they don't, some with special rules (the full-weekers), a host of rules including which points can be used for what ... sorry, I'm not seeing how this is a slam dunk??

What is Direct Connections mag?

I'm not surprised that linking up disparate systems isn't working out so well. been there, abandoned that.

[hac Member Find all posts View Profile Close hac]

Gandfal is correct. I am looking for more of a calendar feature where you can look at a block of time and see when there is availiblity. Right now it is tedious - if you are looking to stay at a certain resort some weekend in the fall - you have to go through weekend by weekend to see if anything is available.

Boardgirl, I am not understanding what having a mixture of resorts with different inventories, points, etc. has to do with not being able to have an availability calendar? We already have the ability to book online - so the system knows availability, and the system already knows what resorts have week requirements, whether or not you have the right type of points and the right amount of points for a reservation, etc. So the system is already set up for that. I would imagine the Bluegreen reservations staff can probably see more than we can - but who knows, maybe they have to go through the same process we do to check availability. Maybe I should call and ask them if they can see when a particular resort has availability for the next several months - or whether they would have to plug in specific date ranges.

As far as Select Connections online - I read it in some Bluegreen literature - sounds like it was the magazine from what Gandfal said. Also, I seem to remember that Bocabum mentioned it after the annual meeting last year.

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

Please understand that I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice, I'm just saying it's not easy and must be thoroughly tested.
It would be unacceptable for someone to book something that really wasn't available (accidental double-book).

My point is that a standalone resort has a very easy time of identifying Occupied vs Not Occupied so saying that other resorts do it is not some magic elixir to make it easy for BG. I seriously doubt that they all have identical databases. I also doubt there is some off the shelf product that would magically tie in to the db schema.

Pushing a calendar for A Resort is a large amount of data to display. If that cannot be done with speed, owners would likely scream about that, so it's a balance. Maybe they have sucko web hardware that can't handle it? Perhaps that budgeted hardware is finally in house and being built out.

While some may say "we don't care if it's slow, we want it anyway!" it's still not acceptable to put out something that underperforms, or worse, brings down the internal booking engine also. The memory overhead will be very large per user session. Put 50 people on at a time and it could crash. Maybe they have something developed and it fails testing?

I develop software and am a dba. It's quite common for users to think something should be easy without knowing what is really under the covers, and it's really easy if you yourself don't have to be the one to Nail It. I'm just saying that it may not be available yet because it is probably much more complex than we know. It took a lot of time to develop what we have, which tells me that the underlying data is complex.

My guess is that showing availability for One Resort for a period of time would be easier than "show me everything for all of Sept and October" but depending on how the data is stored, I could have that completely backwards.

People hate IT, I get that. I've been insulted for lots of things that I had nothing to do with, and I'm just trying to point out that BG IT is probably working on this, but complaining won't make it faster to get to market nor will assuming that all of their developers must suck because "this is easy!"

Just trying to defend the poor geeks getting hammered while I patiently await their masterpiece.

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

Boardy, r u saying you CAN search for more the one date +\- 3 days now?
If so, how do you do it???

[gandalf252002 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close gandalf252002]

BoardGirl is correct, and having a programming background it is why I got away from that type of work.

When I say should, it would probably have been more accurate to say it would be nice. That and "can" and "feasible" are two different things. Just because the system is capable of it, does not mean that it was designed for it or that it is easy to implement.

There is always a long list of improvements, features, etc that end users would like for system and it comes down to priorities. The fact that a year later, BG and Shell cannot get their systems working together is a testament to the work that goes into database design and integrations of disparent and legacy systems.

In a perfect world, everyone would get along and play nice together but when it comes to IT that is rarely the case.

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

Just select a different date. It defaults to a range of days but you do not have to accept that.

Note, you are better off keeping the range small in order to see the ranges (with the +/- selected).

---

Hac, I'm not sure that the booking engine does know full week resorts, as I have never gotten a full week resort to show anything, and so assumed that those are simply not part of the search logic. This is A Guess. Have you been able to get a result for a full-week resort?

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

Have you been able to get a result for a full-week resort?

I've seen a couple of the full-week resorts online, either well off-season or right at the eleven months out mark. I did have to ignore BG's advice on the standard check-in date for at least one of them, though -- the little pop-up said that resort was Friday Check-in when it was Saturday or vice versa.

BG doesn't have many weeks at the weeks resort -- it has only two units at Big Sky, for example, and I think I heard that at some of the associate resorts it only owns certain weeks.

[hac Member Find all posts View Profile Close hac]

I guess I am still not understanding - is there a way to check a larger date range? All I can see is the plus or minus three day thing - which isn't real helpful if you are mainly interested in weekends. I usually have to enter weekend after weekend after weekend - until I see something available or realize there is nothing available in the date range I am interested in. If there is a more efficient way - please clarify.

If an availability calendar is too tricky for all the resorts because of the Club Associate resorts having limited inventory and specific check-in days (as I think I am hearing you say) - then maybe it would only be feasible to do the availability calendar for Bluegreen club resorts.

Also, I think a lot of the frustration with some of this stuff like the booking engine is if Bluegreen says it is going to be up by June 2011 and that date rolls around and it isn't up - instead of keeping owner's up to date through the magazine, or e-mail, or the online site itself - nothing is ever said about the delay. If you ask an agent - they know nothing about it. I think everyone expects things to run behind schedule from time to time - but it is always better to keep people up to date on the status and let them know you are still working on something. Might be a bad analogy, but like an airline - people expect delays - but they prefer to be kept up to date on the status and not just left hanging and wondering.

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

I am also seeing what Hac is seeing and request clarification/example please.

I guess I could put in a friday date to start and a Monday 10 days later to enc to capture two weekends at a time but if the Wednesday is not available it would say nothing available yor ALL my dates

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

I guess I could put in a friday date to start and a Monday 10 days later to enc to capture two weekends at a time but if the Wednesday is not available it would say nothing available yor ALL my dates

When I do that, I often get a "please wait while we look for additional vacation options", then it'll show me pieces parts within and around the dates I choose. In which case you could see if there's availability on both weekends even if the Wednesday was gone. It'll also offer me stuff nearby if the resort is sold out -- Laurel Crest when I'm searching Mountain Loft, or Falls Village (and the Cliffs, and Paradise Point) when I'm searching Big Cedar.

[GrayFal Silver Contributor and supermoderator Find all posts View Profile Close GrayFal]

When I do that, I often get a "please wait while we look for additional vacation options", then it'll show me pieces parts within and around the dates I choose. In which case you could see if there's availability on both weekends even if the Wednesday was gone. It'll also offer me stuff nearby if the resort is sold out -- Laurel Crest when I'm searching Mountain Loft, or Falls Village (and the Cliffs, and Paradise Point) when I'm searching Big Cedar.

Thank you - good to know.
I just tried to do this to 'trick' the system, LOL, but I kept getting 10 day availability! Will try it again in the future.

[hac Member Find all posts View Profile Close hac]

Thank you - good to know.
I just tried to do this to 'trick' the system, LOL, but I kept getting 10 day availability! Will try it again in the future.

Wow, that was frustrating - I was typing a reply and for some reason the system logged me off, so the auto-save only had the first part saved. I will try again........

If the above is what BoardGirl was suggesting, I understand what you are saying to try. The unfortunate part is many of the resorts I am looking at for a weekend (we use Bluegreen for a lot of weekend or long weekend travel) have very limited availability, so like you are saying, if only one day is not available then the search will return with no results - possibly with some alternative dates at the beginning or end, or other resorts. We often look at properties in Florida, the Southeast, and New Orleans - the Orlando properties do have more availability so searching is pretty easy. I guess we are splitting hairs here, there are some tricks, but nothing really very efficient. My main reason for bringing this up was to see if anyone had heard any status on the availability calendar or the Select Connections online, and to see if others shared my frustrations when trying to book. Maybe this will come up at Bluegeen's Annual meeting (in September) - likely BocaBum or someone else will fill us in.

On a similar note, I am told that Bluegreen assigns units at the time of reservation. So, a unit type may be available for a reservation date range, but because the same unit is not available, it shows up as not available. One unit may be available for three days and one might be available for 4 days. We have encountered this when we have tried to extend a Bluegreen reservation - the unit type shows available but we are told we have to move rooms because there is no way of knowing if the incoming person had requested the room, or whether it was randomly assigned.
This took some getting used to because with Marriott, rooms are not assigned till check-in or slightly before. In fact, they often won't tell you your room ahead of time. So, if a room type is available - they will generally extend you without getting you to move rooms. And, as long as a room and view type are available for a date range, they will show available for the whole time because no units are assigned. We recently bought Hyatt and I believe we read they also assign units ahead of time. I don't know how flexible they are about extensions and trying to keep you in the same room. I see pros and cons to both - with Bluegreen you can request certain units (I imagine the higher your status, the better chance you have of getting that specific room since you can get on the waiting list with that request). With Marriott there is more flexibility since they don't have units assigned - they can often extend you without having to move you. I know some Bluegreen properties you book your view, others you do not. We have always gotten good rooms with Marriott - even though they don't assign until check in.