A Roadmap to Great. Vacations...NOT! What was Corporate Bluegreen thinking???

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

I dont know what to think of this. I can see someone who does alot of personal timesharing being hurt by this. I usually have 5 or less ressies at anyone time. Perhaps a good compromise would be to limit the amount of non-owner ressies to 5 or 10 at one time?

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

A search of sites through the Internet appears to indicate that you are actually using your Vacation Points to conduct a rental business by means of booking timeshare units in advance and then offering them to customers for vacations and business travel.

Such business activities as mentioned above are in direct contradiction to the personal usage nature of the Bluegreen Vacation Club product that you own. Further, these activities have a substantial adverse effect on the other Bluegreen Vacation Club owners who are seeking to make reservations for their own personal use by removing possible inventory from the reservation pool that would otherwise be available to them for reservations.
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I received a similar letter from RCI several years ago. The result was they closed my accounts and cancelled my exchanges. I don't think there is any prohibition to renting the property you OWN, only using your points EXCHANGED for another property is a problem.
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However, I ran across this operation last week, and for the first time found myself wishing there were some limitation on renting. The breadth of this took my breath away. I don't mean to be hypocritical since I've rented myself, and I am not sure yet how I would want to see this working, but sheesh, this is too much!

http://stores.ebay.com/bigcedarwildernesslodgetravel



http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188462
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Anyone who's been around timesharing any amount of time knows that owners jacking around with it will lead to repercussions. Yeah, I know, the companies can do the same things, and on massive scale, but not the owners.

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

I dont know what to think of this. I can see someone who does alot of personal timesharing being hurt by this. I usually have 5 or less ressies at anyone time. Perhaps a good compromise would be to limit the amount of non-owner ressies to 5 or 10 at one time?

Here's my issue.
It is 10 reservations or 'pending' reservations.

So I have 4 weeks/4 reservations booked in January 2015 at La Cabana. One of the weeks, I have a second unit as my DD is joining me.
And another week I have a second unit as another friend is joining me.
La Cabana has very few 2BR units so I need to book a studio and a 1BR to accommodate my family. Each takes up one reservation….if they had 2BR units i would have fewer reservations.
So I have 5-7 reservations for January 2015.
As a Platinum member, I can wait list for my January 2016 resies at 15 months or Oct 2015….but wait, I can no longer do this as a wait list request is considered one reservation so I can only wait list for 3 weeks not the 6-7 weeks I need until I have passed the date of those reservations.

The Mega Renters do book ahead but they also do a lot of closer in resies as well.

If they are trying to hurt the Mega renters I imagine they are but they will find a work around.

It is their Platinum level owners who are really hurt by this.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

The Mega Renters do book ahead but they also do a lot of closer in resies as well.

If they are trying to hurt the Mega renters I imagine they are but they will find a work around.

In my humble experience, it is the very existence of statements like this that prompt the companies to take a no tolerance position. Ask those who have had their reservations canceled and accounts closed what recourse they had.

Welcome to the underbelly of timesharing.

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

I suspect they're mostly after the guys renting out Big Cedar points, since an amazing percentage of people who gripe about BG expected to use their points at Big Cedar and Big Cedar only. Certainly a lot of people in the yahoo group have been agitating about mega renters for some time; if they've been lobbying BG the way they've been lobbying the group, then I'm not surprised BG decided to try to do something.

What surprised me is that they seem not to have grandfathered this in the sense of saying, "in the future, you will not be able to have more than 10 reservations...". People would still be unhappy about the ten reservation limit, but it'd be easier to adapt if it didn't mean cancelling reservations already made. Plus people are getting conflicting information right and left.

I have my doubts about the effectiveness of the 10 reservations limit on megarenters (not that I have any better suggestions), but I'm particularly annoyed at how it was implemented. The new rule doesn't have any direct impact on me, and I accept that rules can be changed, but the fact that they're effectively not honoring reservations already made in good faith is bad, and the fact that they can't even seem to clearly communicate what they've changed or what they're asking of people is ridiculous.

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

+1, exactly.

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

I have just recently seen this +1, not sure if I am suppose to be another +1 or am I a +2?

Whatever it is, I agree with Hobbitess and Anita.

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

OK, having let this grow on me, and understanding the desire of these types of companies to limit timesharing to personal, non-commercial use, it seems like in most cases more than 10 reservations would be an indication of commercial usage. For most people 10 reservation for the next two years would be a lot.

Now, if they had way to make exceptions, say for those like Ray Harper, who had 26 reservations for themselves each year, I can understand their attempt to stifle the commercial usage. When Big Cedar first opened, it was a long time before there was exchange availability, and in the meantime it was being offered by BG owners on craigslist.

.

Regarding the first statement, it would 'seem' that more then 10 reservations would indicate commercial use but in a points system 10 reservations does not indicate 10 weeks or 70 days, many people have 2 or 3 day weekend Resies or Sunday thru Thursday Resies. So 10 Resies could be as few as 20 days. And this is a BIG selling point used by the Bluegreen sales dept.

Your second statement regarding Ray is not pertanant as he obtained his weeks mainly thru the exchange company RCI using exchanges, bonus weeks and paid getaways. He was not using his deeded ownership to stay.

However your Big. Cedar observation is right on the money.

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

When Big Cedar first opened, it was a long time before there was exchange availability, and in the meantime it was being offered by BG owners on craigslist.

I'm not sure if you're referring to availability within the BG system, or availability within RCI or II, but either way, that's how the system works (or worked back then). When BG opens a resort, all the units belong to BG corporate, and they rent them out, both to the public and via Bonus Time or other rentals to club members. As people buy into that resort, the weeks belonging to members go into the common pool (unless claimed by the owner before eleven months out). So it can be a long time before many weeks are in the common pool.

At this point, Bluegreen also decides on what week go to RCI, but when Big Cedar opened, people chose their own weeks to deposit, and fairly early on savvy traders figured out that Big Cedar traded really well, especially for the points cost (Big Cedar is actually one of the cheaper resorts in terms of BG points). But it's also really popular, and RCI is much larger than Bluegreen, so savvy traders might also have rented it direct for monetary profit, rather than trading it through RCI or II.

I disagree with your claim that "when stuff is limited, it has more value, but when it is made available to everyone, en masse, that cheapens it." That is only true of things whose primary value is social -- in other words, if something a lot of people want is limited, then it's considered a luxury and a lot of people want it just because it symbolizes something for them. When that sort of thing becomes mass produced, then almost by definition it becomes cheaper to buy, but that is because the cost per unit goes down, not because it is necessarily poorly made or in that sense "cheapened." It is cheaper in a monetary sense, but not necessarily cheapened in value. Computer technology demonstrates this time and again -- when some new gadget comes out, everyone rushes to buy it, and the cost is high. Wait a few months, and you can buy the exact same thing for hundreds less, because it is no longer so high status to own it, and because the people who always have to have "the newest thing," to the point they'll pay whatever it costs, have found something else to throw their money at. Essentially, they pay off the development costs, and then those of us who hang back a bit are only paying the production costs. We don't get the prestige of owning something everyone yearns for, but we still have a fully functional i-pad (or whatever) -- with the added bonus that the kinks have likely been worked out.

Resorts don't work quite the same way -- management has a huge impact on quality, meaning quality can change significantly in a short period of time -- but my experience has been that, with resorts, often the price goes up as the quality goes down, even if they were available to the same number of people all the way through. Disney resorts, for instance, were much better when Disney was less popular. Everyone I know who stayed on Disney property in the 1990s has either abandoned WDW entirely, or stays off property (and often go a lot of other places in Orlando while getting their Disney fix). Disney on-property prices are completely out of line with the perks and amenities, because what most people are buying is either the experience ("staying in the Disney bubble") or a rite of passage ("every kid deserves a trip to Disney World once in their life"), making them surprisingly insensitive to price. They're paying for the social value. Should something come along that replaces Disney (not so likely) or Big Cedar (more likely) in terms of popularity, the price at those resorts will go down and availability up, even though availability in the sense of the number of units won't have changed at all, and even though quality may actually go up while the price goes down.

When it comes to Big Cedar, Bluegreen is struggling with a monster of their own creation, because right now Big Cedar appeals to those who want to go to the "best" resort (it has high social value), and it appeals to those who have few points/prefer bargains (it's one of the cheapest resorts outside of Florida), and it's one of the few nearby options for BG owners who live west of the Mississippi, while Falls Village is the only other one that is anywhere near as cheap as Big Cedar (and Falls Village is a totally different vibe). OTOH, BG is doing what they can to lessen the pressure -- the Cliffs, Paradise Point, and the Concierge and Presidential units at Big Cedar all seem to have been designed to draw off the people who are looking to Big Cedar for prestige, and the new points system through RCI is not only easier for most owners to use; it means Bluegreen can keep more Big Cedar units within the system.

The message Bluegreen would like to convey is, "the original Big Cedar units are for peons; anyone who is anybody will stay in the luxury units." But while the budget-minded wouldn't care about being called peons if that's the price it takes to get into those reasonably priced units, a large percentage of people who want to stay at Big Cedar really can't afford the luxury accommodations (they don't have enough points to get in them!), and also aren't interested in accommodations for peons -- even if they're the exact same accommodations they're wanting right now! So Bluegreen's trying to convince the people who can afford the pricier units that the regular units are not up to par, while at the same time trying to convince the people who really can't afford the newer ones that the older ones are the most desirable. It's tricky.

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

I'm not sure if this is a result of this policy or not, but I have seen 2 bdrm ocean fronts in North Myrtle, and the 3 bdrm Fountains unit now in regular searches.

They typically are as common as hens teeth.

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

I'm not sure if this is a result of this policy or not, but I have seen 2 bdrm ocean fronts in North Myrtle, and the 3 bdrm Fountains unit now in regular searches.

They typically are as common as hens teeth.

I am sure it is.... People are scrambling to get into compliance.



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[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Regarding the first statement, it would 'seem' that more then 10 reservations would indicate commercial use but in a points system 10 reservations does not indicate 10 weeks or 70 days, many people have 2 or 3 day weekend Resies or Sunday thru Thursday Resies. So 10 Resies could be as few as 20 days. And this is a BIG selling point used by the Bluegreen sales dept.

Your second statement regarding Ray is not pertanant as he obtained his weeks mainly thru the exchange company RCI using exchanges, bonus weeks and paid getaways. He was not using his deeded ownership to stay.

However your Big. Cedar observation is right on the money.

1 out of 3 ain't bad.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

I'm not sure if you're referring to availability within the BG system, or availability within RCI or II, but either way, that's how the system works (or worked back then). When BG opens a resort, all the units belong to BG corporate, and they rent them out, both to the public and via Bonus Time or other rentals to club members. As people buy into that resort, the weeks belonging to members go into the common pool (unless claimed by the owner before eleven months out). So it can be a long time before many weeks are in the common pool.

At this point, Bluegreen also decides on what week go to RCI, but when Big Cedar opened, people chose their own weeks to deposit, and fairly early on savvy traders figured out that Big Cedar traded really well, especially for the points cost (Big Cedar is actually one of the cheaper resorts in terms of BG points). But it's also really popular, and RCI is much larger than Bluegreen, so savvy traders might also have rented it direct for monetary profit, rather than trading it through RCI or II.

I disagree with your claim that "when stuff is limited, it has more value, but when it is made available to everyone, en masse, that cheapens it." That is only true of things whose primary value is social -- in other words, if something a lot of people want is limited, then it's considered a luxury and a lot of people want it just because it symbolizes something for them. When that sort of thing becomes mass produced, then almost by definition it becomes cheaper to buy, but that is because the cost per unit goes down, not because it is necessarily poorly made or in that sense "cheapened." It is cheaper in a monetary sense, but not necessarily cheapened in value. Computer technology demonstrates this time and again -- when some new gadget comes out, everyone rushes to buy it, and the cost is high. Wait a few months, and you can buy the exact same thing for hundreds less, because it is no longer so high status to own it, and because the people who always have to have "the newest thing," to the point they'll pay whatever it costs, have found something else to throw their money at. Essentially, they pay off the development costs, and then those of us who hang back a bit are only paying the production costs. We don't get the prestige of owning something everyone yearns for, but we still have a fully functional i-pad (or whatever) -- with the added bonus that the kinks have likely been worked out.

Resorts don't work quite the same way -- management has a huge impact on quality, meaning quality can change significantly in a short period of time -- but my experience has been that, with resorts, often the price goes up as the quality goes down, even if they were available to the same number of people all the way through. Disney resorts, for instance, were much better when Disney was less popular. Everyone I know who stayed on Disney property in the 1990s has either abandoned WDW entirely, or stays off property (and often go a lot of other places in Orlando while getting their Disney fix). Disney on-property prices are completely out of line with the perks and amenities, because what most people are buying is either the experience ("staying in the Disney bubble") or a rite of passage ("every kid deserves a trip to Disney World once in their life"), making them surprisingly insensitive to price. They're paying for the social value. Should something come along that replaces Disney (not so likely) or Big Cedar (more likely) in terms of popularity, the price at those resorts will go down and availability up, even though availability in the sense of the number of units won't have changed at all, and even though quality may actually go up while the price goes down.

When it comes to Big Cedar, Bluegreen is struggling with a monster of their own creation, because right now Big Cedar appeals to those who want to go to the "best" resort (it has high social value), and it appeals to those who have few points/prefer bargains (it's one of the cheapest resorts outside of Florida), and it's one of the few nearby options for BG owners who live west of the Mississippi, while Falls Village is the only other one that is anywhere near as cheap as Big Cedar (and Falls Village is a totally different vibe). OTOH, BG is doing what they can to lessen the pressure -- the Cliffs, Paradise Point, and the Concierge and Presidential units at Big Cedar all seem to have been designed to draw off the people who are looking to Big Cedar for prestige, and the new points system through RCI is not only easier for most owners to use; it means Bluegreen can keep more Big Cedar units within the system.

The message Bluegreen would like to convey is, "the original Big Cedar units are for peons; anyone who is anybody will stay in the luxury units." But while the budget-minded wouldn't care about being called peons if that's the price it takes to get into those reasonably priced units, a large percentage of people who want to stay at Big Cedar really can't afford the luxury accommodations (they don't have enough points to get in them!), and also aren't interested in accommodations for peons -- even if they're the exact same accommodations they're wanting right now! So Bluegreen's trying to convince the people who can afford the pricier units that the regular units are not up to par, while at the same time trying to convince the people who really can't afford the newer ones that the older ones are the most desirable. It's tricky.

too much to read

[stevec Member Find all posts View Profile Close stevec]

Best thing BG have done for a long time

[Sharkman Member Find all posts View Profile Close Sharkman]

Great info