New Benefits for DRI Elite members in 2010

[damamabearx3 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close damamabearx3]

Elite benefits are determined by the number of points you own with DRI. Silver Elite starts at 15,000 points. Gold Elite begins at 30,000 points. I think Platinum elite begins at 50,000 points but I wouldn't swear to it. The fee WiFi and USA today will be for all Elite members. There are some additional benefits as you go higher in the Elite status.

I am Silver Elite and am familiar with the structure since we became members of the Club when it was created. I was actually wondering about the overall hit to the maintenance fees for offering the benefits. Someone's got to be paying the USA Today subscription fee and I bet it gets tacked back into the resort operations or management fees (hence maintenance fees). I don't see DRI paying for this out of their profit as a gift to us.

I am very happy to see a different price structure for converting points to air, cruise, travel, etc. I considered converting the points in the past but it devalued the points so much (MF/points= approx. $0.15 per point) that I would enjoy my drivable weekends in Williamsburg and shop for the best flight deals when I needed to fly somewhere. I don't consider this new benefit as a cost to DRI as it is an income generator for them. It's nice that they are giving up a little on this.

A note about Club, this is the one timeshare-related purchase that I have never regretted.

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

I am Silver Elite and am familiar with the structure since we became members of the Club when it was created. I was actually wondering about the overall hit to the maintenance fees for offering the benefits. Someone's got to be paying the USA Today subscription fee and I bet it gets tacked back into the resort operations or management fees (hence maintenance fees). I don't see DRI paying for this out of their profit as a gift to us.

I am very happy to see a different price structure for converting points to air, cruise, travel, etc. I considered converting the points in the past but it devalued the points so much (MF/points= approx. $0.15 per point) that I would enjoy my drivable weekends in Williamsburg and shop for the best flight deals when I needed to fly somewhere. I don't consider this new benefit as a cost to DRI as it is an income generator for them. It's nice that they are giving up a little on this.

A note about Club, this is the one timeshare-related purchase that I have never regretted.

Opps, I thought you were asking how Elite was structured.

I don't think it's going to hit the MF's anymore than they've been hit now. My guess is this has been in the planning stages for sometime and was part of the last increase. When you get right down to it, the newspaper shouldn't increase the fee's much more then a couple of bucks. I wouldn't think the WiFi would add that much to the bill either. As an example, the high speed internet charge for our Marriott unit in Vegas is $3.77 per unit week. At our Florida timeshare it's $3.60/unit week. So the two services combined might tack on $10/unit week at the most. Since not everyone staying at the resort will be receiving these services for free it's probably not even that much.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

The new elite benefits are for silver, gold and platinum members only,

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

... But anything that resembles fairness should be commended. ...

+1

keep up the good work dri !

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

My wife's Blackberry Storm worked great in Europe. We had to call to add the international roaming plan but, you can put that on and take it off as needed. If you ever add international service it's important to remember to add the unlimited international data package as well. Otherwise you can have a really nasty surprise of a bill when you get home.

Haha, we went phoneless when we went to Paris in November. First time since 1994/1995 withOUT a working cell phone on my hip! How different.

Would this be a less expensive option? I was looking into this before DW told me "NO"
Low-cost Europe cell phones and European SIM cards

[dougp26364 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close dougp26364]

Haha, we went phoneless when we went to Paris in November. First time since 1994/1995 withOUT a working cell phone on my hip! How different.

Would this be a less expensive option? I was looking into this before DW told me "NO"
Low-cost Europe cell phones and European SIM cards

I haven't looked at the link but, it would be hard for us to beat Verizon's international plan that includes unlimited data. The rules are to only call in a dire emergancy, text if it's really important but not an emergent situation and use E-mail for normal communications. With unlimited data we can communicate via E-mail as often as we need. It runs about $17/week and the per minute fee's to make calls were comparable to the Mobil.com international fee's. Actually, I think Verizon's minutes cost less.

[damamabearx3 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close damamabearx3]

I was looking into this before DW told me "NO"

There's something to be said about us DWs. In the end, did you enjoy taking being a step back in time and not carrying a cell?

[damamabearx3 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close damamabearx3]

... it would be hard for us to beat Verizon's international plan that includes unlimited data...

Wasn't an option for us since our phones are CDMA (Verizon) and my husband's work Blackberry was not going with us for two reasons: the obvious DW didn't want him to be distracted, and he works for the government so the air/data charges would be at taxpayers' expense. He did check in on email though so that our vacation didn't stop progress at work.

Being without a cell did challenge us though when we arrived in a city and had to make a phone call to meet up with someone to get a key to the condo we were renting. It took us about 15 minutes to figure it out but we now know how to use a pay phone in Italy. We also discovered that you get a message that the call couldn't go through (in Italian I believe) instead of a busy signal which was part of the problem because we thought we were doing something wrong in making the call.

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

There's something to be said about us DWs. In the end, did you enjoy taking being a step back in time and not carrying a cell?

Yes and no.

Yes, b/c 1) it was one less distraction 2) one less expense,

NO because 1) had to get hold of the kids back home only when we were at the hotel...(that was a challenge) 2) hard not to check in on my forums (like this one) 3) couldn't keep in touch as readily/easily when out and about

[hercules24 Member Find all posts View Profile Close hercules24]

I now understand that the training of the 24/7 Concierge's will be completed shortly and all Platinum members in the Europe will have 24 hour a day / 7 day a week access a week to a personal concierge to help plan holidays and get the greatest added value from their membership, the shift to 6p per point trade in for 3rd party travel has certainly given Platinum members better value and I this week booked a cruise and DRI sold it at same price as best I could find listed for same cruise on the internet (which was discounted by £350 per person from brochure price) - Things are looking up - That with hopfully free WiFi, newspapers, etc ----- Great to see DRI giving more added value to loyal members with larger points holdings

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

I've already had them call me here on the left (right) side of the pond and they've given me the new number. 24/7 except for a few holidays, a 13 member team, guess how many Platinum members there are.

[Ryne08 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ryne08]

Which Diamond Resort will be the first to roll out the free internet services to Elite members?

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

Zer0 Platinum

I've already had them call me here on the left (right) side of the pond and they've given me the new number. 24/7 except for a few holidays, a 13 member team, guess how many Platinum members there are.

Spence,

I would think that a 13 member team would be 12 too many considering how everyone complains about DRI. Who would buy 50,000 points? Reading these boards there are so few who are happy, I would think that we platinimum points members are a pipe dream for DRI.

[hercules24 Member Find all posts View Profile Close hercules24]

Over here in the UK we were quite angry over the previous 2 years at the huge increase in fees by DRI compared to those charged by Sunterra and these huge increases of circa 20% per annum were compounded with further double figure % increases for levy's that were charged to European members for the £ erosion against the Euro, however, DRI Chairman did explain the reasons and the state of the previous club and the pilosophy of DRI and his vision of wishing to take the quality of the club and choice of holiday experience that members could expect to a higher level - to be fair we have seen significant improvement in quality and choice here in the UK, perhaps the US collection was already at a higher level of quality, so I think generally speaking that European members are now much happier with the DRI product than they were a couple of years ago and who knows more members may increase their points holdings if DRI can continue expanding their quality brand.

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

Spence,
I would think that a 13 member team would be 12 too many considering how everyone complains about DRI. Who would buy 50,000 points? Reading these boards there are so few who are happy, I would think that we platinimum points members are a pipe dream for DRI.

But you didn't guess how many PEMs there are. No one would buy 50K points right off the bat, even at some of their best retail rates you're into six figures. One of the best markets for selling points is to happy owners, DRI is trying to get happy owners and then sell more to them. Except for the fees and some of the attitudes against free speech, I think DRI is doing a bang up job.

Over here in the UK we were quite angry over the previous 2 years at the huge increase in fees by DRI compared to those charged by Sunterra and these huge increases of circa 20% per annum were compounded with further double figure % increases for levy's that were charged to European members for the £ erosion against the Euro, however, DRI Chairman did explain the reasons and the state of the previous club and the pilosophy of DRI and his vision of wishing to take the quality of the club and choice of holiday experience that members could expect to a higher level - to be fair we have seen significant improvement in quality and choice here in the UK, perhaps the US collection was already at a higher level of quality, so I think generally speaking that European members are now much happier with the DRI product than they were a couple of years ago and who knows more members may increase their points holdings if DRI can continue expanding their quality brand.

Sunterra bought the European Club and had a hard time integrating. SCs philosphy on being the quality timeshare is even harder over there than here, but as you see, he is forging ahead. There are things members are told that don't make sense but we don't see all the business options and choices, he's intent on making money while at the same time having a quality system. When the US members ask about Carlton Court being closed and are told it wasn't fully utilized - we frown in bewilderment because we could never see availability there. From the layman's point of view, this was not the reason CC was sold.