I'll start off with two areas where I think some changes might be beneficial, would cost DVC nothing, and would provide real benefit to owners of larger contracts:
Extended Banking Privileges
Owners of large point accounts probably take more trips than most, and an extended banking deadline would be a real benefit. This would cost nothing, would have no effect on owners of smaller accounts, but you'd want to keep it as simple as possible.
So, just for the sake of argument, lets suggest this setup:
- < 500 points - the current 8 month banking period (this is my group, incidentally)
- 500-999 points - unlimited banking through 10 months
- 1000 and up - unlimited banking at any time during the UY
A New "Program Fee"
Currently DVC dues consist of a number of line items, some of which are costs of running the
overall DVC system (member admin, member accounting, MS, etc) and a second category of costs which are specific to the
home resort expenses (taxes, etc).
In some other timeshare systems, those costs are segregated. The good thing about segregation of these expenses is that it more accurately apportions the costs.
Every DVC contract has specific annual costs of managing, from computing and billing annual dues, to collecting those dues, billing mortgage payments, etc. And many of those costs are the same whether the contract is for 25 points or 2500. Wouldn't it be more fair -- and a benefit to large owners ("tiered loyalty") if those costs were apportioned more accurately?
I'll give you an example of one system I am familiar with -- Wyndham's. Wyndham charges a "Program fee" for the admin costs of supporting the whole system, and those fees are "tiered."
For accounts of 300,000 points or less, the current program fee is $.57 per K. And because there is a minimum cost for administering every contract, there is a minimum program fee of $88.12 per year. So if you own 154,000 points, you pay $88.12 or $.57 per K. But if you only own 77,000 points, you still pay $88.12...$1.17 per K.
For accounts of more than 300,000, the program fee is $.51 per K. Larger accounts still pay higher total fees than smaller accounts, but their
rate is lower.
Wyndham has recently gone even one step further. Wyndham has numerous Every-Other-Year accounts which receive points only in odd or even years. But Wyndham has to administer those accounts
every year, and in fact, those points can be used in any year. So they recently started charging the program fee every year on EOY accounts. Needless to say, EOY owners were not pleased, but logic is obviously on Wyndham's side. Every account, regardless of size or structure, has annual costs.
The
home resort expenses are prorated equally among all owners based on the number of points owned, so there is no difference there in the
rate between large holdings and smaller holdings.
Just a little food for thought.
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