ASIADCMEMBER

Thank you Vineyarder for telling the way you see things. The good, bad, and ugly. " In a public forum"

99% of reviews especially those on Helium Report basically say the same thing---Great ***, fabulous ***, terrific ***- so they are not very useful--because after reading the same thing 50 times people tend to stop reading and writing.


On reviews like Tripadvisor--even the 5 star ultra luxury hotels get slammed. I think someone mentioned that as a member, it is in your best interest to only say good things about the club--because the more members mean the more homes and more deposits to protect your deposits. Also, the clubs can trace the "slams" back to the commentators even without the real names. Hotel guests give accurate reviews because they are basically untraceable.

Is there a way to get more accurate/informative reviews on this Forum

TravelGuy

Enter PwrShift ..........

DC4MS

It has always been our goal for these forums to be a "user generated content" site for Destination Clubs with both positive and negative experiences and opinions.

Of course, many of us have creative "screen names" as most people here are HNW (high net worth) individuals that value privacy.

Most reviews will be very positive as there is a >95% member satisfaction rate across all DCs. Some reviews may point out a few problems along the way and these forums will put pressure on the clubs to fix any problems encountered. I anticipate that extremely negative reviews or horrible experiences will be rare as this is a very service driven industry.

I have visited dozens of DC properties from the low end to the very high end. The amazing thing, is that they are all pretty awesome properties even though a $6m beachfront property is far superior to a $600k townhouse of another club.

I try to judge each property from the eyes of a member and judge each home in reference to their targeted price range, rather than compare a 1 bedroom condo in the city to a 7 bedroom mansion in the country.

The success or failure of this web site will be a result of the participation of the members. The more members that participate (posting both good and bad reviews) will actually make their clubs better.

Try to remember that - the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Bourne

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The Nile is a river in Egypt......

DC4MS

Both PerryM and pwrshift have been critical of the DC industry and that is fine with me as long as it is a constructive debate with intelligent discussions.

It takes a brave person to come here and try to convince the users here to consider something like a timeshare over a DC, but in reality, several speakers at the DC Symposium last week said that the DC industry can learn a lot from the timeshare industry.

Let's not forget that there are 4,000,000 timeshare owners out there and if only 1% joined a DC, that would represent 40,000 new DC members and about 5,000 new properties would need to be acquired. Talk about the potential for explosive growth.

Bourne

IMHO, the only clubs that can benefit from a transition of timeshare owners will be HCC and UE.

Of the numbers posted, keep in mind that even though there are 4,000,000 TS owners, only 2-5% i.e. 100,000 (2-3%) of them are marketable leads. i.e Owners of hotel based timeshares with multiple prime weeks AND the willingness to pay mid 5 to low six figures for a DC membership.

How many of these 100,000 owners convert over is another question.

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The Nile is a river in Egypt......

LTTravel

If you look on Tug, there are people who start with one week and then add another and then start adding other timeshares, etc, etc and the list of timeshares they own are too long to write down. I don't know how many of them there are, but those are the ones that should get rid of their timeshares and jump into DC's.

Kagehitokiri

there is a lot of fantastic DC discussion here. personally, the only source i trust for reports on and discussion of service etc at luxury hotels/resorts is the luxury hotels forum over on FlyerTalk - The world's most popular frequent flyer community

TravelGuy

I believe that the vast majority of reviews are written with extreme enthusiasm or horrible loathing. My take on the reviews on Tripadvisor, Fodors, Flyertalk, IgoUgo, etc. is that people are motivated to write a review by a great or horrible experience. Most "normal" experiences that meet expectations do not merit the motivation for a review. The "problem" with reviews of DC properties is that most of us appear to have extreme enthusiasm for the DC experience and have had great experiences.

I view reviews like Olympic judging - Throw out the high and low scores and get an average of the remaining scores. (And disqualify the French judges).

With all due respect to Kage, I believe that many of the FT reviews are written with a "glass is half empty" view of the property. Maybe built-up frustration from frequent flying?

Also remember that DCs are not likely to let their properties fall into disrepair and cut their services as timeshares ALWAYS do once the on-site sales stop and the developers leave the timeshare project. I don't expect that you will see a fall-off of either the DC member enthusiasm or good travel experiences since DCs have motivation to KEEP their members very happy.

Kagehitokiri

not in the luxury hotels forum. i was specific about that.

and there is not much frustration when flying F on asian/european carriers.

my point was that forums allow discussion, as opposed to reading reviews.

TravelGuy

I'm amazed that one or more of the DCs has not taken more of a direct sales effort at the upper-end timeshare/fractional owners. I believe that almost all the owners of Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Starwood, Four Seasons, etc. have spent the entry fee for a DC, or more than that, and received a lesser experience (disclosure - I still own 5 weeks of "vacation club" including Hilton). My guess is that the potential DC membership pool of existing timeshare/fractional owners is somewhat greater than 100K. There may be that many in the Marriott system alone based on what they charge for any of their premium weeks!

One reason that current timeshare/fractional owners don't make the transition to DCs is the disposal of the existing timeshare/fractional ownership. I'm been a proponent of a DC doing a timeshare "trade-in" program for some time. I predict that one of the DCs will eventually do this and have stellar growth because of it.

Finally, I'm not sure the DCs have yet understood the mind-set of the typical timeshare prospect. The typical DC sales experience is totally different than the aggressive timeshare sharks. The talking points are different, the pressure is extremely different, and the objections to the sale are not even within the same thought process ("I want it now" vs. due diligence). Eventually a DC will fine tune their direct sales approach to timeshare prospects and the flood gates of DC sales will be open!!

rwhaugan

ASIADCMEMBER- I agree with your comments- with Just the top few clubs there are over 5,000 members, and I can't believe there are not more dissatisfied members (at least occasionally). I spoke to one DC rep who said that a good 10% of his membership came from other clubs, yet I only received 2 affirmative responses when I started a thread asking about members considering switching or had actually switched clubs. I agree that the industry may have a 95% satisfaction rate, but that still leaves 250 people out there. And what about all those people who switched clubs?


I do have to say though that the forum doesn't seem especially welcoming to those that post negative reviews. For example, a negative property review is almost always followed by many, many posts raving about the quality of the property. And ask a question about something like availability and you get a link to the general thread listing or comments such as "searching for availability got 257 hits." Yes, but I have looked through over 100 of those "hits" and they had nothing to do with availability at the DC's.

After a few of those types of responses you might get a little gun shy about posting something out of the "ordinary" comments.

Kagehitokiri

while more and more people participate in forums, most do not.

it will be interesting to see how the level of participation (% wise) increases with this forum over time, compared to say flyertalk for example.

jam

I think most of the previous posts about the paucity of negative or balanced reviews are pretty valid. I do think that there are sizeable numbers of UE members who might tend to be more critical and objective than members of other clubs. Large numbers of defrauded T&H members joined UR a year or more ago. They had been burned and have some residual cynicism but joining UR was a far better option than walking away. They are several years from being in a position to get their deposits back from incoming members that few, I would think would be concerned about turning away prospects that might offer them redemption. In fact, I think the tendency might be greater to try to dissuade new members that might reduce availability. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be many UE members on here, the majority appear to be HCC. That having been said, I think UR has done a reasonably good job of managing that difficult transition. Communication, transparency, and availability for short term retreats is probably not all that could be hoped for but I would guess member satisfaction is pretty good. I know I am not looking to get out and recently upgraded.

TarheelTraveler

Since there are less than 1,000 members on this forum at this point and only a smaller percentage that are currently in a DC (versus management or researching DCs), you've got a fairly limited pool of people available to post reviews, negative or positive. With time, I expect the numbers to increase rapidly.

The DC experience is pretty over the top, so it's hard at least for me to say anything negative. I've taken about 10 trips now with my DC, and I really have never had any complaints of any significance. I'm pleased with management, availability, the concierge services, etc. I would really have to search for things to complain about like a patio chair cushion that had a tear (which was subsequently replaced), lack of citronella candles for a new house (which was also immediately taken care of, with a bug system put in), and not enough serving trays (which again was taken care of as a result of our suggestions). The worst thing that I can think of is a destination host that once sent us somewhere without checking the restaurant first and it actually was closed for lunch. Pretty ridiculous minor things that I can't imagine posting on. I suspect that my experiences are pretty common. It's hard to complain when you're staying in typical DC houses with on-site management that takes care of any problems. I do think that you have some of "the grass is greener some where else" going on sometimes, but I would bet that the DC member probably was enjoying their experience with the first club also (at least if they were in a major, well-managed club).