New Definition of Rental Activity?

[Robbie Cottam]

maybe this will end the need to walk….

That could be cool

 

[Mirabell Rose]

If they choose to pursue this (and I really think it’s still very much IF), then this could really shake up a lot of things and would have huge ripple effects across the DVC world. Though I wouldn’t mind stopping rental sites from walking a much-desired reservation for the sole purpose to quickly turnaround and rent it for cash, I worry this could be the beginning of losing whatever little power we had as individual

I agree with your last two statements, but disagree with the first. The people abusing the rental system are overwhelmingly in the mass rental business. I tried to rent points to one site and the lady had me make several prime week budget (think Riv tower on Presidents’ Day etc) unit reservations, and ultimately I didn’t want to do that and didn’t work with the company and canceled the reservations. They had several hundred of those reservations for rent. Not to mention the thousands of points LLCs walking reservations. Of course this problem won’t go away when if they stop these big players as general owners are now in the habit of walking and spec renting weeks, but at least the scale will change. You are right though, Disney don’t give a hoot about helping us it’s for their bottom line.

All Disney has to do to stop walking is to limit the number of changes to a single reservation to say like 5. They could do that tomorrow and for the most part eliminate walking.

 

[tx911]

All Disney has to do to stop walking is to limit the number of changes to a single reservation to say like 5. They could do that tomorrow and for the most part eliminate walking.

But if they curtail walking without addressing the commercial rental problem, it seems that would be a net negative for owners

 

[Sandisw]

All Disney has to do to stop walking is to limit the number of changes to a single reservation to say like 5. They could do that tomorrow and for the most part eliminate walking.

Except that would be a big change to the current rules that explicitly don’t penalize you for changes.

Personally, would rather see walking for the few rooms it impacts than to see them change up the product on a drastic way.

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

Except that would be a big change to the current rules that explicitly don’t penalize you for changes.

Personally, would rather see walking for the few rooms it impacts than to see them change up the product on a drastic way.

I agree and also limiting to 5 changes dramatically helps the giant rental companies because they have enough points to walk 7 days at a time, whereas many of us actual owner-users with ~200 points have to walk 3 days or less.

 

[Mirabell Rose]

But if they curtail walking without addressing the commercial rental problem, it seems that would be a net negative for owners

I believe that there are not many owners as a percentage of the whole that walk. Most don’t know about it and even fewer have the time to do so. So it wouldn’t negatively impact most owners. That being said, I don’t disagree with you regarding the need to eliminate the commercial owners. I was assuming they would implement the enforcement of no commercial renting along with a limit on the number of changes to a reservation. And as some others have said, that may eliminate the need for walking anyways.

 

[Ruttangel]

Not sure how it would eliminate walking at AKV Value and Club rooms
Some times of year the standard studios at BWV, CCV and BLT will also need walking to absolutely guarantee a room at 11 months

 

[DonMacGregor]

I tried to rent points to one site and the lady had me make several prime week budget (think Riv tower on Presidents’ Day etc) unit reservations, and ultimately I didn’t want to do that and didn’t work with the company and canceled the reservations. They had several hundred of those reservations for rent.

Don’t let @GoingSince1990 see that…

 

[DonMacGregor]

Because this was written prior to the new language being released.

Exactly. I was simply pointing out that it doesn’t address my initial observation that no one from any of the big players has made a peep about the new language.

 

[Cyberc1978]

Exactly. I was simply pointing out that it doesn’t address my initial observation that no one from any of the big players has made a peep about the new language.

Why should they - currently it only applies to CFW and since it's not open yet there are no rentals.

 

[AstroBlasters]

Confirmed reservations were popular post COVID because there were so many points in the system and people wanting to travel to Disney that there was no availability.

In general, the sites have told me they prefer points vs confirmed reservations…. although I’m sure the lowest cost rooms at peak holiday weekends or festivals would be an outlier.

 

[Robbie Cottam]

So which rental store goes under first , and which one will Disney own

 

[DonMacGregor]

Why should they - currently it only applies to CFW and since it's not open yet there are no rentals.

I never suggested they needed to. However, there are, almost without exception, comments by the major players literally every time any such debate arrises, whether it is regarding rentals, walking, resale restrictions, you name it. It may only apply to CFW, but there has also already been speculation/curiosity as to how this might expand to other resorts, or be applied retroactively to other resorts.

Plus, the new language also specifically calls them out, particularly with respect to the words “creating, maintaining or frequent use of a rental or resale website”…

 

[DonMacGregor]

Confirmed reservations were popular post COVID because there were so many points in the system and people wanting to travel to Disney that there was no availability.

In general, the sites have told me they prefer points vs confirmed reservations…. although I’m sure the lowest cost rooms at peak holiday weekends or festivals would be an outlier.

Like @lowlight above, it was specifically suggested to me, by a very prominent rental market player, that I secure a confirmed reservation rather than just putting points up for rent, particularly where the home resort window is often important. It could be that this might be cyclical, depending on when the home-resort booking window falls. Confirmed reservations might be more lucrative between Thanksgiving and Christmas, versus the middle of August, for example, or at specific resorts where the ability to book certain rooms almost demands that the reservation be made right at (or close to) 11 months. Just a guess.

I mean there's obviously a HUGE interest in securing those confirmed reservations on the "dark" (direct P2P) rental market, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation here, so I can't imagine that commercial sites aren't feeling the need to have the ability to link a renter with a reservation for certain rooms at certain times as well.

 

[mort1331]

Disney was able to shut down Private tours quickly when that became a problem. Looks like there seeing this as a problem as well and are going that way too. Better for all of us.

 

[TheDailyMoo]

Just a few thoughts:

I'm surprised they haven't made the resale of DVC contracts be an exclusive right of Disney's and no one else. I'm assuming that's language that can be put into the POS or somewhere else?

Could they allow some of the larger rental companies to conduct business as usual but simply "take a cut"?

Would they outright buy the board sponsor or another large rental company and keep them dba?

If the writing is on the wall...or the POS...as it seems then the owners/execs of these rental companies must be lawyered up and in full "ready to hit the mattresses" mode.

Assuming they shut down commercial renting, I'm assuming many rooms would go empty and many points would expire unused. I bet the reason so many people, especially older/less internet savvy, rent with the large companies is because of the ease/simplicity/security of having them facilitate it. There are many in my opinion that just wouldn't bother trying to find a suitable renter online, then trying to negotiate the payment aspect of it. In effect it really would free up a lot of availability. AKV Value rooms would still be hard to get but you'd have a real shot at it instead of it being what it is now...odds similar to not seeing Taylor Swift shown even once on the Super Bowl telecast.

 

[sndral]

The new clause covers four separate but related issues which all presumably effect availability -
1) Renting
2) Buying & selling resales aka ‘flipping’ contracts
3) Owning points in excess of the maximum permitted via entities, partnerships, or trusts.
4) Creating/maintaining/using a rental or resale website.

New rules are one thing, but any impact will be measured by how vigorously DVC decides to enforce them & how successful their efforts are. I’ve already mentioned that we don’t yet know what DVC intends in regards to existing non cabin DVC resorts. W/out doing a deep dive into statutes & case law, we also can’t really gauge what remedies DVC has under Florida contract & tort law.
In situations where the entity owns the points, remedies to enforce them are fairly straightforward breach of contract type stuff.
As to the non owning rental sites & the creating/maintaining a website issues, remedies are more problematic, DVC might try to proceed under a tort theory seeking injunctive relief claiming that the owners of the sites/rental brokers are inducing breaches of contract.

 

[HyperspaceMountainPilot]

The new clause covers four separate but related issues which all presumably effect availability -
1) Renting
2) Buying & selling resales aka ‘flipping’ contracts
3) Owning points in excess of the maximum permitted via entities, partnerships, or trusts.
4) Creating/maintaining/using a rental or resale website.

New rules are one thing, but any impact will be measured by how vigorously DVC decides to enforce them & how successful their efforts are. I’ve already mentioned that we don’t yet know what DVC intends in regards to existing non cabin DVC resorts. W/out doing a deep dive into statutes & case law, we also can’t really gauge what remedies DVC has under Florida contract & tort law.
In situations where the entity owns the points, remedies to enforce them are fairly straightforward breach of contract type stuff.
As to the non owning rental sites & the creating/maintaining a website issues, remedies are more problematic, DVC might try to proceed under a tort theory seeking injunctive relief claiming that the owners of the sites/rental brokers are inducing breaches of contract.

Keep in mind that Disney doesn’t need legal remedies— they can just cancel the reservations if they have reason to believe they were advertised as for-profit rentals and aren’t being used by the owner. Yes, in theory an owner or third party site could try to sue to stop them, but the value of the points/profit isn’t going to make it worth while for less than a week in a Grand Villa at least, and then you still run into the problem of the no commercial use provision in the contracts.

Whether under the old rules or the new rules, it’s not going to be hard for Disney to shut down the people and entities using more than 90% of their points to snag high demand reservations and booking them in non-family members’ names.

It’s possible that some points will be lost/wasted—but ultimately between borrowing and banking, Disney allows a lot of flexibility. It would be smart if they also bought back unused points at annual dues plus x 1.5.

I do not think Disney has any interest in just taking a cut of profits from existing rental companies— first, the only reason people rent is to save a lot of money v hotels, so Disney wants to shut that down instead of making 10% of the rental fee. Second, Disney swooping the most desirable rental dates with extended walks and scaling/bots against their own DVC members is going to cause them huge PR headaches and potentially legal ones too.

 

[mamaofsix]

Like @lowlight above, it was specifically suggested to me, by a very prominent rental market player, that I secure a confirmed reservation rather than just putting points up for rent, particularly where the home resort window is often important. It could be that this might be cyclical, depending on when the home-resort booking window falls. Confirmed reservations might be more lucrative between Thanksgiving and Christmas, versus the middle of August, for example, or at specific resorts where the ability to book certain rooms almost demands that the reservation be made right at (or close to) 11 months. Just a guess.

I mean there's obviously a HUGE interest in securing those confirmed reservations on the "dark" (direct P2P) rental market, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation here, so I can't imagine that commercial sites aren't feeling the need to have the ability to link a renter with a reservation for certain rooms at certain times as well.

I'm interested to know what company you were dealing with?

 

[tx911]

Why couldn’t Disney get into the resale/rental business themselves?

I would think the name alone would get them the lion’s share of the business, and they could also undercut the other players in price.

And very soon Disney is the only one left standing.