I find the - for DVD beneficial - short term effect more questionable than the longterm effect:
I'll be the first to admit, I don't get to sit around the table with the decision makers. But Occam's Razor suggests that they are doing this for short-term gain, because none of them are going to benefit--directly
or indirectly--from some strategy that is a decade in the making.
Bob 1.0/3.0
does not care about profitability in 2Q34. He's not going to be CEO, and may not be above ground by then. He probably doesn't even care about it in 2Q27, because his (current) contract ends in '26.
But he sure does care about profitability in 2Q24. Today. Right now. If the strategy folks thought restrictions depressed sales below "more or less break even" they'd be gone tomorrow.
You have argued in other postings that guides don't talk about resale and most direct buyers are not aware of resale.
That's an accurate assessment of my opinion. I believe
most buyers have no idea that the resale market exists or what it might look like. I believe Guides do not tell buyers about it in
most cases.
But
most is not
all.
A Guide's job is twofold. First, the Guide must figure out,
for this specific guest, what their most compelling reasons for buying might be, and to accentuate the elements of the program that align with those reasons. Second, the Guide must figure out (again
for this specific guest), what their most salient objections to buying might be, and how to overcome or minimize them.
So, what are the objections that are relevant to resale? The first is: "I'm not sure I want this for fifteen years, let alone fifty." One argument to overcome that objection is: "Well, you can always sell it--and you'd probably get a good price for it, and in the meantime you are staying in these luxury villas at today's prices." That has the benefit of being true. It is not the
whole truth, mind you, but it is true. A Guide
might even suggest one property over another "because it holds its value particularly well."
Heck, that suggestion might even be for an unrestricted resort, if they happen to have one in active sales. I'm not sure if Florida Guides are willing or able to sell Aulani, but if they are then fine, that's an option. But, if they are not, they are not going to have unrestricted points in active sales until and unless Poly 2.0 goes on sale without them. And there, the shorter time horizon is a feature not a bug.
The second objection? "Someone at the pool was telling me that I could buy these for less from someone looking to get out." Well, sure you could, but you wouldn't be eligible for <a very long list of meaningless Blue Card benefits.> And, that's the argument they've had for years. Apparently, they thought that adding one more argument--well, you
could, but you
could only stay here--was worth doing.
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We here on DIS often make the argument that restrictions don't matter that much, because after '42 a much larger share of points will be restricted, and there will be fewer meaningful resale options that have multiple resorts available. We tend to generalize from that argument to "and that must be why they are doing this." But I can't imagine that any bright-eyed bushy-tailed MBA came up with a presentation that said: "If we do this today, and sacrifice sales for a decade or so, then 20 years from now we're in great shape!" without being laughed out of the room or, more likely, fired on the spot.
And look, I'm just an armchair quarterback. Heck, I've never worked in the private sector for more than a few months at a time since I was in high school. And that was a long time ago. So, I could be wrong about all of this. But, just reading the tea leaves, this seems to be the answer that is more likely than not.