Absolutely! I’m still just figuring out how these things are changing over time, but sitting at $940 per night for 3 weeks sounds to me like someone was asleep at the wheel.
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What’s really insane is how big of a difference in price per point it can be for a confirmed rental vs requested.
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I have a question for DVC peoples: probably nothing of any consequence in the scheme of things, but
I noticed something one of the rental company’s is doing and my brain is wondering why they might do this:
I have a spreadsheet I created to turn the rental data I’m gathering into scatter charts - I used one in my TP blog post.
While adding a minimum days field to the chart, I noticed there’s a pattern in the Old Key West deals - DVC Shop seems to post 7-day deals at regular intervals for Studios at either $394 or $500.
The start dates are also (often) a week apart. Also: they do not appear to be cancelling and rebooking the same deal over and over as the old ones mostly stay out there as the new ones arrive.
Here’s the list of further out $500 deals:
The $394 deals are also kind of a week apart - except there seem to be 2 different ones alternating. The regular “Deluxe Studio” and the one with “Near Hospitality”:
Is there any DVCish stratagem that would account for this?
I guess just may be as simple as them making sure they have some sort of standard stock out there to grab. But that seems weird as these are supposed to be already booked reservations, so wouldn’t really be advantageous to manufacture them unless there was a known market for them(?)
Both $394 and $500 for OKW Studios are decidedly high price points, as the scatter chart depicts. 
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I’m not sure I fully understand the question, but one thought is that they may own points as a broker that they are more likely to experiment with different price points to see if they can get different types of customers (sensitive to price / sensitive to time). I don’t know thouth.
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I’m glad I’m not alone.
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I have a theory and I hope I’m wrong, because it breaks the rules.
OKW and SSR in particular are often the resorts it is possible to switch into from other timeshare schemes. It used to be RCI and now is Interval International (I think). Those systems work on a weekly basis and always started on a Saturday.
The terms (at least as far as the RCI rules were written) are very clear, that they cannot be sub-let. If Disney or RCI found out that they have been sub-let, the reservation got cancelled.
For that reason Mouseowners when it had a rental board, did not allow ads for rentals for 7 nights starting on a Saturday. It was impossible to tel, if these were genuine or being sub-let.
The fact all of these are 7 days makes me suspicious.
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Wow that is some serious sleuthing … and I have no idea what it means! 
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Ha! Sorry if I was confusing. 
I’ve been holed up in my room getting over 
COVID since Saturday so may be slap happy.
Let me try this:
These “confirmed reservations” are bookings already made by owners and not solicited by anyone in particular, right?
So they are rooms that people already have used points on but need to unload.
From the data perspective, the chances that there are multiple DVC owners who need to rent already-booked rooms that are all the same price, all a week apart, all the same (relatively large) number of days, a few dozen times (so far) is pretty darn low.
Which makes me think very strongly these listings aren’t booked by chance.
As a non-DVC owner, was just wondering if there was some reason this exact type of booking might be created so often. Was thinking what Jeff said - experimenting with price points, perhaps?
But IMHO after looking at a lot of data for the last month: 7 days seems a large and riskier sell than say, 3 or 4 days(?)
I’m going to jump over to my sheet and analyze if that feeling is really true - see how many deals for each number of days come and go. (Not sure I have enough data to make that statistically significant yet?)
Thought there may be some sort of DVC rule where if you had X number of points you needed to use, it’s worth booking a 7-day room for some contractual or point maximizing reason. I know that I don’t know the ins and outs of DVC, so you all here are my go to on asking those questions, because Liners, baby.
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Do they stay posted after the 31 days before check-in date which is the cancelation cut-off date? If you cancel a DVC reservation 31+ days from check-in the points go right back into your account for another reservation. If you cancel closer than that the points go into holding. So if they are disappearing right before the 31 day mark they are likely canceling and then rebooking another for a later date to maintain inventory, which I think your agruement makes sense.
The DVC rental industry seems to be going more and more to confirmed reservations. Likely due to the recent problems booking rooms at 6 months or less.
PS - hope you feel better soon.
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Ooh, that seems odd.
Just went over and pulled all the 7 day bookings at OKW in my database - there are 72 of them.
(5 of them are 1 or 2BR Villas)
15% start on Sundays, 65% start on Saturdays.
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Out of the 7-day OKW deals, 76% are still active and out there and the vast majority are many days out in future.
Of the ones that have come and gone, there were a few that left within a few days of 31 from check in. One deal was at 12 days out and the rest much higher. So, 
Thanks for the “feel better”!
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So I do think that post-pandemic people have been doing more manufacturing of “confirmed” reservations. Like knowing that points have an expiration date (which really wasn’t a huge deal breaker pre-2020) and that it can be hard to rebook, instead of just offering points up for rent, owners book as good as they can get with their points (a holiday weekend, marathon, F&W, etc) and then try to rent that as a confirmed rental. I think it makes the reservation more desirable if they offer something that is sold out. I know one of the Welcome Home podcasters did this with the points he needed to rent.
I also think that the agencies do actually own some big chunks of points and it might be easier for them to pre-book these specific studios at a higher price point to always have some sort of inventory in their pockets for last minute people who have no idea that you were supposed to book 10 months ago.
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Is this the actual podcast title?
I’m always looking for good DVC content. So far the DVC Show (through Dis Unplugged) and My DVC Points Podcast are the only two I have found
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Oh I’ve listened to that.
I stopped for some reason.
Do they go off on too many tangents?
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I will comment that they are not always the most knowledgeable about DVC and one guy kinda grates on me (but he’s absent a lot). But I like their banter and stuff.
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Haha yes very much and there is a lot of non WDW DVC talk. They are definitely not for everyone.
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That might be it.
I’ll give them a listen though to see if i remember what it was that made me stop listenting
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For what it’s worth this table is a breakdown of all 1,855 unique deals I have in the database from the start of May - left side counts how many of each type of booking starts on each day.
So, out of all 381 1-day bookings, 73 of them started on Sunday (=weekday 1 in Excel.)
Those 1-day booking start dates are fairly evenly distributed throughout the week.
As the booking days go up, they really skew towards weekend start dates (Days 1 & 7).
I highlighted the 7-day booking line - where a whopping 54% of all the deals start on Saturday.
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More visual representation - busy with lines but definitely shows how different that 7-day Saturday-start booking looks in comparison to the other booking-days distribution.
(I’d say that dramatic jump on Friday starts for the 2-day bookings makes sense as many people likely are looking for a quick weekend trip.)
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