And their margins are huge! One example - They have 3 nights in early May in a value studio listed for $1200. That is a 30 point stay. $40/point is a lot of cash!
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How do they identify the owners? Where do they start?
Tracking all reservations made by owners of > 1k points would be cumbersome.
Tracking all lead name changes would only identify those renting out multiple confirmed reservations.
They could VERY easily write a program to do this. Welcome to AI.
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Why would they not be able to track the owners?
If you book rentals, I assume you have to use a login or contract number or something identifying to book it on their system - then that info is in Disneyâs data.
If people are playing games with names on the contracts or buying with LLCs or something, that adds some wrinkles. (I assume there has to be an officer on an LLC?) But, still doable for the most part Iâd have to think.
I have no doubt even with LLCs etc you could still work through the data to figure out the real owner of many of those using various other fields, like addresses etc. That wonât be perfect, but probably doesnât need to be to find a majority of the commercial game players.
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I was in IT many moons ago. So Iâm thinking of th e parameters theyâd need to check for.
How many contracts are held in trust? Can they easily identify that Joe, who has several contracts in his own name is also a beneficiary / trustee of other contracts? I genuinely have no idea if DVC link these somehow.
Even if Jane only has 5 contracts, what are they looking for? Any reservations where Jane is not listed at all (she might not be a lead on all of them)? Or no one with the same surname (to rule out obvious valid reservations)?
Even if they can identify owners who may be of interest to them, do they automatically send a generic email that says âplease explain each of these reservationsâ?
And then thereâs the other criteria. How do they find out the identity of âlPolyloverâ who posts on Facebook every week to rent out her points? Or âShaneâ who seems to have a lot of YouTube videos of DVC resorts and they think might be a broker agent?
I just donât know that theyâre really going to spend a lot of time on this. Because every CM looking for commercial renters is one fewer CM answering the phone at MS.
EDIT: WHOOPS: Had some missing newer data when I first generated those charts. Fixed now.
First two charts essentially the same, with higher totals. Last chart very different numbers, but same pattern as others.
I dropped in all of my latest data into the sheet that generated these Jambo Studio charts.
Hereâs that chart I posted above, now using all data from start of my project in 2022 to current.
Here is how it looks if you just use start dates from 2025 to current. DVCShop still leading the pack.
Now here it is for just Starting dates from 2026 to current. Doesnât look like they are slowing down much since the first commercial policy rumblings last yearâŚ
(Note: This last chartâs start date is in April because there were NO Jambo studios listed for the prior 3 months! Weird.)
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How about Poly studios? Those are usually high demand studios that can be had at 7 months too.
Well, I agree there are going to be wrinkles in contract names etc.
But, if Disney thinks finding these commercial renters is in their best interest, which they seem to be doing since they have announced and updated the policy - they will surely throw resources at it if they havenât already.
Again - they donât need to be perfect, they just need to find the big gorillas.
I bet the vast, vast majority of owners are just normal bookings.
If I can find obvious patterns of crazy bookings with just a spreadsheet, they can too and just focus on those.
I also imagine they can compare them in any number of ways to get to the base owners. Matching addresses, name comparisons (Soundex is useful!), âŚ
We canât know since we donât have the data, but really - with a good data analyst or three I have no doubt theyâd have the ability to figure out whatever they want to know.
Also - no one is saying they will be tracking online points sellers like your IIPolylover or asking CMs to figure this out on the fly.
I am talking about using data from the bookings on their own system.
We all know that Disney slices and dices data to the end of the world.
They just need to do some data analysis on their many years of bookings.
Iâve been grabbing dedicated rentals since May 2022 and I have data on almost 78K dedicated rentals an maybe a few million data records that captured how rentals changed.
Disney must have a LOT more data to play with than that!
If they just crack down on a subset of commercial renters, it might make the others think twice.
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The policy says those are examples of an owner violating the no commercial renting rule.
Equally though they could just be used as another reason to go for known offenders.
Maintenance fees at least partially fund Member Services
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Here are the same charts for Poly Studios, each successive chart removing removing a year or three of data to see how it is changing over time.
I should probably recreate these for just the length of listings for each year to make any change clearer to see, but this is what I have set up alreadyâŚ
There is definitely a recent effort at booking 5-nighters!
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Sorry, I wasnât aware they said that themselves. That is kind of bonkers.
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Donât get me wrong, youâre the data guru around here.
But I still think they have to start with the owners. I cannot see how they trace which owners are making all those confirmed reservations showing up on your spreadsheets. Which is probably why they arenât going after the brokers yet.
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I do not think itâs 1500 owners each making a single 1 night reservation. Itâs probably a good handful of owners with 500 point contracts that they got for cheap booking dozens of 1-nighters.
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I canât help but believe the tactics Disney is using, including this recent update on defining terms, will lead in a LOT of commercial renters bailing sooner than later. I feel like (and perhaps Iâm wrong, since this is just an anecdote) that every time Iâve been looking at resale contracts available over the past year or so, Iâve seen a large uptick in large contracts being for sale (500 pointers). I wouldnât think the average joe buying DVC would normally choose such a high point contract it if was just for personal use. There are exceptions, always, of course. But would they then be bailing now?
It could come to a point where Disney doesnât even actually have to pursue ANYONE officially to see a major reduction in commercial renters just due to these changes.
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Ha, I get it.
I donât have any inside information, but I am just working under the assumption that when I book a DVC room, I have to enter some sort of identifiable info.
Otherwise how do they know where to get the points from?
I am either logged in to an account that has my owner ID on it, or I have to enter the ID to book.
(I am not an owner, so I donât know what the system looks like.)
Disney knows who owns every contract and what their owner ID is.
Thatâs it. Those bookings have to reside in their system and they can mine that data.
If someone bought various contracts using the names:
John Smith
John J Smith
John Smith Jr & Jane Jones
ILIKEDISNEY, LLC
But, if some of those contracts seem suspicious (different name on booking, whatever other criteria they outlined), they might flag it and look for similar ones to find related ones.
The different names might make correlating those contracts to a single owner challenging to some degree.
But, then they can look at secondary data to tie them together:
Addresses, birth dates, EIN or Social Security (US folks), agent of record on the LLC.
Maybe some correlation will be unsuccessful, much of it wonât be.
Maybe they donât even care about tying contracts together - maybe theyâll just focus on each one individually. Dunno, but it is all feasible.
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Iâm sure they are too! But Disney have to find them by searching for owners with dozens of reservations. Or more likely an LLC, through which they can identify the actual owners.
OK, Here is a single chart showing counts of Poly studio bookings by number of days and year.
I excluded 2022 since it was partial year data and wasnât good for comparison.
Of course, both 2026 and 2027 are very partial years as well, but useful for at least a trend.
For example, seeing the number of 4 to 7 night listings in 2026 near or above the 2025 count when we are only 3 months into the year does look like a significant shift from the previous preponderance of 1-night listings.
âŚand now I am curious how all the other resorts look. Looks like I have a new project for after work. 
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I donât think youâre understanding me!! 
They can do all that. Easily. Iâm not disagreeing.
But what they cannot do is say âDVC Shop have all these AKL reservations. Letâs see who made themâ. They cannot see from the listings on DVC Shop who made them. There is no DVC booking confirmation # or owner name shown.
they have to search their booking system and find owners who have booked multiple reservations at AKL. And investigate that owner.
Of course they might find the owner happens to run a broker site. In which case they can also after the company too.
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Canât they just run a program that shows reservations, by membership, where no owner is on the reservation? All reservations are in their system by membership?
They could then filter out âall the less than 20 reservations per yearâ or âmore than 20 separate reservations per membership per year? Or more than 10 and then by name?
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Why do they care about the reseller?
All of the actual bookings have to be made by the contract owner on the Disney DVC owner site, no?
Do people turn over their IDs or credentials to the reseller booking sites?
or do those sites contact the owner to do the booking?
Donât know, doesnât matter.
If all actual reservations ultimately have to be made on Disneyâs system, they have all the data and know what owner contract booked it.
I, on the other hand, have zero access to anything except what those 3rd party sites post on their dedicated listings. I have no idea if they are even booked, I just know when they go away. I also have no idea what non-dedicated listings they are brokering.
So, as I do rely on the 3rd party information, mine is very incomplete and I have no way to correlate anything, as you are saying.
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