DVC Question

[Anna]

For those of you who are DVC owners, if you travel with friends and they want to stay in a villa with you and your family (which means you have to go to a 2 or 3 bedroom villa) do you charge them or ask for some amount of payment for using your points/villa?

I have a couple of friends (both are single and one has a son) who are all excited that we now own DVC so that they can mooch off us and stay for free (or so they think). Although, we do not mind traveling with them, we do not like to be taken advantage of.

Any thoughts or suggestions on how to handle this? One of our friends is a real tightwad so much so that we get angry when he stiffs the waiter/waitress for example.:(

I thought if we had a set agreement for instance the current rate for a value resort / night which varies according to the time of year that it might help things a bit. That way they know up front what is expected.

My husband and I have been trying to come up with a way to handle this, because we know it is coming soon.:confused:

TIA!!

[SunshineGirl]

We like having people stay with us and almost always take others with us. We ask that they pay the difference in points in what we would have booked and what we booked to have them with us. So our last trip was a difference of 6 points for the 2 bedroom from the 1 bedroom. I figured points rent for about $10 each on the DIS--so they paid us $60 a night.

[kimbih]

We usually take family members with us and I always feel weird asking them for money. I feel that if we ask them to come, they are our guests. They are good about making it up to us though by buying us dinners and things like that instead.

We did "rent" points to friends once that asked if they could use our points on a trip by themselves and we charged them a lower price than the going rental rate.

[PSL1013]

When we travel just the two of us we always stay in a studio but when my son and his girlfriend come we get a 1 bedroom, I would never think of charging them to stay with us because they are part of our family and we bought enough points to accommodate us in a 1 bedroom every year if we need it. This October we are taking my SIL and we had to switch from a studio to a 1 bedroom, she wanted to give us money towards it but I wouldn't feel right, I just told her to buy us a dinner one night...she said, don't worry...I'll take care of you. If it's immediate family and we have the points I could never charge them, we really like showing off our DVC anyway. :rotfl:

Now friends are a different story....I would definitely tell them that it is costing you double the money to go from one type room to another and if they want to join you than they would have to contribute to the cost of the room or another option is to have them buy the groceries for the room. I just rented a studio to some friends last month, they are going at the end of May for 3 nights....even though they are friends, I charged them $100 night for a studio, hey it was cheaper for them then staying at a value resort and they were thrilled to get it.

I would just tell friends that when you bought DVC, you just bought enough points for your family to get "x" number of vacations per year in "x" size room and would have to borrow from the next year to upgrade and that you would have to charge them the difference. It's a hard thing to do but if you end up doing it once for them, then they will probably expect it all the time.

[rjk]

When we have had friends go along they have always insisted on paying. I ended up figuring what the points really cost me (minus the cost of money of course). I figured we paid $2 for each one of those points and then added the current year maintenence cost so it was right around $6 a point.

Our friends had a great studio for $6 a point. We all had a great time and they are now thinking DVC for themselves.

[bbangel]

I am in your situtation. It hasn't come up yet but I know it will so I did some thinking. If others are coming with me and I have to go up a room size I will charge them the difference in points at $10 a point. If people ask to use my points without me along, I will rent to them as I would to anybody - $10 a point for the whole reservation.

[askomsky]

That is tough, but since you already know that one is a "tightwad" with his money AND it will cost you more to get a bigger room I would charge them the difference UPFRONT.

I htink it's good your thinking it out ahead of time and honestly they wouldn't get an awesome deal like that elsewhere. I would cut them "some" slack but not to have to cost YOU anything extra out of pocket. You can say to the two of them it's going to cost $60 extra a night to get the bigger room to accomidate both of you, how you two want to pay the difference to us is up to you. (Meaning if they want to split it etc) Just lay it all out front and tell them when the money is due ( I would do it a week of ahead of time so you have the money before you have to pay etc) so you can reserve etc.

It's tough you don't want to be a PITA with it, but it's really unfair to you too.

[Anna]

That is tough, but since you already know that one is a "tightwad" with his money AND it will cost you more to get a bigger room I would charge them the difference UPFRONT.

I htink it's good your thinking it out ahead of time and honestly they wouldn't get an awesome deal like that elsewhere. I would cut them "some" slack but not to have to cost YOU anything extra out of pocket. You can say to the two of them it's going to cost $60 extra a night to get the bigger room to accomidate both of you, how you two want to pay the difference to us is up to you. (Meaning if they want to split it etc) Just lay it all out front and tell them when the money is due ( I would do it a week of ahead of time so you have the money before you have to pay etc) so you can reserve etc.

It's tough you don't want to be a PITA with it, but it's really unfair to you too.


Thanks for all the tips and advice. Like you, I would never charge my family, nor would I have to worry about them taking advantage of me. One of my friends, would insist on paying, but my husband's friend who has a son would weasle out of it any way he could. I just didn't want my buddy to feel the brunt of the expense and end up paying it because he wouldn't or didn't.

My son loves to hang out with his son so we put up with a lot we would not normally. For instance, on one trip with the same group of people (the 4 of us), my friend, my husband's friend and son shared another condo in the Smokey Mountains. We had bought some groceries with the understanding that each was responsible for their family's breakfast food and snacks. He let his son eat all of the snacks we had bought and drink all of the milk without offering anything to us. It is things like that that get to me. I am just planning ahead so I know how to approach them with a price.

We like having our friends with us but, I think it is only fair for them to split the cost of the villa with us since we make monthly payments on it plus a maintenance fee. They still are getting a great deal on a place to stay which cuts their costs significantly.

I am new to the DVC and will have to get more familiar with the point differences. I just do not want to use all of our points on a single stay.

? Can you use points and pay some in cash for a villa? Just curious...that might be a way to go if it is possible. :confused:

[disneyforever]

I own a timeshare, but not Disney. I always charge my friends and family $20 per person per night. I explain to them up front that we paid lots of money for the points - and although we don't mind them joining us on vacation - we have to use more of our points to book bigger rooms (2 or 3 bdrm) instead of a studio or 1 bdrm. This means we take less vacations per year because our points get used up faster. We also are charged more for the cleaning fees with a bigger unit. Once we explain that to everyone, we have never had anyone complain.

Another thing we point out is "real" hotel prices... meaning that if they wanted their own room with a kitchen, washer, dryer, ect.. what that price would be. It is usually a real eye opener to them. Then they gladly pay the $20 per person charge and several times our friends have even paid us more.

[m4travels]

? Can you use points and pay some in cash for a villa? Just curious...that might be a way to go if it is possible. :confused:

You can do this however it's not like using 15 points + $150 for a night's stay.

Say you purchased enough points that would get you a two-bedroom unit for 4 nights. You would use the requisite number of points needed for those 4 nights, and then book the remaining nights on a cash basis. As a DVC member you do get a 25% discount on the rack rate IF it's available and then ask MS to link those two separate reservations together.

[SunshineGirl]

I think I'd charge Cindy if she wanted to stay with me. Just to make up for the pain and suffering of having her there the whole time. JUST KIDDING!! We don't charge family members either. Even when we book completely separate rooms for them so that they can go with us. Of course, I'd probably draw the line outside my immediate family.

I didn't know about the DVC 25% discount. I'll have to look into that for the nights before the SR cruise because I didn't want to use our family points for an SR function.

[m4travels]

I didn't know about the DVC 25% discount. I'll have to look into that for the nights before the SR cruise because I didn't want to use our family points for an SR function.

We've never done it, but it's still a rather pricey stay, I think. They don't always have them available but it doesn't hurt to ask!

[piglet-for-me]

We've never done it, but it's still a rather pricey stay, I think. They don't always have them available but it doesn't hurt to ask!

We've done it at Hilton Head, but more for the convenience of adding an additional night. It is a sticker shock to hear what the cash reservation is, even with the discount.

Personally, I think if it was just a couple of days, especially before a cruise, I would opt to stay at a value or moderate resort over paying for the nights with cash. Even with the cash discount, I think it's still way over priced.

[Anna]

You can do this however it's not like using 15 points + $150 for a night's stay.

Say you purchased enough points that would get you a two-bedroom unit for 4 nights. You would use the requisite number of points needed for those 4 nights, and then book the remaining nights on a cash basis. As a DVC member you do get a 25% discount on the rack rate IF it's available and then ask MS to link those two separate reservations together.

Thanks so much for the info! That helps a lot! :sunshine2: