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.

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.

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.