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19 April 2012
Posted in
Financial News
For the first time in nearly three years, more Disney Vacation Club points were sold for Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas than for any of the nine resorts for which point sales can be tracked. In March 2012, Disney Vacation Development sold 181,076 points, of which 85,632 points were for Animal Kingdom Villas. Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, which led all resorts in sales for the prior seven consecutive months, dropped to second with 44,081 points sold.
The 181,076 points sold in March 2012 represents a drop of 16.9% from the previous month and a drop of 31.1% compared to March 2011 when 262,756 DVC points were sold. In 2011 Bay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort was still being actively marketed and accounted for over 162,000 points sold in the month.
The sales data includes all seven Disney Vacation Club resorts at Walt Disney World, as well as Disney's Vero Beach Resort and Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort. Point sales data is not available for the Villas at Disney's Grand California Hotel or for Aulani, Disney Vacation Club Villas. The data is compiled from deeds filed by Disney Vacation Development and recorded with the Orange County (FL) Comptroller, the Indian River County (FL) Clerk of Court, and the Beaufort County (SC) Register of Deeds.
Bay Lake Tower at Disney's Contemporary Resort - Despite no longer being actively marketed by DVD since June 2011, Bay Lake Tower continues to sell about 30,000 points each month. In March 2012 DVD sold 34,173 points for Bay Lake Tower, the most since June 2011 when 146,501 points were sold.
In March 2012 DVD also reacquired 6,938 Bay Lake Tower points through foreclosure proceedings. This is the largest number of Bay Lake Tower points that DVD has reacquired in a single month.
DVD can only sell 98.0% of Bay Lake Tower's 5,733,530 total points to the general public. As of March 31, 2012, it had about 254,536 points that it could sell. These numbers reflect points that DVD has reacquired from owners through foreclosures, exercising its Right of First Refusal on resale transactions, and other buyback reasons. Since sales started in September 2008, DVD has reacquired 395 deeds containing 69,617 Bay Lake Tower points.
As the chart below shows, February is the most common Use Year at Bay Lake Tower and also has the most unsold points. October is the least common Use Year and has the fewest number of points still available for purchase at this time. Bay Lake has only one Unit containing 39,280 points that DVD has yet to use to support sales. DVD will not designate the Use Year for that Unit until it begins to draw points from it to support sales.
Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas - Animal Kingdom Villas' sales are benefitting from it being the only Walt Disney World DVC resort being actively marketed. With 85,632 points sold in March 2012, Animal Kingdom Villas led all resorts for which sales can be tracked. This is the largest number of Animal Kingdom Villas points sold in a month in at least two years.
As of March 31, 2012, DVD has sold 67.17% of the 7,400,270 total points at Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas. With the latest declaration of Units that was recorded on April 4, 2012, 77.60% of the resort is now declared for the DVC inventory. This means that slightly more than three-fourths of the resort is available on any given Use Day for members to book using points.
Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa - From July 2011 to February 2012, Saratoga Springs led all resorts in sales and averaged 90,386 points in monthly sales. However, Saratoga Springs is no longer being actively marketed by DVD and sales fell substantially in March 2012. Only 44,081 points were sold in March, representing a drop of 57.0% compared to the prior month.
All of Saratoga Springs has been declared for the DVC membership. With about 14,031,570 total points, it is the largest of the 11 DVC resorts. The next largest resort, in term of points, is Aulani, Disney Vacation Club Villas with 11,518,422 points. The most common Use Year at Saratoga Springs is December with 20.48% of its total points. The least common Use Year is April with only 6.70% of its total.
Hopefully they are selling a lot of Aulani points to make up for the drop in East of the Mississippi revenue.
Since July 2010, DVD has averaged about 205,000 points in monthly sales, excluding Aulani and Villas of Grand Californian for which point sales cannot be tracked. Until sales commence for VGF, DVD has about 2.25 million points left to sell for AKV, plus an unknown - but significantly larger - number of points left to sell for Aulani. BLT seems to be generating about 30,000 points in sales each month, and I suspect that SSR will also level out to about the same number of monthly sales. AKV sales will really have to improve to well over 100,000 points a month if DVD hopes to maintain a sales rate of 205,000 points while awaiting VGF to come online.
It's not really worthwhile to put too much stock in such a narrow comparison. In February '12 sales were up nearly 30% compared to the prior year.
The sorts of incentives were being offered in one year vs the other can certainly impact sales. Or it could be procedural delay (DVC slow closing, OCC slow recording, etc.) caused by something as simple as a scheduled employee vacation. If DVC's closings slow down because someone takes a week's vacation, the numbers are easily distorted.
I wouldn't put much stock in the Kidani start date. DVC began selling Jambo points about 6 months before the villas opened. When all of the Jambo points were exhausted they simply transitioned to Kidani out of necessity. There wasn't a conscious decision to begin selling Kidani 14 months ahead, it just worked out that way. The other alternative would have been to suspend sales for a period of time--not something DVC wanted to do since AKV was pretty much the sole focus of their marketing at that time.
The sorts of incentives were being offered in one year vs the other can certainly impact sales. Or it could be procedural delay (DVC slow closing, OCC slow recording, etc.) caused by something as simple as a scheduled employee vacation. If DVC's closings slow down because someone takes a week's vacation, the numbers are easily distorted.
Good point Tim.
I didn't realize March 2011 was such a big sales month (biggest since at least June 2010), so it's not surprising to have a big drop off.
Also DVD hasn't offered any incentives that have the various boards buzzing for at least 2-3 months.
If I remember correctly, didn't DVD offer some big incentives for AKV just before BLT sales started. If so, would DVD likely offer another incentive before VGF sales start? (Obviously, fall 2008 was a much different economy than 2012, so things could change). Seems like a good business practice since new products often suffocate sales for existing products.
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