OP here Surprised to find the thread in this forum, to be honest, IMO it belongs to IC as it deals with the pointbreak issues specific to Priority Club.

As most PC members know "pointbreaks" are heavily discounted (50-87.5% off) awards offered at limited number of properties a few times a year. As a result some of the better hotels exhaust their award inventory within days and drop from the list. IC Vienna is a prime example - regular award goes for 40K and pointbreak is 5K.
There are no limits on awards so anyone can easily book dozens of nights when the list is published (I recall reports of a 2 month stay booked on PB rate). As long as this is done for personal use it's all good.

What alarms me is the creation of a marketplace to trade those nights on CC. Due to restricted PB availability it really gives an incentive to book as many nights as possible and come to CC to profit from those bookings. Along the way many other members who legitimately want to book the discounted awards find out that they are too late and the awards are gone.

I have no fundamental problems with the posts I quoted in OP (or the market value of those nights) but I don't really want to see FT turning into a marketplace for scalping.

The solution is pretty obvious of course - PC and other hotels should make the awards non-transferable once booked (as with the airlines) so perhaps if we move this back to IC forum some lurkers would consider this as my personal feedback.

[QUOTE=janehoya;12421124]As yet you are unable to view coupon connection posts as you don't have the requisite number of posts (90+ I believe).

regards,

J

I think they should either make a limit on how many pb bookings you can have or something because it seems that the really good hotels go way too fast and it mostly just because people book them for every weekend during the pb period and the cancel the ones they can't use.

Most definitely a wrong forum. Should be on the PC one for sure.

They should just make them non-transferable and non-cancelable.

Since you asked, no.

Points arbitrage is better suited for eBay.

Well said.

Read this thread so you know why the referenced threads in CC are not viewable to you: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...onnection.html

IMHO, you've raised two issues: CC trades and IC policy of award bookings.

As you know there have been more than one threads recently in CC and ORP that specifically discuss what's expected in CC (market place vs. community spirit). I am not going to reiterate the whole debate here. All I can say is it's no surprise your thread got moved to ORP now.

This seems to be your main focus but I failed to recognize it in OP. It appears you are advocating a policy change in Priority Club. If I were you, I would resort to more effective channels to communicate with IC officials.

A standalone thread in our IC Forum may help, if there are resident IC representatives on board, like what we have in SPG Forum.

[QUOTE=Flyersj18;12421683]You learn something new every day. This is especially true since I discovered FlyerTalk this summer. I appreciate your response. Thanks.

Absolutely. There's a always a premium if your intention is to gouge, same as I could charge a 15% markup when bringing duty free back to the UK. I don't, but at least if I did then it would be more appropriate than abusing the CC forum.

If you come out on top after a CC trade when you had an option to be back even (IE cancel the reservation) then that's an abuse of the forum. And specifically stating that they feel their reservation justified a 'premium' rather shows one of the poster's intentions.

For ordinary award nights it's not such a big deal because inventory is less limited, but I feel the solution here is to only allow PB bookings where the account holder is present. Multiple rooms is fine, but as now, only where the PC member is staying too.

This is, I know, still more suited to an IC thread, but the non-cancellable thing has been touted before - someone else there made the valid point that making them non-cancellable would only increase the likelihood of people trying to transfer them, so this'd only work if you implement both of your suggestions and enforce the former rigorously...

This surely isn't the first time on FT someone has attempted to grab more than what they can use themselves and it likely won't be the last. Past hotel errors saw a few posters with zero intent to actually use the reservations themselves grab whole month blocks to, in effect, hold the reservation hostage for some eventual compensation. I agree hoarding for personal gain is to be frowned upon but it doesn't surprise this poster.

I do believe people should start following CC more closely.

It has always been full of offerings where one side is trying to secure an extremely favourable deal for themselves whether its' trading Marriott 7 day vouchers, Hotel nights for sold out events such as Obama's inauguaration, (both of these cases are definitely hoarding) people trying to get 2 2010 EVIP's for 1 2011 EVIP - how on earth can that be the case in early September. I also saw somebody successfully getting 75k AA miles for a $500 AA voucher. The list goes on.

It's full of these type of trades. Cant/couldnt see too much evidence of the same people, who highlighted the IC Vienna cases, focusing in on those trades.

If I nominate another person to stay at the IC Vienna instead of myself and this person fails to show I am still responsible for the First night's stay in cash. I think this is worth something to me. Call it a premium or whatever you like. I have been on the wrong side of bad trades on CC so I believe I have right to expect some form of extra compensation. I dont call a 2011 EVIP for 4nights at the Vienna IC an excessive deal, certainly not gouging.

I certainly didnt make the original booking in order to gouge FT'ers. If I was in that game I would be using my points for all the major sold out events that I referred to previously.

My OP was not specifically directed at you although your offer was obviously cited. A stand-alone trade is really not a problem but if you book and trade 4 nts and another poster 8 and perhaps I'll book a dozen next time and so on and the future awards will be gone in no time since we'll have an opportunity to trade later on therefor why not grab as much as possible.

I can see two way to minimize this - one, as I mentioned, is to change T&Cs on PC side another is to draw attention to those trades here on FT and perhaps generate a collective thumbs down that can reduce FT marketplace for those trades.

Some examples you cite represent the deals between two parties (evip or miles trades) - if they agree there is no harm to the rest of us whatever the valuation is. But hotel nights/sold out event etc speculation is quite different as the inventory is limited and shared by all of us and I really hope not to see this on FT.

I certainly agree with your sentiments. I am not into hoarding.

One question.

Let's say I have booked 3 nights at a HI in the Miami area for
next year's SuperBowl (75,000 points) where the terms explicitly state that
I will pay for the stay should I not turn up.

If I then decide that I am not able to go and decide to offer this
stay on CC, am I obliged to offer this stay for the exact no
of points I originally used given that I will have to pay for the stay
should the other party not show?

In my book the no show aspect of the trade has to be worth something.

Nor has janehoya been here 90 days (joined in July of this year).

It's a 90 days, 90 post access area.

EDIT: Here's a much, much better explanation of CC access

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/12018017-post138.html