Tyler's Dad
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2006
I posted this on a Genie post, but might be more relevant here.
Doing a little research and noticed some trends.
In 2011, Disney ran at 81% hotel occupancy and their stock was devalued based on the reports. Hotels were not booking in the Moderate and Deluxe categories, so cost per room was having to raise in the Value category, in order for them to operate at a profit and Art of Animation was opening soon, to add even more value rooms. So, Disney developed FP+ the next 2 years and when it went into effect, hotel guests received the benefit of pre-booking and hotel occupancy started going up. By 2015, this was at 89% and Disney stated that was almost too much and any further increase would require expansion, so Disney doubled down on DVC resorts and tried to add rooms to existing resorts, but tap into a fan base that wanted to own. This eased the pressure for a little while, but then by 2018, the occupancy was right back up there. At that time, Disney started allowing good neighbor resorts to use EMH and book FP+ at 60 days in 2019. They also announced the building of Reflections and Star Wars resorts to add more rooms to their inventory.
Now, at every step in this process, as Disney occupancy went through the roof, Disney tried to develop technology and or inventory that would help stay ahead. When occupancy took too big of a hit, they added technology to entice people to stay on-site. When that was maxed out, they tried to add inventory where they could or hurt their own occupancy in the case of giving the same benefits to good neighbor resorts.
When the pandemic hit, Reflections was abandoned, so there was no new inventory coming. They had already maxed out DVC space and brought on the good neighbor hotels. So, what is the next thing they could do to stop capacity from going up again? I think by removing some perks of staying on-site and introducing Genie+, they are going to get people that see that staying off-site might make more sense and will begin doing that. That will be good for Disney for a short while. Then, when everything in the resort opens to max capacity again, they will see occupancy rates going back down and bring back some incentives to stay on-site again. Once those work and capacity goes back up to the limit, then you bring back Reflections or fins some way to encourage off-site again. The wheel just keeps going around and around.
One last thing that interested me was the good neighbor hotel incentives and FP+. I would imagine Disney had to enter into a contract with them, for some amount of time, that would give the same FP+ availability to those hotels as on-site guests. Otherwise, Disney could have offered 60 days to them and then turned around and changed to 90 days for on-site guests and nothing would have changed. I almost wonder if Disney has to wait until next year or the year after before they can offer Genie+ benefits to on-site guests, in order to fulfill those contracts?
Doing a little research and noticed some trends.
In 2011, Disney ran at 81% hotel occupancy and their stock was devalued based on the reports. Hotels were not booking in the Moderate and Deluxe categories, so cost per room was having to raise in the Value category, in order for them to operate at a profit and Art of Animation was opening soon, to add even more value rooms. So, Disney developed FP+ the next 2 years and when it went into effect, hotel guests received the benefit of pre-booking and hotel occupancy started going up. By 2015, this was at 89% and Disney stated that was almost too much and any further increase would require expansion, so Disney doubled down on DVC resorts and tried to add rooms to existing resorts, but tap into a fan base that wanted to own. This eased the pressure for a little while, but then by 2018, the occupancy was right back up there. At that time, Disney started allowing good neighbor resorts to use EMH and book FP+ at 60 days in 2019. They also announced the building of Reflections and Star Wars resorts to add more rooms to their inventory.
Now, at every step in this process, as Disney occupancy went through the roof, Disney tried to develop technology and or inventory that would help stay ahead. When occupancy took too big of a hit, they added technology to entice people to stay on-site. When that was maxed out, they tried to add inventory where they could or hurt their own occupancy in the case of giving the same benefits to good neighbor resorts.
When the pandemic hit, Reflections was abandoned, so there was no new inventory coming. They had already maxed out DVC space and brought on the good neighbor hotels. So, what is the next thing they could do to stop capacity from going up again? I think by removing some perks of staying on-site and introducing Genie+, they are going to get people that see that staying off-site might make more sense and will begin doing that. That will be good for Disney for a short while. Then, when everything in the resort opens to max capacity again, they will see occupancy rates going back down and bring back some incentives to stay on-site again. Once those work and capacity goes back up to the limit, then you bring back Reflections or fins some way to encourage off-site again. The wheel just keeps going around and around.
One last thing that interested me was the good neighbor hotel incentives and FP+. I would imagine Disney had to enter into a contract with them, for some amount of time, that would give the same FP+ availability to those hotels as on-site guests. Otherwise, Disney could have offered 60 days to them and then turned around and changed to 90 days for on-site guests and nothing would have changed. I almost wonder if Disney has to wait until next year or the year after before they can offer Genie+ benefits to on-site guests, in order to fulfill those contracts?