Aulani Open for Purchase

[antnyh]

I didn't see this here anywhere so thought I'd post it. Since we just bought into BLT we are tapped out and not able to buy into Aulani, but sure look forward to visiting in the near future. Here are some details. I got these from another site, so if you are the OP at the other site please excuse my stealing your post info.

Details:
- 600 Founding Members will get name on a tile on-site and one sent to them at home
- final point chart is the same as the one released last week
- opening date for first phase 8/29/2011
- reservations start 9/29/2010
- $114 per point, less $12 discount for 250 point founding member purchase = $102 per point (didn't ask about discounts at other point levels)
- additional incentive will be applied if attend the July 1-7 "resort" event (didn't say what it would be, but I will net less than $102!)
- Dues $4.31 per point
- Offering a fixed week option for 10% increase in price (this is new to DVC - I passed on this)
- 706 rooms are available. of these 246 are 1 bedrooms

[Ed]

Hawaii resort Aulani may be key to Disney growth

Aulani, an 841-room Disney time share and hotel in Hawaii, is set to open in fall 2011.

By Jason Garcia Orlando Sentinel

Nineteen months after breaking ground, Disney today will begin selling time-share interests in Aulani, a high-rise resort in Hawaii that company executives hope will be a template for future growth in their $11 billion-a-year theme-park division.

The 841-room hotel and time share, which carries a reported $800 million price tag, is the first test of Disney’s strategy to build stand-alone resorts and niche attractions in markets far from its massive theme-park resorts in Orlando and Anaheim, Calif.

If successful, Aulani will likely serve as a model for similar Disney projects in other markets — such as in Washington, where the company last year paid $11 million for 15 acres as a potential resort site. If it flops, Disney executives will be left scrambling for new strategies to wring profit growth from a maturing U.S. theme-park market.

“It’ll be a test to see if their brand can extend … outside of their traditional business,” said Michael Corty, a stock analyst who follows Walt Disney Co. for Morningstar Inc. “I would say they’ll be tested outside of their parks.”

Disney has dabbled in stand-alone resorts before. In the mid-1990s, the company’s time-share arm, Disney Vacation Club, opened the 175-unit Disney’s Vero Beach Resort and the 102-unit Disney’s Hilton Head Island Resort in South Carolina.

Neither of those properties, however, approaches the scale of Aulani. Rising on 21 acres along the southwest shore of Oahu — about a half-hour’s drive from Honolulu — the resort will include 360 hotel rooms and 481 Vacation Club time-share villas. The design team is being led by Joe Rohde, the company Imagineer who oversaw design of the Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World.

The beachfront property will offer guests a saltwater snorkeling lagoon, water slides and a “lazy river” that winds through volcanic-looking rock. The complex includes an 18,000-square-foot spa, two restaurants and nearly 65,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting and event space.

With Aulani, which will open in the fall of 2011, Disney wants to continue tapping the billions of dollars in travel spending that occurs every year beyond its theme parks, much as it has with Disney Cruise Line. The company is betting that the brand affinity it has developed with customers inside its parks — where it has cultivated a reputation for family-friendly entertainment and attentive customer service — will give it an edge over other hotel and time-share operators.

Disney has said its domestic guests make trips to Walt Disney World or Disneyland only about once every four years, whether because of obstacles such as high costs and lengthy travel distances or a desire for different vacation experiences.

“Thinking outside the berm gives us a great opportunity to keep our guests within the franchise, even while they are between visits to our major destinations,” then-Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo told analysts in early 2007, a few months before Disney unveiled plans for Aulani. Rasulo said Disney could also build stand-alone retail, dining and entertainment districts, water parks and niche theme parks.

Rasulo has since swapped jobs with former Disney Co. Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs, though Disney has said the two executives share the same strategic vision.

The regional-resort strategy also reflects the growth constraints Disney faces at its flagship resorts, particularly Disney World, where it already operates four theme parks, two water parks, nearly two dozen hotels and other venues. Most travelers have only a limited amount of time for their vacations, and it may be difficult to extend their stays even further.

Hawaii offers several advantages for Disney as it tests the stand-alone concept. The island state already draws more than 6 million visitors a year and is a popular vacation destination for travelers from the U.S. and Japan, where Disney is already well-established with its Tokyo Disney Resort.

Disney expects Japan to be an important feeder market for the Hawaiian project. The company this month will open a 15,000-square-foot Disney Vacation Club sales center at Tokyo Disney — its first international sales center — which will feature two-bedroom models of Aulani rooms.

Disney spokesman Mike Griffin said Hawaii is also “among the most requested” destinations among Disney Vacation Club time-share members, who purchase “points” that can be used for stays in non-Disney hotels.

“Hawaii is consistently ranked as one of the top family destinations in the world,” Griffin said. “It seems to dovetail well with our business.”

Still, analysts say the success of Disney’s Aulani — or its regional-resort strategy — is by no means assured.

Though Disney is the dominant player in the theme-park business, it faces much more intense competition as a hotel-only operator. Aulani, after all, won’t have the Magic Kingdom next door to help drive bookings or time-share sales.

The pivotal question is: “To what extent does the Disney brand itself drive people to stay at their property when they’re not really associated with parks?” said Bill Carroll, a senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

“Clearly, they will have more competition in this kind of market than they would otherwise,” Carroll added. “It’s clearly a higher risk.”

[Melanie]

As the article states, I can definitely see the Japanese being all over this. They love Disney and they love Hawaii.

[DVC2004]

I just got an add on offer emailed to me.

[diz_girl]

I just got an offer too. If you add-on 50 points, you pay $114 per point and get a $6 per point credit. The price per point will increase to $120 per point on 1 November.

The offer also states that the first 800 members to add-on 160 or more points become a Founding Member.

While Aulani sounds great, I won't be adding on there. I'm not going to buy somewhere that I will rarely go. I'll just try my luck at the 7 month mark, when my family finally goes to Hawaii, probably in about 10 years or so.

[laprana]

I got the e-mail offer today as well. I don't think I'll be adding on there, but I would love to visit someday. There is a new section about Aulani on the DVC member website and it looks like it's going to be fabulous! :thumbsup:

[Aurora]

There's an interesting footnote on the bottom of the points charts that have been circulating:

"For all stays at Aulani, the State of Hawai'i imposes a daily transient accommodations tax based upon the number of Vacation Points required for the stay and the per Vacation Point Annual Dues for the calendar year of the stay. This tax must be paid by check-out. The amount of the tax will vary from year to year."

Wonder how much that will be...

[TheDuckRocks]

There's an interesting footnote on the bottom of the points charts that have been circulating:

"For all stays at Aulani, the State of Hawai'i imposes a daily transient accommodations tax based upon the number of Vacation Points required for the stay and the per Vacation Point Annual Dues for the calendar year of the stay. This tax must be paid by check-out. The amount of the tax will vary from year to year."

Wonder how much that will be...


The state of Hawaii imposes a 4% tax on everything! They even tax the tax you have just paid which has every hotel, gas station, restaurant, gift shop, grocery store, etc. charging the consumer 4.67% to cover the unending tax on tax. FYI Hawaii is called tax heck by the locals. Property and income taxes are very high also.

[Aurora]

The state of Hawaii imposes a 4% tax on everything! They even tax the tax you have just paid which has every hotel, gas station, restaurant, gift shop, grocery store, etc. charging the consumer 4.67% to cover the unending tax on tax. FYI Hawaii is called tax heck by the locals. Property and income taxes are very high also.

Well I just found out that the 4% tax isn't even what they're talking about -- it's an ADDITIONAL tax that's going up to 9.25% on July 1 of this year. It sounds like they multiply the number of points you use for your stay times your annual dues (to determine the dollar value of your stay) times the 9.25%.

So if you stay in a standard-view 1-bedroom during low season for a week (about 250 points), and you pay annual dues of $4.6 per point, you can expect to pay about $100 more for your Hawaii stay.

[seanyred]

wow that is terrible and I thought we were taxed bad in Chicago/Cook County. But seriously my DW and I would love to go some day but it will probably be a once in a great while thing (or maybe just once). It looks like a great resort but with the cost of air fare from Chicago and food (which I hear is expensive) and the taxes, will make it to costly to go frequently.

Besides we are theme park junkies so I'd rather spend my money in FL or CA.