posted 06-02-2005 22:13               

The supply and demand for your unit/resort is probably the most important. Your Cancun week is off season therefore the demand for it is not the same as if your week was xmas or new years. Those latter weeks are in heavy demand and thus their trading power is much greater.

Another part of the secret formula is the VEP rating. You know those surveys that we all get to rate our vacation experience at a particular resort. Well if enough folks indicate that they are not happy at that resort it will effect its desirability and lower its trading power.

There are weeks that trade better than others such as red,white and blue with red being the most desired. Whether you are trading a 1br vs a 2br, a standard resort v a Gold Crown etc.

I believe I covered most of the main criteria. If you do a search on "trading Power' you should come up with a wealth of information as this topic is always raised.

Hope this helps,

posted 06-03-2005 08:12               

The point is, regardless of the weeks being lumped into 3 broad categories of red/white/blue for high/medium/low demand times of year (and yes, some regions are allegedly 'red' all year), there are actually "hot red", "medium red", "low red" and "barely pink" weeks that all get lumped into "red".

So, RCI (and other exchange companies too) apparently have a variable scale assigned to each week/location that's indirectly part of the hidden 'trading power'.

For starters, as a 'proxy' to the unkown/hidden trading power you seek, try this:

Go to www.rci.com , start to enter the "RCI Points" side of the site. Before you're into the 'members only' area, you can click on the Resort Directory, and see a listing of RCI Points resorts. Choose one roughly comparable to your Cancun resort. View the details of the resort and eventually see the table of RCI Points values assigned to each week of the year. (these tables often have the year broken up into 8 or 10 'lumps' of timeframes and you could see significant variation in the number of RCI Points required to vacation a week at that resort during the year. (If you're an RCI Weeks' exchanger, the Point values don't apply to you, and there's no guarentee that this table accurately reflects the RCI Weeks' hidden trading power formula....but they're supposed to be based on similar demand/quality criteria.

hope that helps.
Hat

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