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We were just at the Ka'anapali Beach Club aka Ka'anapali Beach Vacation Resort aka Embassy Vacation Club at Ka'anapali Beach over Christmas week 2007. During this time we met with a salesperson, and salesmanager for the "Owner's Update" - during this time, Stephen J. Cloobeck, the CEO of Diamond Resorts International was there, observing the sales operations and doing a detailed review of the resort. The following is my analytical interpretation of what their strategy is. Under the new Diamond Resorts International (DRI) management, they are intending to transform the resort into the much higher premium and cost category as seen in the neighboring expanding Westin Vacation Club complex and the nearby Marriot Vacation Club converted from the old Marriot hotel. At these two resorts, the developers have been able to sell their units for approximately twice as much; while controlling their inventory through the variable and much more developer-controlled 'currency' of the vacation club points system. Like Sunterra previously, Diamond International is only allowing the purchase of the KBC units via their point system in "The Club". In order to drive the prices higher, by making sure they control the inventory of the best rooms during the most desirable time the following is occurring: 1) DRI is currently exercising 1st right of refusal for many resale KBC weeks to return these deeded week properties back into The Club Points inventory. This effectively reduces buyers' ability to buy outstanding weeks on the open market at prices competing with DRI's Points; akin to when corporations buy back shares to increase share prices. As the developer is able to offer extra weeks and other bonus incentives to new purchasers while eliminating low price secondary market sales, the majority of potential buyers will end up having to going through the developer. Note that DRI points are only transferrable through "inheriting" the deeded property underlying the points, or other legal mechanism that does not involve a monetary "sale", since all deeded properties are placed into an IRREVOCABLE TRUST (per the contract with DRI) held and controlled by the DRI management company in exchange for the participation within this particular Points-based club. When the current owners of these points desire to sell their deed, they are unable to extract the deed from the irrevocable trust. Of course, neither are 'owners' able to externally sell their points since these are the non-transferrable currency created and usable only within the DRI system. DRI can more closely control access to KBC within the RCI and IntervalInternational system based upon the actual underlying exchange value of the property. If Points owners (including those who have inherited the deed) try to end their ownership, they will find a much smaller buyer base to the point where sustained non-payment of maintenace and special assessment fees result in the owner defaulting and the underlying weeks reverting to back to the developer-controlled trust (for sale to another easily pressured and convincable person at their high prices). This greatly reduces the marketability of our fee-simple property ownership; and enables the developer to hold a large voting block of deeded weeks to create an unfair monopoly of the owned shares, such that DRI controls all valuation of our property rather than allowing market forces to set the fair-market value. Since so many deeded weeks are held by the developer, the block of these shares end up controlling both the Vacation Owners Association and the Club Vacations Hawai'i Members Association. Furthermore, this gradually reduces the number of floating (and fixed) weeks that are available within our owned inventory; which then leverages the ability of DRI to eliminate availability of weeks to the non-point owners; especially at the most popular times of Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, and Spring Breaks. This allows DRI to charge more points for the holiday high season weeks, thereby shutting out non-point owners who want to book at the high holiday weeks. At some point in time, even though owners have a contract for 1-52 weeks of floating timeshare usage, they may NOT be able to ever book into those weeks. We were told by the DRI Sales Manager (Shawn) that Steven Cloobeck wants the holiday weeks to be ONLY available to those who have points! Unless Hawai'i has legal rulings or timeshare policies that require resorts to always provide the units to the owners despite these grand-fathered owners NOT giving into the pressure sales tactics to PAY to convert their deeded fee-simple weeks into the irrevocable trust to get the floating currency of Club Points (of which I suspect will be affected by "new-resort" inflation, so the current points will not get you as much in the future as new resorts are built or old are remodeled). 2) Under the sales pitch, the Points valuation offered for our two floating weeks (one oceanview, the other scenic view) was equivalent only to the non-high weeks. Thus, if we converted to the Club Points, we would NOT be able to get the holiday weeks we are currently able to get now with our fee simple deeded weeks, that have still have an available supply. After we pointed this out, Shawn the sales manager came back and improved the Club Points offer and reduced the "conversion" price they were asking us to pay from $12,000 to $8,650. (The points offered for the weeks were still insufficient for us to reserve the same holiday weeks we were then enjoying - up to the point of their pressure sales tactics.) 3) The sales conversion offer is only available to those who purchased their week directly from the develop in the 1st place. The sales rep and Shawn, the sales manager, continued going on and on how the Point program was so much better than the 1-52 floating weeks we currently have; but when we mentioned that we actually purchased our weeks on the secondary market; Shawn immediately said no point conversions are to be offered to the resale purchasers. However, that's when he went back to presumably talk to the CEO of the situation we were presenting, and came back to sweeten the previous price "reduction", with an added increase of one-time points of 3500 to the non-holiday points (which were still insufficient to allow us to still book our current holiday weeks). Using pressure tactics, he said, "this is a one time offer, and Stephen Cloobeck, our CEO just told me you never be able to book your weeks during the Christmas and New Year's week again if you don't accept this offer! Only those in the Club will be able to book these weeks with their points. The only other way you'll be able to get points is if you buy points here from us for a new purchase." (There is NO resale market of Club points outside of DRI; not like Worldmark, etc.) This set my wife off crying, as he was essentially saying that DRI was not going to honor the existing contracts we owners have with our grand-fathered deeded fee-simple weeks. Bottom-line, if the owners are unable to sever all but the essential links with DRI and prevent DRI from eroding our ownership in KBC to the point Cloobeck can make good on his threat to us to shut out the holiday weeks to anyone but those who bought the expensive develop floating Points currency. These points, like any floating currency, can be inflated at their whim in order to increase the price of entry to the levels seen at the other high end Westin and Marriot timeshare resorts. Just see the other listings and posts throughout the public bulletin boards, online auctions, etc. You'll generally see a dearth of property transactions being successfully completed; and very few even being listed. So if you are interested in trying to lock in the lower purchase price to this resort through the secondary market; it may be greatly worth your efforts IF you can sneak it past DRI's Right of 1st Refusal. My other recommendation is resist the sales pitch to convert your existing deeded week that you own into their DRI Club point system, especially when their offer will result in you paying them money so you are not able to book the week and level of room you are currently able to get. My final recommendation to you, should you be unable to find a buyer for your week you are trying to sell, try to post it for rent on this board or other board to at least get your maintenance dues covered instead of giving it back to DRI as a defaulted property.