The UVC Facebook group that I find the least useful is UVC-Unlimited Vacation Club. Official Group. This is UVC's Official group. Its admins and moderators are UVC staff. Currently, it looks like this although they change their cover photo pretty regularly:
The Official UVC FB group is in a position to provide a useful service to members, but they don't. UVC prefers to use the group to market its resorts and to give existing members new ways to spend more money. Like the Owners' groups I belong to, the Official UVC FB group allows only UVC members to join.
Here are some ideas that the Official UVC group could implement that would be beneficial to members:
1. Respond to all member questions promptly, accurately and clearly. You'd think this would be obvious, but it's not for the Official group gang. As you'll see in future posts here, they've been known to approve a post asking a question and then not answer the question. Other times (I have a couple personal experiences with this), they won't approve a questioning post at all. Questions that do get approved rarely get answered publicly in the group so all members can learn. The admins' preferred method of responding to member questions is to direct the member to FB Messenger to address the issue one-on-one rather than in the group. That approach may help the one member, but there are another 8,000 or so members in the Official group who could be learning from that one member's experience. Apparently, that's a bad idea to UVC. In the best case, the way the Official group addresses member issues helps members only one at a time.
2. Advocate for members' interests with the resorts. This is probably a lost cause in a Hyatt-run UVC. In addition to managing UVC, Hyatt also markets and provides other management services to the resorts. There are times, and there will always be times, when a member's interests conflict with a resort's interests. More often than not, Hyatt will support the resort (their larger revenue source) before they support a UVC member. In Hyatt's UVC, members don't have a reliable advocate with the resorts and probably never will.
3. Provide members with updates on what's happening in the club. Since Hyatt's purchase of ALG, there have been a lot of changes at UVC. Hardly any of them get communicated to members (there will be a lot more on how poorly UVC communicates with members later). There have been a number of significant business transactions Hyatt has made recently that have implications for UVC members. Hyatt's UVC won't discuss the future of the club with members. I've tried. I know. They won't.
Questions from members about the future of the club are the ones that don't get approved and published to the group, or do get approved but don't get answered, or (and this seems to be the preferred approach) get approved and get a response that doesn't answer the question. Such behavior from the group that presents itself as UVC's "official" voice does members, and Hyatt, more harm than good. Periodic question and answer sessions led by knowledgeable Hyatt staff (not the admins and moderators of the FB group) would be welcome. Hyatt's UVC seems to take a "let members figure it out for themselves" approach to the club's future.
4. Advise members of construction and renovation schedules for all resorts. When a new resort breaks ground, or an existing resort begins renovations, Hyatt releases a press statement notifying the world of the project. Soon after, if I want to follow what's happening on the project, I'll join a FB fans group for that resort. Unfortunately, FB fan group intel is the best way to keep up with what's going on with construction projects. UVC offers members no updates on projects under construction. Many of the fan groups are started and run by travel agents seeking new business. The travel agent admins of those groups share info on construction status and resort amenities, etc. that they tell group members has been given to them by Hyatt. Why Hyatt won't share this same info with its UVC members, who serve as their own travel agents, is a head scratcher. It seems like it would be beneficial to Hyatt to generate interest in the resort, especially among loyalty members, while the property is still in construction. Deliberately excluding UVC members from the same information they willing share with travel agents is another example of Hyatt's contempt for its UVC members. Hyatt should be giving UVC members the same information at the same time it's given to travel agents. The Official UVC FB group is an obvious place to share that information, but it doesn't happen.
5. Provide members with UVC rep contact information at each resort. UVC's social media managers did this for a short time and posted email addresses for UVC reps at each resort on their blog. They didn't keep the data current. When new resort staff arrived or old resort staff departed, when new resorts opened or old resorts closed or rebranded, the email addresses on the UVC blog didn't get updated. Quickly, the published data was unreliable. Members could try using an email address from the blog, but they never could be sure if it was correct. Often, it wasn't. Ultimately, UVC gave up and removed the contacts page from their blog entirely. It was useful when it was accurate. For UVC, it was too hard to keep accurate. I have some ideas I could share.
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In Hyatt's UVC, the Official FB group doesn't exist to help members. It exists to make Hyatt more money. Most posts made by its admins are advertising resorts, or other travel products: Amstar (A Hyatt company providing ground transportation and excursions), Funjet (A Hyatt company providing chartered air travel), travel insurance (through a non-Hyatt company UVC partners with). In Hyatt's UVC, the main purpose of the Official group is to increase members' spending.
If UVC focused on member satisfaction with the club, members might choose to spend more money on their own. Just a thought.