Riviera Sales by the numbers (vs CCV) for 2019 - (December added 1/16/2020)

[Jenniebee]

It was built inside the CBR property, literally it sits on what used to be Barbados area.

 

[skier_pete]

It was built inside the CBR property, literally it sits on what used to be Barbados area.

No I get that - but I guess I didn't realize how close it would be. Like 200 feet close. Like "rooms are closer to Riviera than to Port Royale" close. Meaning people may be apt to use the amenities at Riviera while staying at CBR. I wonder if they are going to be tougher on their pool restrictions to make sure CBR people don't swim there - like Stormalong Bay tough.

 

[mousemagic00]

Port Royal is the location for Shutters? That has had decent reviews lately and RIV doesn’t have a “Kona” or “Wave” level sit down, so that’s interesting if you can pop in vs get on the sky liner.

 

[CanadaDisney05]

This is a good point. Wages have not increased enough compared to the cost of living and education; the generation 35 and under have a lot of student debt and many cannot even afford a house let alone dvc. I would be shocked if there were many dvc purchasers for riviera that were under 35 but disney must know something we don't.

Keep in mind that the supply of DVC is actually very small in comparison to the overall population. In order to sell out a DVC resort, Disney doesn't need high volume sales. If 99% of the population is drowning in debt, the 1% that aren't have more than enough people to sell out DVC.

 

[Soap_1984]

Keep in mind that the supply of DVC is actually very small in comparison to the overall population. In order to sell out a DVC resort, Disney doesn't need high volume sales. If 99% of the population is drowning in debt, the 1% that aren't have more than enough people to sell out DVC.

Based on this you would suggest that there is infinite demand from the 1%. Of that 1%, 98% have absolutely no interest in disney and or dvc. You can keep slicing up that one percent to the point where you have a definite number of potential sales and I am just saying that pie is getting smaller due to the current economic situation.

My original point was that they cannot expect and infinite supply of people who don't care about value to keep ponying up an increasing amount of money without looking for new members. It is probable that many of those new members will be under 45, and if you distribute your top 1% by age, I would say the under 45 are almost none of the top 1% (unless perhaps their parents also occupy a spot in the top 1%).

It's a similar argument to why young people aren't buying houses in Toronto. Almost no one in my age group owns a house, prices are too high and people are not making enough money to support drastically increased prices; this is at near zero rates. People who are 60 are probably less likely to hop into dvc if they haven't already I would argue; these are my (speculative) thoughts.

 

[Jenniebee]

Port Royal is the location for Shutters? That has had decent reviews lately and RIV doesn’t have a “Kona” or “Wave” level sit down, so that’s interesting if you can pop in vs get on the sky liner.

This is a really good point to consider about Shutters. Also I do wonder like Pete said will they have gate/card access at the Riviera pool. I am guessing they will have to.

 

[Donna M]

This is a really good point to consider about Shutters. Also I do wonder like Pete said will they have gate/card access at the Riviera pool. I am guessing they will have to.

There is no reason for anyone other than those staying at Riviera to have access to the pools. And I'm sure they will be locked.

 

[RivShore]

In addition to the 1,700 rooms that Disney still has coming online, they added 545 rooms at Gran Destino recently.

Attendance at Disney’s US parks dropped 3% in their third quarter. That drop happened while US consumer spending increased 4.7% the same quarter. Last week Disney emailed me an offer for rooms at Coronado for a $150 a night for the week before Christmas. There is your context.

From today's Q4 report:
Christine McCarthy, chief financial officer at Disney, said booked rates at its domestic hotels were pacing up 5% compared to the same time next year.

So occupancy growth actually improved from Q3. There should be no problem absorbing that 4% increase in new rooms that you were so worried about.

 

[Soap_1984]

From today's Q4 report:
Christine McCarthy, chief financial officer at Disney, said booked rates at its domestic hotels were pacing up 5% compared to the same time next year.

So occupancy growth actually improved from Q3. There should be no problem absorbing that 4% increase in new rooms that you were so worried about.

I haven't read the report but any time you have to make a statement that convoluted you are spin doctoring to some extent lol. Booked rates are pacing up compared to the next year, what does that mean exactly? It doesn't say anything in that statement about q3 vs q4 nor does it say anything about occupancy; booked rates sounds more like rates or revenue, as opposed to occupancy.

If things are good they just say "occupancy was up x% yoy/compared to last quarter and revenue was up y%".

 

[ELMC]

I haven't read the report but any time you have to make a statement that convoluted you are spin doctoring to some extent lol. Booked rates are pacing up compared to the next year, what does that mean exactly? It doesn't say anything in that statement about q3 vs q4 nor does it say anything about occupancy; booked rates sounds more like rates or revenue, as opposed to occupancy.

If things are good they just say "occupancy was up x% yoy/compared to last quarter and revenue was up y%".

I agree. All they are saying is that they are charging more for hotel rooms. We already knew that - they are charging more for everything.

 

[Brianstl]

From today's Q4 report:
Christine McCarthy, chief financial officer at Disney, said booked rates at its domestic hotels were pacing up 5% compared to the same time next year.

So occupancy growth actually improved from Q3. There should be no problem absorbing that 4% increase in new rooms that you were so worried about.

That does not mean bookings are up 5%. It doesn’t even mean revenue from bookings is up 5%. It means the cost charged for booked rooms so far is 5% higher.

 

[emchen]

I agree. All they are saying is that they are charging more for hotel rooms. We already knew that - they are charging more for everything.

"booked rate" = booked price
not = booking rate
Is that correct?

 

[Soap_1984]

"booked rate" = booked price
not = booking rate
Is that correct?

That was my interpretation; basically if you booked a room at the hotel two years in a row, the price you booked at was 5% higher. The "next year" thing I have no idea what that means unless it is some kind of a typo..

 

[zavandor]

Even with decreased attendance at Disneyland and constant attendance at WDW; profits went up due to increased spending, because prices went up, even with increased expenses for the Galaxy Edge opening. So it seems Disney is right, they can increase prices and increase revenues, they've not yet found their ceiling.

 

[Soap_1984]

It's easy to raise prices if you are spending more money. The takeaway from what I read was that people spent more and so did they, and they didn't make more money. In business that isn't a good thing.

 

[RivShore]

"booked rate" = booked price
not = booking rate
Is that correct?

That was my interpretation; basically if you booked a room at the hotel two years in a row, the price you booked at was 5% higher. The "next year" thing I have no idea what that means unless it is some kind of a typo..

I think you all are right, it's just the room cost year over year they were addressing. I had assumed it was another way to describe occupancy, i.e. "rate of bookings", but booked price makes more sense. What doesn't make sense is that they did not address overall occupancy at all other than to say Q4 2019 was up a bit from prior year. The increased rates does speak to increasing demand, but In past reports they have noted occupancy, so maybe something is not as good as they want it to seem. Either way, the stock will be driven by Disney+ for the foreseeable future, with parks a mere footnote for now.

The final question of the conference call tried to dig thru the corp speak without much success:

Steven Cahall
And then maybe just Christine, one on the park side of thing, how do you get comfortable that you're not seeing any underlying weakening demand and it's all just deferrals and since you think that is the case, is there a point in the year where you think that you might start to see some acceleration in the attendance at the domestic parks? Thanks.

Christine McCarthy
Steve, on domestic parks, we still feel very good about the demand for our domestic parks product. We do a lot of research in our parks business of guest satisfaction is something that we track when people come and they are intend to return. And also we have metrics that look out year-over-year what the booking trends are. And as I mentioned in my prepared comments, our booked rates at our domestic hotels are currently pacing up 5% versus prior year. So given everything that we've talked about previously, especially as it relates to Star Wars Galaxy's Edge and the complete opening of that land in both world and Disneyland, we feel really good about the momentum we have going into '19 domestic parks.

 

[Soap_1984]

Yeah so it is compared to last year; they are basically stating they are booking rooms at a price increase of five percent.

 

[RivShore]

Some DVC related info in this article. Looks like point sales are up a decent amount year over year...

https://dvcnews.com/index.php/dvc-p...nces-q4-financial-performance-for-fiscal-2019

Our own sales numbers confirm higher sales in the period of July to September 2019 vs the same period in 2018. Unofficial tracking performed by DVCNews reflects sales of 525,384 points in this 3-month period of 2019 compared to 471,792 points in 2018, an increase of more than 11%.
These numbers do no reflect sales at Aulani, Disney Vacation Club Villas.

 

[mustinjourney]

Because of the recent discounts, there is a significant number of guests that will be staying at the Riviera on cash between opening and the end of March. You can expect to see DVC put the full court press on those guests and the sales numbers from those months should be very telling. Until then there's not much to do but wait. And speculate our behinds off.

I hadn't thought of that. Good call. Cash discount gets people in the doors and once there, it's a hell of a lot easier to sell the product.

 

[skier_pete]

Some DVC related info in this article. Looks like point sales are up a decent amount year over year...

https://dvcnews.com/index.php/dvc-p...nces-q4-financial-performance-for-fiscal-2019

Our own sales numbers confirm higher sales in the period of July to September 2019 vs the same period in 2018. Unofficial tracking performed by DVCNews reflects sales of 525,384 points in this 3-month period of 2019 compared to 471,792 points in 2018, an increase of more than 11%.
These numbers do no reflect sales at Aulani, Disney Vacation Club Villas.

Except that old resorts are way up with Riviera down vs Copper Creek a year ago.