TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Local properties receive RCI Gold Crown Awards

Daily Herald story

I'm surprised that Divi wasn't a gold crown.

Nice to see so many ranking in Gold Crown and some holding Gold Crown for several years! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" /> Owning Gold Crown in SXM has always given us excellent power for exchanges.

With all the negative comments about SXM and timeshare...it' nice to see so many of the resorts on the island hold the ''Gold Crown" status!!! I guess the resorts must be something right!

Interval's list is less glowing...but Divi Little Bay is listed at a gold Premier resort

Not making the list (silver or gold) at all are Flamingo Beach Resort, La Vista (both listings), Mary's Boon, Ocean Club, Simpson Bay Resort (Villas are Premier Gold), Sonesta Great Bay and Sea palace

Atrium, Belair, Geo group, Festiva, Tradewinds, Summit and Towers are not listed as II exchange resorts.

Nice to see my 3 locations are all gold crown.

from the article i read in the link,,flamingo,,both La vista's were on the list. ?

I was confused also, but I think he was talking about Interval, versus RCI..

Yes I thought that too. For the record Flamingo fixed weeks are RCI. Flamingo points are II.

Correct...I was just comparing Interval's list to RCI's list...

Those ratings are nice, but you must understand how that is achieved. Just so everyone understands completely about RCI awards, it is based solely on ratings provided by those people who EXCHANGE INTO those timeshares, and NOT by any inspection by RCI nor by ratings made by owners who stay at their own timeshare resort. (If one owns week 15 at XYZ resort and exchanges through RCI to get a different week at that same resort, that owner would then fall into the "exchanger" category & would be able to submit a rating. But if he uses his own week, that owner would not be eligible to submit a rating.)
The specific Rating categories that combine to create an award are: Check In/Out, Resort Hospitality, Resort Maintenance, Unit Maintenance, & Unit Housekeeping. Scoring is from 1-5 (with 1 the lowest & 5 the highest), and to get Gold or Silver, the combined scores must be in mid 4 range. The difference in scoring for Gold & Silver is quite minimal, within 2/10th of a point. Less than 40% of the people who exchange into a resort actually send their scores/ratings back to RCI!
If a resort finds that it is "on the edge" of getting an award or not, the resort management can submit information to RCI to attempt to "make their case" to get that award.

That is partially true, but RCI requires the resorts affiliated with them to send updated pictures of the interior and exterior of the resort annually and also to update the activities which are available at the resort. All improvements to the resort has a direct bearing on the rating and often the more activities available the better the rating. There are a lot of things that go into establishing the different ratings.If the owners are not happy and voice complaints to RCI, their complaints also do influence the rating as was the case with the Sapphire Resort in St. Maarten.

I failed to mention there are perhaps 10-15 other categories in the ratings questionaires that people are asked to rate between 1 & 5, including activities; however, the 5 I spoke of earlier are the 5 that actually are applied to the 3 awards. As a member of 2 Gold Crown timeshare owner boards for 12 years, this is what I learned from our management from our quarterly reports.