Cancun hotels, call now!
Sep. 9th, 2009 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslI just got a cold call offering a promotion on a Cancun vacation (6 days, 2 adults + 2 children): at first it was a combined deal with Orlando, FL (5 days), for $598 altogether (including ground transportation). I managed to haggle them down to $349 for Cancun only, for 6 days/5 nights in a luxury hotel, to book anytime in the next 18 months (with an extra day free if I booked between Aug-Nov).
At first I thought it was a scam, given the slimy nature of the marketing ("you just won $2500 in travel money!", "only one call per household, so it's take it or leave it!"). They said it was a way of promoting their timeshares, and that the deal required that I take a tour of their resorts.
After I hung up, I realized that this must be related to H1N1.
Slimy or not, the take-it-or-leave policy makes sense a lot of sense as price discrimination. The people who approach their website by themselves are likely to be interested in going to Cancun, and thus willing to pay more. Mechanisms by which I'd call them back later could be corrupted, eliminating their high-paying customers.
At first I thought it was a scam, given the slimy nature of the marketing ("you just won $2500 in travel money!", "only one call per household, so it's take it or leave it!"). They said it was a way of promoting their timeshares, and that the deal required that I take a tour of their resorts.
After I hung up, I realized that this must be related to H1N1.
Slimy or not, the take-it-or-leave policy makes sense a lot of sense as price discrimination. The people who approach their website by themselves are likely to be interested in going to Cancun, and thus willing to pay more. Mechanisms by which I'd call them back later could be corrupted, eliminating their high-paying customers.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 10:53 pm (UTC)you "only" have to take a tour of their resorts; you will also have to spend however much time resisting really high-pressure, and increasingly nasty, sales tactics as they attempt to get you to buy into a timeshare.
people who are unfazed by that can certainly take advantage of the free shit they're giving away and then walk away, and be ahead. and i have known people to do so. (not vacations, but sometimes they offer free meals / a day at their resort / etc. -- we heard about these kind of deals a lot when we were vacationing in Mexico.) but i am not in that category, and it doesn't sound like a nice vacation to me.
you just have to think: obviously they railroad enough people into buying timeshares that they can afford to subsidize those who take them up on the free vacation but don't buy into the timeshare BS. they are VERY pushy. plus there is psychology at work -- i think i read somewhere that once you give someone something for free, they have a sense of indebtedness to you and are more likely to buy something.
by the way, timeshares? serious scam. they are really almost never worth it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-10 12:19 am (UTC)This is a concept that's examined thoroughly in Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice if you should ever need to cite this somewhere else. It's a pretty popular text in commerce, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 10:54 pm (UTC)I would take the flight there though, and get the hell out to see the interesting bits.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 11:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 11:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-09 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-10 04:30 am (UTC)