Do not mess around with the Festiva Corporation, owners of the Atrium in Sint Maarten. I will tell you why. For me they are changing the general rules of operation. I own two floating week contracts valid weeks 15 through 50. Reservations cannot be made more than one year in advance. When I tried to make a reservation this year for next spring on the first week of eligibility for weeks 21 and 22, I was told there was nothing available for week 22 and only one room in the entire building for week 21and that room did not face the ocean. I have been going to the Atrium since 2000 and have always had a nice choice of rooms on an upper floor with an ocean view so this was rather a shock. So I pushed to discover how this could be and was told the following.
Festiva internally assigns a week to all the floating contracts. This is not part of the contact and the owner of the contract has no visibility of this. In my case I believe it is week 35 and 36. When an owner requests a week that is not on this internal assignment, the only way a room can be available is if another floating week contract covers that week and has not been exercised. In my case, no one was assigned week 22 so there was nothing available for me.
All the other units had been assigned to the Festiva Adventure Club and points programs even though no reservations had yet been booked. I should point out Festiva controls at least 40% of all weeks as they have never been sold to individuals and they always have rooms available for rent. These are obviously not the conditions under which floating weeks were sold and I doubt the legality but I am one person against the corporation.
Why was I told this? I suspect I am a special case. When I last used my condo, the Atrium added some daily fees to the bill that amounted to $4.50 per person per day. I challenged this with American Express by sending a copy of my contract to them. American Express agreed with my claim and I did not have to pay the fees. So be careful in dealing this outfit.