Just out of curiosity, but couldn't deleting the vacation hood be the problem? If his sims went on vacation, met some of the locals and suddenly those locals were deleted with the hood, would that cause this problem? I've always thought that sub-hoods shouldn't be deleted after being played for this reason, so I'm wondering if I'm wrong.
You can delete a university, provided there is another university for the dormies to go to, and you move your playables out to the sim bin before deleting. You delete the university in game (the game will not allow this if there is only one uni in your hood). Dormies will reappear in the new university.
I think, as with NL and OFB sub-hoods, there are a number of special NPCs that are created in BV that would make it a very bad thing to delete. The game may not allow you to delete your one island holiday sub-hood, for example, and if you delete it in any other way, there is a good chance that it will bork the hood. If this was done, I suspect the hood is doomed.