Hotels Shake Up Time-Share Act

LIKE many other potential time-share owners, Candace Gilbert was hooked first by the freebie. On regular visits to a Hilton hotel in Hawaii, Mrs. Gilbert and her husband, Jim, were offered resort credits for attending sales presentations to buy a stake at a Hilton time-share property.

“We started doing that in 2000, just for the free meal,” Mrs. Gilbert said.

At the time, the couple, who are from Austin, Tex., were considering buying a vacation home in Hawaii. But after looking for a while, Mr. Gilbert, who is 65 and retired, decided he didn’t want the headaches of maintaining a second home, and Mrs. Gilbert didn’t want to be stuck vacationing in the same place every year. What’s more, said Mrs. Gilbert, 53, “the houses we were looking at were a million-plus and they weren’t even on the beach.”

So last June, armed with knowledge gleaned from attending numerous time-share pitches over the years, the Gilberts bought a two-week share at a Hilton property on the Big Island of Hawaii. A few weeks ago, they bought another week at a yet-to-be-completed Hilton resort on Oahu.

As the prices of second homes move out of reach for many Americans, older couples like the Gilberts are buying time shares as an alternative. Baby boomers account for about half of time-share buyers, according to the American Resort Development Association, a trade group in Washington. [more]
(Hat Tip: ARDA Newsbriefs)

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Also, if you’d like to hear about how the baby boomers will soon revolutionize the travel and leisure industries, don’t miss Holiday President David Skinner’s groundbreaking presentation, “Dawn of a New Age.” You can view it here.

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