Timeshares Aid Isle Economy
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By Daniel Dinell
Vice President of Hilton Grand Vacations Club, Chair of the American Resort Development Association of Hawaii
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I want to buy a timeshare.” It is an unsought product. Every day thousands of hardworking Hawaii residents show people a different way of vacationing - owning instead of renting accommodations.
Timeshare is when people purchase an interest - traditionally one week annually, but sometimes more or less - in a resort accommodation to use for a set number of years, or often, as in fee simple real estate, in perpetuity.
This submarket of our hospitality industry has a profound impact on our Hawaii residents. It helps diversify and bring stability to our economy by keeping our families and neighbors employed. In fact, timeshare touches 34,420 working people in Hawaii. And, according to a 2007 study, direct and indirect timeshare spending was responsible for an estimated $4.5 billion and generated $511 million in tax revenues. That’s significant.
On average, timeshare visitors spend about $4,202 per trip to the Islands. And if you think that’s money spent only in Waikiki or Kaanapali, think again. Studies show that timeshare visitors spend about 86 percent of those dollars with businesses away from the resort sites in which they are staying- at local restaurants, convenience stores, shopping malls, grocery stores, and on a wide range of entertainment activities.
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For our state’s largest industry, the recession has been one of the most impactful in recent memory, but it would be much worse without timeshare. Whether we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel is still unknown. But there is a bright spot - according to DBEDT, in the first eight months of 2009, the number of visitors staying in timeshare units increased by 4.6 percent, bucking the industry’s recent downward trend.
Even in difficult economic times, the numbers show that timeshare owners are committed to Hawaii and will come year in and year out. And that’s good news, not only for the visitor industry, but for the entire state, as we weather this difficult economic climate. American Resort Development Association of Hawaii (ARDA-Hawaii) member companies continue to promote Hawaii, introducing timeshare to an important group of visitors who love Hawaii.
Over the past several decades, the timeshare industry has matured and come of age, and is now a major contributor to Hawaii’s economy and our Island lifestyle. So the next time you hear someone saying something negative about timeshare or visitors in general, think about how much tougher life might be without them.
Why should you support Hawaii’s timeshare industry? Simple: because it supports us. Mahalo.
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ARDA-Hawaii is
Hawaii’s timeshare community, whose members include: All Islands Timeshare Resales, Diamond Resorts, Disney Vacation Club, Hawaii Escrow & Title, Hilton Grand Vacations Club, Imanaka Kudo & Fujimoto, Imperial Vacation Club, Interval International, Lawai Beach Resort, Marriott’s Ko Olina Beach Club, Maui Schooner Resort (Trading Places), McCorriston Miller Mukai Mackinnon, Old Republic Title & Escrow of Hawaii, PAHIO Development, RCI, ResortQuest Hawaii, Royal Aloha Vacation Club, Shell Vacation Clubs - Hawaii, SSFM International, Starwood Vacation Ownership, and Wyndham Vacation Ownership.
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