Your Trip’s in the Mail

One piece of unsolicited mail, several credit-card billings, a few pleasant beach days and several uncomfortable hours at sea have arisen so far in my 15-month relationship with the vacation certificate industry. But like many troubled relationships, ours ultimately comes down to a few waves of anxiety and a couple of decisive moments.

The most crucial of those moments cropped up on a blustery January afternoon here on Florida’s southeast coast.

Outside, rain drummed on the roof, the wind ripped fronds from the carefully coiffed palms of the Palm Aire Resort and Spa in Pompano Beach, and sent the salespeople and their prospective customers scrambling for cover. Inside, my wife and I sat sequestered from the others at a desk in the last-chance salesroom, the one that many customers don’t realize is a salesroom until they’re in it. Ahead of us lay the Florida-Bahamas vacation that lured us here in the first place. Across the table, between us and our vacation, sat a saleswoman named Bobby, not blinking.

Bobby wanted to know why we were holding back. Why we were throwing our future vacation dollars away on overpriced hotel rooms. If we didn’t act immediately, after all, we could forget about this prime bargain. Bobby wanted to sell us a time-share unit in the worst way.

As she pressed the pitch, Bobby turned from my wife to me and back, her eyes fixing us with the sort of laser glare I imagine Gen. George S. Patton turning on his troops just before battle, assessing their fortitude. Can we be trusted? those eyes asked. Would we let her down?

Bobby had reason for optimism. Despite warnings from consumer advocates and government regulators, time-share sales in the United States have surpassed an estimated $1.7 billion per year. About 1.6 million Americans now own vacation “intervals” of a week or more, by the estimate of veteran time-share industry consultant Richard Ragatz.

Most buyers pay about $5,000 to $15,000 for the basic product, an “interval” that generally amounts to one week per year in a vacation condominium forever, or for the life of a long-term lease. Though the prices can range widely, depending on your bargaining skills and which week you buy at which location, research shows that buyers usually agree to a down payment of 10% to 20% and a five- to seven-year payment plan (at double-digit interest rates). They also typically pay annual maintenance fees of roughly $200 to $400 for as long as the interval is theirs.

Florida is home to more time-share developers than any other state, but industry figures show that the country’s leading supplier of buyers is California. An estimated 243,900 Californians own time shares, and one of the industry’s principal tools for marketing those time shares is the vacation certificate.

“Certificates,” says state Deputy Atty. Gen. Christopher Ames, “are flooding into California.”

Why does the time-share business continue to grow so ferociously? In large part, many consumer advocates and government regulators say, because the time-share trade has honed a remarkably effective strategy for wooing prospective buyers, tempting them with on-the-spot deals and discouraging pre-purchase research.

Ellen Burr, president of the Resort Property Owners Assn., a consumer group based in Northbrook, Ill., notes that “there are a lot of happy time-share owners out there. They tend to be people who have owned for a number of years, and they’ve learned the system.” Often, she says, those who are satisfied “have bought at a place that they really like, and they just go back to that place over and over again.”

But after nearly a decade of fielding daily letters and calls from regretful consumers who have bought time-share properties on impulse, Burr says, she has settled on this all-purpose advice for anyone who gets a certificate, postcard or other approach-by-mail that seems connected to time-share sales: File it in your garbage can, she counsels, or send it on to your worst enemy.

“The industry is not quite 30 years old, and it’s had a pretty rough childhood, in part because of its marketing,” acknowledges Christopher Larsen, communications director for the American Resort Development Assn., the industry’s leading trade group in Washington, D.C. But now, he asserts, with such established tourism-trade names as Disney, Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton offering time-share products, standards are rising, and the association is trying to persuade developers and marketers to “ease off the high-pressure tactics. . . . We’re in a period of introspection.”

The Pitch

Back in February 1995, I knew little of the time-share industry or its search for self. It was on a Wednesday of that month that our mail carrier came up the drive with a curious unsolicited envelope addressed to my wife, Mary Frances.

“PACK YOUR BAGS,” said the certificate. “You are confirmed to receive a World Class Florida/Caribbean Vacation Package Promotion including all accommodations and a Round-trip Cruise!”

There was no price mentioned on the certificate, which was printed with logos from various reputable organizations, including Radisson, Marriott, Sheraton and the American Society of Travel Agents. But there was no mention of the word free, either, and elsewhere in the mailing, in some of the smallest print, it said, “this is not a contest, sweepstakes or lottery.”

The day after the certificate’s arrival, I called the toll-free number. Rebecca the reservationist answered, asked me many questions, and told me that the company making the offer was Vacation Break, which sends thousands of guests yearly to accommodations in Fort Lauderdale and on Grand Bahama island, about 90 miles east of Fort Lauderdale. We’d get four nights in Fort Lauderdale, two nights on Grand Bahama. To carry us between destinations, we’d have a cruise ship “much like the Love Boat that you’ve seen on TV,” Rebecca said. But there would be no overnights aboard the ship. (In fact, there were no private cabins, unless you paid extra, and the offer had nothing to do with Princess Cruises, which operates the ship seen on “The Love Boat,” although Rebecca didn’t say any of this.)

A few more things: We had to get to Florida on our own. And pay “promotional fees” of $199 per person for the vacation. And, some weeks later, we’d have to pay $89 each in “port fees.” And give them 45 days’ notice before we travel. And take the trip within 18 months.

Already, our tab was $576 plus transportation to Florida, plus we’d have to pay our own hotel taxes. But if we booked this on our own, Rebecca suggested, we’d probably have to pay $1,200-$2,000 per person.

And what was required of us? Well, Vacation Break would like to give us a tour of a “vacation ownership” property. A time-share development, in other words. Under California law, the company couldn’t make the tour mandatory, but it was recommended.

Now, here is where thousands would say thank you and goodbye. But I was curious. For all the warnings I’d read and heard, I’d never come across a firsthand account of what happens on a time-share certificate promotion vacation. What if we suspended a little skepticism? How bad could a week of sun and beaches be? How much could it cost?

The good news was that, since we had called within 48 hours of receiving our mailing, we qualified for a bonus three-day escape to Cocoa Beach or Daytona Beach or Tampa or Orlando, on another trip. The bad news was that Mary Frances and I would have to decide that night whether to accept the offer. Then Rebecca’s supervisor came on to reaffirm the details and point out that we were being taped in case later review was needed.

So this was it, the first moment of truth.

Sign me up, I said.

That night, my Visa card balance rose $398. Over days and weeks that followed, the correspondence rolled in: a congratulatory postcard from Rebecca, a videocassette featuring John Hillerman (formerly Higgins on “Magnum, P.I.”), order forms on which to request our preferred vacation dates.

Then there was a lull, during which I did what many certificate customers are accused of neglecting. Research.

The Biz

The time-share trade, born in the late 1960s, is not merely one global business, but a family of them.

There are developers of time-share lodgings, who had opened 4,145 resorts worldwide as of last year. There are marketers of time-share resorts, who use certificates, telemarketing and street corner salesmen to lure prospects to presentations. There are two massive exchange companies, Interval International and Resort Condominiums International, who arrange for owners worldwide to swap privileges and time slots.

And if you tire of your time share or the payments attached to it, another wing of the family is ready for you: the brokers who pledge to help you sell your interval, probably for less than half of what you originally paid, if you can sell it at all.

An alert company might make money in several ways. And Vacation Break, founded 11 years ago in Fort Lauderdale, has been such a company. The company began as a marketing firm that helped sell other developers’ time-share resort projects. But since 1993, the company has been developing its own time-share resorts. In 1995, it grossed $117.5 million in total revenues. When “Vacation Ownership World” magazine listed 34 of the largest time-share developers worldwide, Vacation Break ranked 12th in sales volume for 1995.

Most of the company’s business stems from a two-pronged strategy:

First, using mailings that officials estimate at 300,000 to 500,000 certificates weekly, Vacation Break persuades consumers to buy weeklong promotional vacations in Florida and the Bahamas, last year reporting sales of 149,162 packages.

Then, pressing hard to make same-day sales at its resort presentations, Vacation Break sales teams woo those vacationing consumers. The company’s target demographic audience: consumers age 35 to 59 with annual incomes of more than $35,000 and an interest in travel.

The Switch

At last, on Sept. 1, a letter announced that we’d gotten our requested vacation dates. All we needed to do now was call to confirm, and if we chose, we could book our airline tickets through Vacation Break’s in-house travel agency.

But the Vacation Break phone representative, John, was enthusiastic about a “new option”--Orlando instead of Fort Lauderdale, and a more elaborate cruise. Yes, it would cost more, $311 each beyond what we’d already paid, but “it really seems to give you a little bit more for your money,” John said.

Was this the big bait-and-switch? I asked for time to consult with my wife, then when John and I connected again, I told him we’d decided to stick with Fort Lauderdale. There was a long pause, and I sensed that John was displeased with me.

He kept asking what my interests are--the beach, shopping, the casino, what?--so that he could plan special things for us. Even though we were clinging to the Fort Lauderdale plan, it turned out there was another special opportunity he could offer us. Instead of the Royal Islander Hotel on Grand Bahama Island, which he said was a costly taxi ride away from the beach and shopping, we could move over to the Port Lucaya Resort and Yacht Club for a meals-included deal. We’d be across the street from the beach, with a mall and restaurants next door. Considering the money we’d save on food and transportation, it would be well worthwhile to pay an extra $120 per person now and switch.

Uh, sure.

Oh yes, and there was the $89 for the seven-day Fort Lauderdale Alamo rental car we’d need. Another $329 (for the resort and the rental car, combined) went onto my Visa bill, with $664 soon to follow for our two LAX-Fort Lauderdale round-trip

tickets on Carnival Airlines. All this was arranged by Vacation Break’s travel agency operation, which like most travel agencies takes commission payments from airlines and other travel providers.

After booking, I called around to check: Sure enough, that regularly scheduled Carnival Airlines flight did offer the best ticket price for our dates, by a wide margin. Which was a comfort, because so far, the tab for our world-class vacation package promotion was $1,569, and we hadn’t gotten out of Los Angeles yet.

Now came another lull, a little more research and a helpful coincidence. As our courtship with Vacation Break was advancing, the company was preparing to make its first public stock offering, a step that by federal law requires extensive disclosures of how a business makes and spends its money.

Between Jan. 1, 1993, and Sept. 30, 1995, the company’s Dec. 21, 1995, prospectus reports, Vacation Break sold 308,416 vacation packages, but just 127,560 trips were actually taken. In general, the prospectus reports, “approximately 45% of all purchasers use their vacation package.” In other words, more than half of the company’s vacation-package customers fail to travel during the 18-month life of the offer, and lose their money. In the case of Mary Frances and me, that would have been at least $398 down the drain.

Why so many no-shows? When I asked Bill Smith, Vacation Break’s vice president of marketing, he cited various factors, from simple forgetfulness to buyer’s remorse, and said the company was trying to overcome those impediments. The company’s prospectus, however, points out that those unused vacations have yielded “significant revenues.”

None of this, authorities say, indicates illegality. But state officials have taken notice of Vacation Break and its offers.

Within the last 16 months, company officials acknowledge, Arizona and Virginia each levied fines against Vacation Break, accusing the firm or its independent representatives of misrepresentations in their sales pitches. The Virginia officials collected $2,000; as of March 29, the Arizona attorney general was still seeking $10,000.

In addition, Florida state records show that from 1989 to March 22, 1996, the state’s Division of Consumer Services registered 448 complaints against Vacation Break. That’s more complaints than senior consumer complaint analyst Vidal Cortijo could remember being lodged against any of the other roughly four dozen currently operating certificate companies. But Vacation Break also handled far more customers in that time than most other companies--and then there’s a striking pattern in the disposition of those complaints.

Of those 448 complaints, Cortijo said that 413 have been resolved to the consumer’s satisfaction and 26 have been set aside for various reasons. Just nine complaints remained open against the company as of late March--a minuscule number considering the volume of Vacation Break’s business.

In his experience, Cortijo said, most complaints are from consumers who agree to a promotional vacation, make a payment or two, and then, after Florida’s 30-day cancellation period has passed, change their mind and want out. If those customers take the trouble to complain to authorities, Cortijo said, they tend to get refunds. Company representatives affirm that view.

In other words, though most Vacation Break customers never take the trips they’ve paid for, and some find themselves sold on different trips from those first advertised, only a small fraction complain. When they do, the company apparently moves quickly to satisfy and quiet them. And the new prospects keep rolling in.

The Trip

At last, Vacation Day arrives. On the afternoon of Jan. 6, my wife and I board a Carnival Air jet at LAX. Departure is a little over an hour late. And long before we touch down in Fort Lauderdale, I begin to sense that I’m slipping through a looking glass into another world--a sensation that will persist for most of the next week.

About halfway through the flight to Fort Lauderdale, the dialogue of the movie “Nine Months” suddenly switches to Spanish, and despite passenger protests, never switches back. After landing, we approach the Alamo rental car office and find a long, slow-moving line of cranky travelers. Fifty minutes later, while I’m outside guarding the luggage, the clerk at the counter talks my wife into buying collision-damage waiver insurance, thereby adding about $180 to our prepaid rental car bill of $89. It’s about midnight now.

Rolling up at the Radisson Bahia Mar Beach Resort, despite advertised rates of more than $100 nightly, we find no valet parking cars and no bellman handling bags.

“They all have the flu,” says the affable security guard, who takes on both duties. Also, there’s no restaurant open after 10, so we order deli-delivered sandwiches.

The room is fine. We sleep.

The Push

On the morning of Day Two, we rise late and take breakfast at Joe Belair’s 24-hour diner. Then, following the directions in the envelope that was waiting for us at the hotel desk, we find our way to the Palm Aire Resort and Spa, passing on our way the tall, gleaming glass tower of Vacation Break corporate headquarters.

The day is cold and windy when we pull up at the well-manicured grounds, but inside all is cozy and efficient. Two by two, couples of various ages from various states are led away to the dining room by sales persons until there are more than a dozen threesomes nestled around the buffet tables.

Our salesperson is Barbara. She asks about what we do, how long we’ve been married, our family plans, our plans for the weeks ahead. She tells us we’re really very lucky to have been chosen for this offer. She guesses my age six years too young, and remarks briefly upon my resemblance to Fabio, an observation that draws great laughter every time I tell this story to anyone who can see me.

Though it’s my wife who has been invited by Vacation Break and not me, I go ahead and volunteer that I work for Times Mirror, a corporation that publishes books, magazines and newspapers, and that I write about travel, and that I may write about this trip. A little later, I pull out a notebook.

Barbara seems a bit cautious about my occupation at first, but then plows ahead with her pitch. She leads us on a stroll across the grass, delivers us to the little theater for the six-minute Vacation Break audiovisual production, leads us through model condominium units. Eventually we sit with Barbara at another table in another room filled with threesomes. Good cheer and easy-listening jazz are in the air. And after more than three hours of geniality and gradual introduction, we hear a price for the first time.

The next few pages in my notebook are filled with numbers and references to “Gold Crown” designations, maintenance fees, trade fees, taxes, down payments, discounts available only for a short time. I have no material from Vacation Break with any price information because the company didn’t give any out. And the more I jot down in my notebook, the more Barbara seems perturbed.

“There’ll be time for that later!” she scolds me at one point.

The first price we are quoted is $16,500 for a one-bedroom condo unit on the premises, one week a year, with a $2,000 discount for buying today. (That, Barbara says, can be handled with a 20% down payment of $3,466.50 today, then five years of monthly payments at $281.48 each, financed through Vacation Break.)

Soon we are joined by Jeff, a beefy, engaging fellow with a Snoopy tie and a black-and-white blazer, and rapid-fire delivery. Now we hear about two-bedroom units for $13,500. Also, around this time I ask about the interest rates on these loans. From 15.9% to 17.9%, they say.

Then, a few minutes later, through some remarkable turn of events, a two-bedroom suddenly becomes available at $11,500. There are no guarantees, Barbara and Jeff tell us, that any of these opportunities will be here tomorrow.

When we seem hesitant, Jeff asks Barbara to fetch a cup of water, leans forward, and whispers to us that if we change our minds later, the fine print in the contract allows us 10 days to reconsider our decision. Delivered in this way, this tidbit seems like a fine insider’s tip. In fact, it is a requirement of Florida law, a right of rescission applicable to every time-share sale in the state.

Through all this, my wife and I ask many questions, treat our sales folk cordially, tell no lies. When we finally say no and seem firm about it, Jeff and Barbara suddenly notice my wife’s resemblance to Lea Thompson, the sitcom actress of “Caroline in the City.” Amid cheerful banter about this remarkable likeness, they lead us out of the room, thereby removing our potentially negative vibes from the sales energy surrounding the room’s remaining threesomes.

So we’re done now, right? Almost. Next stop is the room next door, for what seems to be a customer-service survey. The interviewer, a blue-eyed woman named Bobby, with her name on her necklace, asks if everyone has treated us well. But then she reaches behind her desk, and turns back to us with a look of new resolve. The developer has called. Information has been received. Yet another unit is newly available, a more affordable unit with more modest benefits. The price is $5,700--about a third of the first price quoted to us.

Now Bobby’s eyes bore into us. What could possibly keep us from seeing the value here? Would we let her down?

You bet we would.

And off we dart into the waning afternoon. The ordeal has lasted five hours, three times longer than it took with many other, more resolute couples. This, my wife says, has been the most amazing and awful sales experience she’s ever had. In fact, she wants to get out of the parking lot and off the property before we say another word about it. I owe her.

We drive back to the Radisson, decompress, treat ourselves to a nice dinner on Fort Lauderdale’s trendy Las Olas Boulevard. Now we’re really on vacation.

Rough Seas

Day Three, which we view as the first day of the rest of our lives, begins early. We report to the port for our cruise to Grand Bahama Island at 6:15 a.m., joining about 1,000 other passengers in bitter cold. Dragging our luggage, we slowly file into the cruise terminal, hand over our bags and get our paperwork processed.

We also look at the brochures and paperwork of others. In connection with this cruise, we prepaid $89 each in “port fees,” a description that some travelers might imagine means taxes. As Vacation Break’s marketing vice president later acknowledges, $49 of that goes to the government via the cruise company, and $40 is “retained by Vacation Break to cover the cost of shipboard personnel.” (Beginning with sales made in June of last year, the Vacation Break vice president says, the company dropped the “port fees” of $89, and replaced it with “departure fees” of $49.)

An hour after arriving, we board the Discovery 1, where Bloody Marys are selling fast and a cruise director who looks about 20 years old is wandering the room with a microphone, making crude jokes in an English accent. Waitresses rush to distribute bingo cards. Our cruise director asks who’s traveling with Vacation Break. A majority, it seems from the show of hands.

There are more people than seats in the Venus Lounge, so we cling to our spots. As the boat lurches, a white-haired man takes a tumble near our seats.

“My wife’s gotta be crazy, coming on this,” he mutters.

Through no fault of Vacation Break, the unusually strong winds outside are gusting to 30 mph, and the lurching intensifies. Mary Frances and I are Dramamine-protected, but clearly hundreds are not. By 10 a.m., there’s nausea throughout the good ship Discovery 1. From one end of the vessel to the other, inert bodies lie next to tell-tale white paper bags with twist-tie tops. In the casino’s men’s room, the sink brims with vomit. Back in the bingo area, the caller, speaking on microphone, helpfully recommends the peanut butter sandwiches “because they taste the same coming up as they do going down.”

Pained groans rise from the audience.

Among those neither groaning nor sleeping, time-share presentation war stories are a common topic. Tom of Oakland, a 60ish businessman and Vacation Break traveler, tells me about his encounter the day before.

“They tried everything, and I said absolutely not,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “And then as a last ditch, at that last lady, they offered me one for $6,300.”

And he bought it. Telling me, he reveals neither pride nor sheepishness. It’s mostly for his son, he says; at that price, it seemed a good value.

Company statistics suggest that for every 100 prospects who receive unsolicited certificates from Vacation Break, four to six buy a vacation package. Of those, about 45% actually take a vacation trip. Of those who take the trip, about 90% attend the sales presentation. And of those who attend a sales presentation, about 10% buy a time share. Last year, those sales added up to more than $40 million in revenues for the company. The average Vacation Break interval fetched about $11,500.

Aside from Tom of Oakland, all the other time-share prospects I speak with during the week say they’re non-buyers.

“It all seems a little sketchy,” ventures David Mendoza, 30, of Costa Mesa. His girlfriend, Terri Lynn Umentum of Aliso Viejo, recalls an argument with a salesperson, in which Umentum found herself yelling, “How do you expect me to do this?”

The Vacation, At Last

From here, things flow more smoothly, although not always cheaply. Our hotel on Grand Bahama island, a five-minute walk from the beach, is a clean, unremarkable place owned by Vacation Break. The meals there are adequate. Our island tour guide shows us verdant gardens, and takes us past the piano-shaped home built by the late Count Basie. It seems to be impossible to ride a taxi anywhere on the island for less than $4 per person, so as we explore further, we find the fares adding up.

Still, the beaches are gorgeous, the pine groves that line the shoreline are striking, and the turquoise water is warm. Mary Frances has fun getting a few strands of hair strung into beaded plaits; I take pleasure in sampling conch soup and pounding on a few musical steel drums.

The cruise back to Florida is a far calmer affair, with no visible cases of seasickness at all and food that isn’t bad, as meals prepared for 1,000 go.

Back on the mainland, the good times continue. We take a pleasant stroll around beachfront Fort Lauderdale, doing a little more wandering on Las Olas Boulevard, make the 45-minute drive into Miami and explore the Art Deco architecture of South Beach. We return the rental car and catch the flight home.

The Final Tab

If I worked for Vacation Break, I’d point out that these days of relaxation are worth a great deal in the hurly-burly of contemporary life, and that they deserve far more space in a story like this. I’d also point out that all this hospitality came despite our decision not to buy a time-share, er, vacation-ownership, unit.

Instead, however, I’m a consumer--a professional consumer, in fact, of travel industry products. And customers tend to remember vividly those events that cost them money, cause them anxiety and disagree with their expectations.

Tallying the hotel bills, the parking fees, the taxi fares and all the prepaid expenses, I calculate the cost of our weeklong holiday at $1,763.84--nearly $295 per night. Toss in the price of several meals we ate out, a pair of island tours, (never mind the extra car insurance) and we’re out-of-pocket more than $2,000.

That’s enough for a lot of things that don’t involve certificates or sales presentations. A round-trip, seven-day Carnival cruise between Los Angeles and Puerto Vallarta. Four nights at Los Cabos, Baja California, in an upscale hotel. A package trip to Oahu. Maybe even an off-season week in London, Amsterdam or Rome, if we ate a lot of sandwiches.

But my relationship with the time-share industry isn’t quite over yet. If I understand my options properly, even with all this water under the bridge, our timely response to that mail certificate 15 months ago entitles Mary Frances and me to another Vacation Break trip. The three-day bonus holiday in Cocoa Beach or Daytona Beach or Tampa or Orlando, remember? I have the paperwork here somewhere.

So I suppose this is my final decisive vacation certificate moment: Mary Frances and I hereby decline the three-day bonus holiday. Frankly, I don’t think we can afford any more of these opportunities.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Questions and Answers

A Vacation Break executive answers four common queries:

1. Why do more than half of those who pay for Vacation Break promotional trips never make the trip?

Bill Smith, vice president of marketing for Vacation Break, attributed the drop-off rates--known in the industry as breakage--to several factors: consumers deciding that they can’t afford the time or the cost of the trip after all, procrastination, forgetfulness, and “remorse or doubt about whether they’re going to have a good time.”

To encourage those people to travel, Smith said, the company has increased its reminder mailings, and offers additional incentives, such as extra hotel-nights on a separate trip, to reward those who follow through. Also, he said, Vacation Break grants 12-month extensions to all customers who call or write to ask for more time.

2. If its promotional vacations and time shares are good values that stand on their merits, why does Vacation Break use controversial certificate mailings to sell the vacations and controversial same-day sales tactics to sell its time-share intervals?

“It works,” Smith said. “Implicit in your question is [the suggestion that these techniques are] bad. We’re not bad. And I regret that we use creative executions and direct-mail programs that look like the programs used by other less-legitimate operators in the vacation-package business. . . . But it does work.”

With the time shares in particular, Smith said: “We have a product that is a high-ticket item. . . . The dynamics of personal selling dictate that a sense of urgency and desire and motivation be created during the one opportunity that there is for this sale. . . . If it were summarily judged to be a high-pressure situation, in all candor, I think our [customer satisfaction] scores would be a lot worse.”

3. What kind of customer satisfaction figures does the company’s research show?

Last May, Vacation Break distributed surveys to 4,352 vacation clients, drawing responses from 642. The company reports that 79% found the firm’s reservation agents’ courtesy and information to be excellent or above average; 60% found their Florida hotel accommodations to be excellent or above average; 56% said their impression of the Florida-Bahamas cruise was excellent or above average; 54% found their Bahamas hotel to be excellent or above average, and 64% described the courtesy and professionalism of their time-share presentation as excellent or above average. Of the 642 surveyed, 15% said they bought time-share intervals.

4. Do you think most Vacation Break travelers end up spending more than they expected to when they made that first phone call?

“I’m sure that they don’t realize what the total cost of any particular vacation trip is going to be when they say yes,” Smith said. And that, he added, is why company procedures call for a second representative to join in the conversation and repeat an explanation of what is and isn’t included, with a tape recorder running. “We want absolute assurance that the customer knows that certain things are not included.”

Further, Smith said: “I haven’t yet met a soul who has come back from a vacation having spent less than they planned. . . . But I think there’s a major difference between that fact and a deceptive practice.”

--C.R.