State, Timeshare Group Disagree Over How To Count

Did Hawaii timeshare visitors spend $112 or $160.10 a day in 2004?

A long-running discussion between the state and the timeshare industry on the methodologies they used to calculate spending concluded that there were differences that couldn't be reconciled.

The two groups crunched the figures again and, while they came up with new numbers, they still didn't agree; the state said $90 and the industry group $111.

"There's no way to reconcile," said Pearl Imada Iboshi, the chief economist of the Research and Economic Analysis division of the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

"We have agreed to disagree," she said. "We figured out what the differences in timeshare spenders are and figured we can live with them."

The state and the American Resort Development Association Hawaii have gone back and forth on who had the right numbers after they came out with conflicting reports on the scope of timeshare visitor spending two years ago.

At stake was the credibility of both agencies. Some believed ARDA had an agenda because it was championing the cause of timeshare visitors and trying to prove that they were not cheapskates, as timeshare detractors have sometimes claimed.

The resort association's report said timeshare visitors spent about $160.10 a day during their vacation. State economists calculated that each timeshare visitor spent about $112.

The source of the problem was found to be the maintenance fee, an average of $600 annually, that timeowners paid. ARDA included this as a more than $30 expense per day for each visitor while the state didn't include these numbers.

"The question was whether or not to include timeshare maintenance fees and it merited a fair amount of discussion," Iboshi said. Those timeshare fees all add up.