I think it is that they can be sold more profitably with high pressure than they could be sold to shoppers who have a chance to compare. A lot of the market is getting people while they are on vacation, away from the people they’d usually bounce ideas off of, and when they’re in a hurry and feeling very positively about the destination. Sort of like selling overpriced glo-sticks to kids at night at a theme park, when in the light of day at Wal-Mart glo-sticks probably sell for pennies.
This is where we differ. I did “enter” something, to the extent that I dropped my name in a box.
You’d be wrong. I met with these people, walked away with about $800 worth of free stuff, and provided them with $0 and no personal info beyond name and address, which A) I already gave them and B) every marketing company on Earth already had years ago anyway.
My full report is forthcoming (likely tomorrow) in a separate thread which I’ve not yet had time to write. For now, I’ll just say that it isn’t a scam, unless you have the willpower of steamed bacon. Anyone claiming that these things are scams has clearly never tried this, which is why I went with the advice of those who have, and I didn’t end up disappointed.
OK - Without reading the entire thread to see what has already been posted, I am short of time and wanted to post my experience here.
I used to sell timeshares so a few thoughts
- The prize that you have one will be the cheapest one to them. It may be the $2,000 cruise or whatever, (probably won’t be the cash). What makes it the cheapest is the VERY high proportion of people that never use it.
- Use you will be subject to a high pressure pitch - but do go in with an open mind - I have sold to people that swore and declared that timeshare was the biggest rip-off. It CAN and DOES work for many people - to this day my father still owns one and loves it.
- It sounds counter-intuitive, but the costs of giving even a $500 gift to QUALIFIED prospects can be a very cost effective way of marketing. I once saw an advertising ROI study for a car brand - for every prospect (i.e person that took a testdrive) that walked through their doors they were spending the likes of $700 on “convential” advertising. This puts a slightly different spin on the gift your timeshare marketer is offering.
The gift is based on being “qualified” I would expect that there are some minimum income requirements, relationship requirements of similiar that you filled on on the entry form.
Ha - sorry for posting again so soon - I once had a couple that did exactly this - the husband sat with me sharing his holiday stories while the wife got sent home for the cehque book 
From the perspective of the time-share company, that’s really not the kind of thing you want to put in the hands of someone you just pissed off.
I was in Mazatlan last week, at a timeshare resort (ownership = my gf’s parents). It was very nice.
Big downside = even though we were there as owners, there was additional pressure for us to attend yet another presentation, to get us either to buy another unit (???) or to give them friends/family as further leads to follow up on.
Not to mention, you couldn’t walk fifty feet anywhere in Mazatlan, including the beaches, without some jamoke getting in your face with an offer of some incentive or other to attend their presentation. They even came up to us during dinner at restaurants. After a couple of days I was praying for a taser.
Although it did make me think a little bit: The only thing they want from you is to have you go and listen to their pitch. That’s your only obligation. So I wonder, what would they do if you maintained absolute silence? Sit through the PowerPoint half, then go to the little desk for the one-on-one part, and say nothing? Answer no questions, offer no information, just look blankly and silently at them? I suspect it would be mildly amusing, but I don’t know if it’s 90-minutes-out-of-my-life amusing.
I am honestly curious as to how in hell I’m “qualified.” I didn’t sign up for any drawings or whatever, so I can only assume that the timeshare folks sending me postcards got my info off of some sort of direct mail database. I don’t know how much of my spending habits are publicly available for data mining, but I can guarantee you there’s no travel/vacation related purchasing in there. I’ve taken one vacation my entire adult life, and I only managed that because I had friends to crash with – no hotels, just cheap airfare and bus tickets. Once in the last 15 years.
Or income: even when working full-time, I make the smallest salary of anyone I know, and usually by a five-figure margin. I have virtually no disposable income. Or assets. Or anything that might make me look wealthy.
While I do have reasonably good credit, I manage that by not buying things I can’t afford, like timeshares.
So how on earth do I “qualify” that I keep getting these postcards? Even if I believed I won a vacation, I wouldn’t bother going to pick it up, because I couldn’t afford to pay for even the meals while away, nevermind any kind of entertainment (and who would want to travel just to sit in a hotel room doing nothing? I can sit and do nothing at home for free). I certainly can’t pay for a timeshare, so not only would I be a waste of a perfectly good “prize,” I’m a waste of postage.
So, genuine question, how am I getting pre-qualified for this? Or are these particular timeshare people just incompetent?
Haven’t read the whole thread yet, but when I ‘won’ one of these time share trips/sales pitches, I forfeited the prize because I wasn’t married/in a serious relationship. Apparently I HAD to bring a SO with me the company could also hard sell them.