It's a long flight, but it's not an unreasonably expensive flight. Especially if you live in a place with winter, it might be nice to visit in novemberish and marchish to get a warm week in between your cold at home. There's lots of people who live near me and visit Hawaii once a year.
Personally, I'd be more likely to do a two week stay than two one week stays, I'd rather reduce my time on an airplane. But leaving for two weeks is harder than leaving for one for all sorts of reasons.
Also, like, how do you even handle the resentment?
Odds are you're just staying with tourists most of the time, and whenever you do need to deal with the locals you have to ignore their thinly-veiled contempt mixed with self-loathing for depending on your patronage.
I hear it gets kind of awkward for Paris people getting summer homes in Britanny. I'm pretty sure the degree of hostility towards mainland Americans getting winter homes in Hawai must be much higher.
Some of them are “points-based” and you can spend your points at different resorts that they own and hypothetically have some flexibility in time but “points” should be a bad smell, see
Where they actually cheat to help you get enough points that you think you could win them when they stop cheating the game is unwinnable. If the cops show up they will see the carnie playing ‘honestly’ and not see anything wrong. In terms of psychology it is the king of scams.
In the case of the timeshare schemes you will find all sorts of problems and limitations when you try to redeem your points, it is like the limitations on airline frequent flier points but raised to the Nth power.
They cover that in their sales pitch. There's supposedly a market for trading timeshares, so you can trade in your timeshare for someone else's, specially if you have a highly coveted one
Of course none of it is as easy as they make it sound.
Right. "Supposedly." I've always avoided options that more or less locked me into a single location.
I do go up to my dad's--now brother's--place in Maine a few times a year but that's as much for family as having a need to go to a specific location. Absent family, I'd probably even vary that a bit.
It’s pretty sweet if you’re on the west coast and you have young kids. Extremely high chance of a good, relaxing time for everyone, and it’s a non stop flight for most people. Plus, many people take multiple vacations in a year.
Even from the west coast it's a 6 hr flight. Combined with time difference, it often means 2 days on travelling alone. Even worse for people in mid west or near west coast, which is the majority of where the population is [0]. For most people I know, Hawaii is a trip once every few years, and definitely not twice a year.
This is a week vacation though, not a weekend. I agree it doesn't work for a weekend, but if you take a full week off things look much better. If you really do want to go to that exact place in Hawaii for one week a year every year for the rest of your life a timeshare is a great deal (assuming the fees are as stated, sometimes what looks like $100/month turns out to be $2000/month) - but I don't know many people who vacation like that. I do plan to go back to Hawaii, but I also have vacation plans for Boston, Florida, California, Spain... Even the people I know who do vacation like that don't do it for life (I make regular trips to visit my in-laws, but they are thinking about moving states so I may have already taken my last visit to their current home)
In the end, the best case a timeshare does save money. However for most people the restrictions mean you are never in the best case and often you are in the worst case and lose money.
Personally, I'd be more likely to do a two week stay than two one week stays, I'd rather reduce my time on an airplane. But leaving for two weeks is harder than leaving for one for all sorts of reasons.