Ideally, what happens when your airplane touches down is that the sun is shining, the temperature is soothing, and you immediately feel a smile creeping across your lips. After all, you are supposed to be on vacation, right? The place should at least look and feel like paradise, whether it is on a Caribbean beach or in the Swiss Alps.

Assuming round-trip airport transfers were part of your all-expenses-paid promotional deal, you should be met at the airport by a representative from the timeshare resort who will help you collect your luggage and take you to a courtesy shuttle or van. Then, after what hopefully is not too long of a drive, you should find yourself being welcomed to the timeshare resort.

Checking in, finding your room, and getting to know the grounds should be about the same for you at the timeshare resort as it has been at various other resorts and hotels during your previous vacations. The marketing company's goal is to get you nice and relaxed — and, hopefully, to have you grow quite fond of the resort — before they sit you down for their sales pitch, so you should have at least a half a day to settle in and look around before you have to attend the presentation.

Eventually, of course, the time will come for you to join the other prospective timeshare owners in the sales pitch conference room. Do not think you can skate by and enjoy your free vacation without attending! If you fail to sign in and attend the sales presentation (you usually will be asked to show a form of personal identification, such as a driver's license), you will be charged for your entire stay at the timeshare resort, regardless of what the promotion promised.

Remember, your attendance at the sales pitch is a requirement that goes along with accepting the free vacation. Whether you attend the presentation is not a personal decision, unless you are willing to foot the bill for your whole trip — sometimes at higher-than-usual rates — after the fact.

Getting to Know You

When you arrive at the sales presentation, the mood should be decidedly upbeat. Most of these pitch sessions are a good hour to two hours long, and the salespeople want you going into them relaxed with a good attitude. They should welcome you, introduce themselves, and ask you a few questions about benign things like who you are and where you are from. Do not worry about answering these questions. Smile and introduce yourself. In most cases, the salespeople are just being polite and trying to set a good tone.

After everyone has shaken hands, grabbed a complimentary cookie, and the like, you will be asked to sit down so that the sales presentation can begin. Usually, the salesman will start by telling everyone a little bit about himself and the timeshare resort, perhaps with a video, PowerPoint, or slide presentation. There may be accompanying music, as well as handouts passed around of newspaper or magazine articles that have been written about the timeshare resort. The salesman's job is to help you to understand what you can expect during the rest of his presentation, and to ensure that you understand exactly what product he is selling.

The last thing that is likely to happen before you get into the nuts and bolts of the timeshare purchase details is a segment of the presentation during which the salesman will try to get to know you — and your vacationing habits — better. Again, you can feel free to answer these questions politely, but know that the salesperson, at this point, is beginning to accumulate information that he hopes he can use later to close a deal with you. If you really aren't interested in buying a timeshare, it is best to say so at this point — perhaps by telling the salesperson that you never really go on vacations and that this is your first one in years.

On the other hand, if you are interested in buying a timeshare, now is the time to be perfectly frank. Tell the salesperson exactly what you expect to get out of a vacation, and make him work hard to respond with detailed information about precisely why his timeshare opportunity is the one you should be considering. The more information you give him, the better able he will be able to explain how his product might meet your needs.

The Presentation

At some point, the salesman will begin going directly into his pitch. This should include some combination of information about the developer who is building the timeshare resort, the company that is going to be managing it (if different from the developer), and the types of units that he has available for sale that day. You are likely, again, to be shown pictures, either in the form of slides, a movie, or glossy brochures. Room layouts, resort layouts, even topographical maps may be handed to you for consideration.

If you are at a resort managed by a well-known company, such as Marriott or Hilton, you also are likely to be given additional information about the company's history, financial strength, worldwide reach, and the like. The salesperson, of course, wants you to understand that the timeshare units he is selling come with the full backing of a powerful brand name that you may already know well.

Do not be surprised if the salesperson talks quite a bit about how important a timeshare purchase can be in strengthening your family. Phrases like “investing in memories” are certain to be lobbed about, with the goal being to keep you thinking more about your family — and feeling heartwarming emotions — than digging analytically into every single word of the sales pitch.

If the salesman can get you to feel all warm and fuzzy about spending more time with your kids, for instance, you are far less likely to question his math when he begins to explain exactly how much of your savings he wants to collect that very afternoon. Be sure to keep your wits about you, especially when the dollars and cents portion of the program swings into effect.

Money Matters

One of the most powerful portions of the salesperson's timeshare presentation is likely to be the segment about how much money you stand to save during the next twenty or thirty years if you simply invest in a timeshare today. This part of the pitch can certainly be true — and it is therefore worth considering very carefully. The trick, of course, is to make sure you are being given all the numbers you need to make a realistic assessment of your own long-term financial picture.

For starters, make sure that the price you are being given for the timeshare unit is the lowest price available. Many salespeople inflate the price of the unit for sale, just to gauge your reaction, and then lower it later on as if they are giving you a really good deal. Your smart move — no matter what the asking price — is to haggle. Odds are, you will be able to lower the asking price by at least several thousand dollars.

As you read in Chapter 2 of this book, there is a compelling case to be made for the long-term financial savings that can come with buying a timeshare at the right price. If you are willing to accept — and this is definitely an if — that vacation accommodations such as hotel rooms are going to see inflationary rises in the neighborhood of 5 percent, per year, for the rest of your vacationing lifetime, then it is difficult to deny the financial advantages that can come with purchasing a timeshare.

Remember the timeshare-versus-hotel examples from Chapter 2? According to the Marriott Vacation Club calculator, if you spend $150 per night on hotel rooms this year, you can anticipate spending $251.32 per night in ten years, $409.37 per night in twenty years, and $666.81 per night in thirty years (based on a 5 percent, per year, inflation model). By taking one week's worth of vacation each year for the next thirty years, at those rates, the calculator shows that you will have spent $75,341.65 on hotel rooms.

That is, of course, far less than you will have spent if you plunk down $25,000 for a timeshare unit at today's prices — and therein lies the sales pitch. What you need to remember is that your $25,000 purchase price is far from the only fee you will be paying during the next few decades.

Hidden Extra Costs

A good salesman will break down the entire financial picture for you, instead of simply comparing a timeshare unit's price against the cost of thirty years' worth of hotel rooms. Additional financial considerations that you must take into account include:

• Annual resort maintenance fees ($200 to $600 per year)

• Special assessment fees (possibly hundreds of dollars every few years)

• Exchange fees (in the neighborhood of $125 per exchange request)

• Mortgage interest payments (possibly many thousands of dollars, depending on your financing)

When you roll all of these costs into one bundle, and only then compare that total number against the total cost of hotel rooms, will you be dealing with an apples-to-apples comparison.

Any time you are asked to compare simply the timeshare's purchase price against the cost of hotel rooms, you are being given an apples-to-oranges set of figures that cannot be trusted.

Also keep in mind that you are under no obligation to answer any questions during this part of the discussion about your income, savings, or any other personal financial information. You are there to listen to the salesman discuss his financial offer, not to share your financial status with him or anyone else in the room.

Timeshare Tour

After the salesman has given his presentation and allowed plenty of time for a question-and-answer session, you and the other potential timeshare buyers will be taken for a tour of one or more of the units being sold. If you are already at the resort, you will not have to go far, but if you are far from the location of the available units, you should be provided with transportation such as a golf cart or courtesy shuttle.

Ask as many questions as you like during the model tour. Remember: This is your opportunity to examine the timeshare product with all five of your senses. Examine the timeshare unit as you would any other real estate property, looking for, among other things:

• Evidence of water leaks on the ceiling

• Evidence of poor construction, such as crumbling grout in the bathroom

• Evidence of cheap construction, such as peeling countertops in the kitchen

• Reputable brand names on appliances such as washers, dryers, and refrigerators

• Evidence of maintenance around terraces or balconies

The odds are, as this is a model unit meant to wow you, that none of these things will be a problem during the tour. The timeshare unit should be in pristine condition, leaving you drooling instead of dreading. In fact, a model timeshare that is in less than five-star condition is a sure sign that the resort may have some sort of problems. This is just common sense: If the resort can't take care of the one unit it is showing off frequently to potential customers, imagine how little it is doing to maintain other units and amenities that existing customers see only once a year.

The Unit-for-Unit Question

One of the most important questions you can ask during the tour is whether the model that you are being shown is identical to the model you will be offered for purchase.

Do not assume that just because you are being shown a spotless two-bedroom timeshare with a gorgeous view of the stunning Caribbean Sea that this particular unit is the same size as — or even on the same side of the resort as — the unit you will be offered for purchase. Far too many people have taken tours of top-level timeshares only to find out later that what they in fact went on to purchase were units with excellent views of the resort's garbage cans.

If you are serious about signing a timeshare contract that day, insist on being shown the exact unit you would own after the deal goes through. Again, this is common sense: You wouldn't buy a house or a car back home without seeing it at least once, would you? The same rule applies to a major purchase in paradise.

If Your Unit Isn't Built Yet

As the popularity of timeshare vacations continues to grow, developers are building more and more resorts — and sometimes offering units for sale before a single shovelful of dirt has been moved on the site. In this case, you of course cannot be shown an actual timeshare unit, as none yet exist. You will be asked to rely on the reputation of the developer, resort, and exchange company when making your purchase.

This can be a reasonable request, and it is not necessarily a bad move to purchase a timeshare unit before it is built. However, you must go into such a purchase with the full knowledge that problems might occur along the way. Construction permits could be denied, underground problems could be discovered on the site, unforeseen issues may force unit floor plans to change — the list goes on and on.

The Moment of Truth

Okay: You've been greeted, fed, pitched, toured, questioned, answered, and then some. At this point in the timeshare salesman's program, you will be asked to buy — at least a few times, and likely by at least a few people. The salesman in the room, like all salesmen everywhere, is trying to get you to purchase his product. He wants you to buy it that day, and he will do everything in his power to make the deal happen.

Do not be surprised if you are offered a one-day-only substantial discount, such as a 10 percent knockdown on the purchase price, or a one-day-only hefty incentive, such as additional points to be used at a points-based resort. This sales tool is commonly used during timeshare presentations to give you and everyone else in the room a reason to sign on that day. It is no more a scam than, say, an on-the-spot discount offered by a replacement window salesman in your home. It is simply a way to entice you into spending your money on that particular day.

Of course, it doesn't feel that way when you're sitting in the chair being told that if you don't commit right at that very moment, your potential discount or bonus points will be lost forever. In fact, it can feel almost threatening, as if you are being told you are an idiot if you fail to purchase at that precise second.

Simply knowing in advance that this type of offer is likely to be made is one way of buffering the psychological blow. Knowledge, as they say, is power, and if you know going in what you can expect, you will be less disturbed by it when it actually happens.

The multiple-salesman pitch is another sometimes off-putting sales tool that will seem less abrasive to you if you know it is likely to come your way. This is a method of sales in which the original salesman, seeing that you are not moving in the direction he wants, will bring in another salesman or supervisor to talk with you. Again, this is commonplace in timeshare sales, and it can feel very high-pressure to you during the actual sales process.

Just remember that you are under no obligation to buy anything, from anyone, no matter how many different salespeople are sent your way. Be honest, be straightforward, and do not feel pressured to deviate from your desires whether they are to buy or not to buy.

The odds are that you will see no more than three salespeople during the course of any presentation; it doesn't make sense for the resort to waste any more employees' time at that point — so keep in mind that there is an end coming soon if you find yourself being double- or triple-teamed.