Time-share
groups agree to stop
handbill solicitations

They say they'll operate now
only from booths or licensed
business sites

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Seeking to put an end to annoying solicitations of tourists, members of an association of time-share sales organizations have agreed to stop approaching pedestrians in Waikiki.

ARDA Hawaii, the Hawaii division of the American Resort Development Association, said members representing some 20 time-share sales businesses agreed to operate only from official booths or licensed business premises. Booths are licensed by the state.

"We finally had all our members throughout the state agree that all of them would refrain from hand-billing in the streets of Waikiki," said ARDA spokesman Michael Kaplan, president of Consolidated Resorts Inc.

"I think it's been terrible. A tourist is waiting to cross the street at an intersection and gets accosted," Kaplan said.

He likened time-share solicitations to the religious groups insisting on their right to sell T-shirts, sometimes right outside rent-paying businesses such as Crazy Shirts. "It's silly," he said.

"We've had booth locations that we're paying rent on," Kaplan said, and rival time-share organizations have paid solicitors grabbing people right in front of them.

Kaplan, who is in Las Vegas where his company is building a time-share resort, said the company has seven time-share properties on Maui.

In a letter to the Waikiki Improvement Association announcing the ARDA decision, Kaplan outlined the problem.

"ARDA has recognized the problems of the annoying and offensive flyer distributions, as well as the persons standing on the sidewalks hawking persons to attend sales presentations," he wrote to Rick Egged, WIA president.

As of Sunday, his association's members will stop all such solicitations, Kaplan said.