The sun might be setting on the timeshare holiday concept in New Zealand, popular in the 1980s, but the boomers still hanging on to the dream remain having the time of their lives. Photo / 123rf
The wave of 1980s investors enticed by promises of endless sunset cocktails on the balcony of a timeshare unit are now wanting out. As the lawyers move in, Tracy Neal asks if the sun is setting on the once-popular holiday getaway concept.
Every summer for the past three decades, Bill O’Meara has packed up the family, the jetski and trail bikes and headed for their timeshare unit in the balmy, subtropical Bay of Islands.
Their allotted two weeks each New Year at Club Paihia beckon as strongly today as it did almost 30 years ago when he and his wife bought their timeshare, two hours from their home.
“We never run out of things to do. We’re water babies and I’m a keen fisherman, and the other people who go there at that time − the fixed-week owners − are the same people and have the same interests,” O’Meara says.
He says the regulars over the years have become lifelong friends − more like family.
Timeshare, or “holiday ownership”, is a concept where several people own rights to a holiday property, as opposed to the property itself.
The number of owners depended on the timeshare model, with the most common being 52 owners per unit, where each owner got one week of use a year.
The number of owners was then multiplied by the number of apartments available, so, for example, a 50-room resort could have up to 52 owners a unit, resulting in a total of 2600 owners.
O’Meara says the timeshare concept came from the US and arrived in New Zealand in the early 1980s.
Owners paid an up-front purchase price for a unit title that could be tens of thousands of dollars for a new one, or a couple of thousand for something older, plus annual levies to cover maintenance fees.
Purchasers were given a certificate of title. In New Zealand, owners had legal protection under the Unit Titles Act.
O’Meara says securing your week could come down to “drawing straws”, but booking systems were professionally run under a “classification” system, much like any hotel or resort.
Back when he bought their timeshare, it was a better option than an annual overseas holiday.
“There was no way that I could have a holiday at an international holiday destination for the same money.”
He wouldn’t say what he and his wife paid for their timeshare, only that they weren’t among those who forked out up to $30,000 in the early 1980s (about $107,000 today) for a timeshare off the plans.
O’Meara is a firm believer in the merits of the timeshare concept. He holds an active role in the industry association for the timeshares in New Zealand as a member of the New Zealand Holiday Ownership Council (formerly the New Zealand Timeshare Owners Association).
He is also on the body corporate of Club Paihia, which oversees the running of the resort.
For O’Meara and his family, the merits of owning a timeshare include the “enforced getaway” to a favoured spot, in New Zealand and even overseas.
He says there’s a global network of about 500 timeshare resorts offering an exchange system, helmed by companies offering a professional management service.
In New Zealand, many timeshares were managed by Australian firm Classic Holidays, which bought New Zealand‐based Monad Pacific Management Limited in 2023.
Monad managed 13 timeshare resorts across New Zealand, with about 13,000 member families under management.
The acquisition made Classic Holidays the largest timeshare management company in Australia and New Zealand.
O’Meara says owners can swap their week for another timeshare somewhere else in the world through one of the exchange companies.
“As a family, we’ve been to Hawaii every year. We would take two weeks on the Gold Coast and school holidays in the middle of winter.
“We’d get the cheapest airfare we could find to get into Coolangatta, hire a rental car from a fellow who gave us a really good deal and got to know us really well and off we go.”
O’Meara says it does, however, take a lot of planning.
“You’ve got to be on your game.”
He says little can beat a relaxing luncheon boat ride with friends to one of many bays out from Paihia, or a slow jetski ride to one of many inlets, or a kayak trip to Haruru Falls.
“We’d go up on the tide and when the tide turned, we’d come back again.”
However, the tide that brought in the wave of investors in the 1980s now appears to have also turned.
In 2023, media reported there were fewer than 20 such resorts left in New Zealand.
The decision in 2025 to wind up the Bishop Selwyn timeshare resort in Paihia was one of five in as many years handled by one law firm alone.
In July, the High Court cancelled the unit plan that covered all unit titles at the Bishop Selwyn, and that freed up the entire complex to be sold.
It followed an application to the court by the resort’s body corporate to allow its sale.
The decision wasn’t unanimous, but the majority of owners were in favour.
A survey in 2023 of the 263 unit owners showed 59.7% agreed to a wind-up of the scheme and sale of the property.
At a meeting the following year, 83% voted in favour of a motion to cancel the unit plan, although not all owners could be found.
Justice Jason McHerron said in his judgment that many owners had formed the view that the annual costs of keeping their timeshare weeks did not provide sufficient value, or they no longer had a need for their timeshare holiday accommodation.
Levies are typically in the $800-$1000 range and are paid to the body corporate to cover maintenance and any development.
Justice McHerron said about 17% of the survey respondents last stayed at the Bishop Selwyn two or three years ago and 24% at least four years ago.
He said unit owners looking to sell their interests had found there was no market for timeshare leases and where sales did happen, the vendor was unlikely to receive much, if anything.
He was satisfied it was an appropriate case for the court to exercise its discretion to make orders authorising the cancellation of the unit plan, which was approved to allow sale of the whole property.
It was envisaged a share of the proceeds would be allocated to each owner according to their respective interests in the unit plan.
Justice McHerron said a registered valuer would determine this on a percentage basis for each unit and would then be used to calculate the distribution of the sales proceeds after the costs of the sale have been paid.
The Bishop Selwyn Resort on almost 2500sq m of land in downtown Paihia had an insurance value of $20 million and was listed for sale in June 2025 for $5.6m.
Agent Ross Robertson, who recently retired, was handling it as his swansong, one-off project.
He told NZME in late October he had fielded a decent amount of interest so far, with 18-20 parties wanting to look at it.
A partner in a Hawke’s Bay law firm, Jonathan Norman, who specialises in the timeshare field, says the dynamic of ownership is fascinating.
“For the people who do use the properties, they absolutely love them. They talk about how their family might have holidayed there for 40 years, that they had the most amazing times and want their children to have the same experience.”
Norman says there’s still a market for timeshares in some areas of the country, but the concept has largely gone out of fashion as the boomers who led the charge begin to fade out.
He says the biggest issue is most owners no longer use them, but are still paying their levies every year and getting very little back.
O’Meara says timeshares have also been at the mercy of increasing competition in the holiday accommodation sector, with the arrival of Airbnb and Bookabach.
Airlines had also become “more aggressive” through there simply being more of them, and the associated travel package deals that have flooded the market.
But many have simply done their time.
“Their life has changed. They bought in when they were 40 and they’re in their 70s now or coming up 80, and some of them are in their 90s.”
Betty is 86 and trying to sell a timeshare unit the family bought beside Lake Taupō in the early 1980s.
She’s one of several owners to have listed their timeshare at the Lakeside Villas Resort. She says it’s time to bid farewell to a place they loved and enjoyed and which her family isn’t keen to take on.
“I’m getting too old for it now. I don’t want to travel,” she says.
Betty and her late husband were drawn to the idea of timeshare ownership in the early 1980s by the promise of an annual holiday at a place they didn’t have to maintain.
It’s right on the lakefront, with walkways nearby and not far from town. Owners also have a swimming pool, spa pool, tennis court, mini golf, squash court, pool table and table tennis at the resort.
“We could just walk in and have a week in Taupō, which we quite enjoyed.”
Betty and her husband also took advantage of the international exchanges to timeshares around the world.
“We went overseas to England and Canada and Australia and I thought that was marvellous.”
Norman says the sale on a timeshare can often come down to a vendor paying the buyer’s legal costs.
“So, you know, it’s pretty grim for people. They’ve paid all the levies and that’s the best they can get out of it.”
Betty is offering the lease plus one fixed week and one floating week at the studio unit at Lakeside Villas Resort for a total of $600.
The annual $545 levy is paid, but will renew in 2026 when the body corporate sets the fees for the year.
“I shouldn’t imagine it’ll be much more,” Betty says.
When she spoke with NZME in October, she’d had interest from one person, but refused their $50 offer.
“I would virtually be giving it to them and they get a holiday this year.”
Norman says a lot of them are now on fixed incomes and worried about passing it down to their children because a timeshare lease does form part of your estate.
Thomas Attwood is among those to have inherited a timeshare at the Bishop Selwyn and the headaches he says came with it.
“The timeshare was our dad’s and when he passed away it was sort of handed over to us.”
Attwood remembers his parents used it regularly “in the early days when all the timeshare was in vogue”.
They initially owned one in Taupō, but that was wound up, so they transferred ownership to one in Tūrangi, but that, too, was wound up.
Attwood says they owned a timeshare at Bishop Selwyn for about 15 years and used it yearly for a family holiday break.
But, it’s an added burden he doesn’t need.
“Dad was retired, so managing all this side stuff was no problem for him.”
That includes the expert organisation it takes to book an extra time at a timeshare outside the allocated week.
“He’d be on the website like a hawk. He was used to the mechanisms and the way the timeshare stuff worked, but for families inheriting it’s kind of, ‘Oh yeah we look on the thing [website] but it’s all been booked out’.
“I think you probably have to be like my dad and know how to work the timeshare system, so it does end up kind of being a burden,” Attwood says.
He compares timeshare ownership to what it’s probably like owning a villa or unit in a retirement home.
“You know you’re looked after and all that sort of stuff and you can live with other elderly people and go to the golf course or the bowling green, but you’re still paying maybe $150 a week [in levies] on something you might have paid thousands for up front.”
Different legal structures surround retirement home ownership, such as freehold, leasehold or a licence to occupy.
Entry costs are typical, which may include a deferred management fee and monthly fees for maintenance, insurance and communal services.
Norman says while there are challenges to selling a timeshare unit, where the market lies is in the bricks and mortar.
“There is a good market for these properties as either motels or other types of accommodation.
“They’ve generally been really well maintained and kept to a pretty good standard, albeit dated as products of the 80s and 90s.”
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.