The letter arrived looking much like many other pieces of junk mail: "Congratulations! You are in a very select group! You have been selected to receive one of the following gifts with a retail VALUE OF UP TO $800."

For details on how to receive "this exciting package", which promised one, two or four nights' free accommodation in various hotels owned by the Accor group, we were urged to call a free number "within 72 hours of receipt of this letter!"

In the fine print on the back, the letter disclosed that the promotion was designed for couples or singles earning more than $50,000 a year and you had to attend a 90-minute timeshare ownership presentation to get the gift.

Which was how, a few weeks later, my husband, our four-year-old daughter and I ended up in a suite in Melbourne's Mercure Grand Hotel, listening to a young saleswoman preach the virtues of Accor Premiere Vacation Club (APVC), a joint venture between the global Accor hotel group and Melbourne's Becton property development group.

In essence, what she was promising was one week's holiday each year, until 2080, at 12 club-owned properties in Australia, for a capital outlay of about $20,000 and an annual maintenance fee of about $500.

Our plan was to listen to the compulsory sales spiel, then bolt with our voucher for four nights in Noumea. Three hours later, when we finally escaped to pick up our other daughter, we had signed up and paid a $2000 deposit.

How did this happen? Partly, it was the high-pressure sales tactics. Rather than sitting back in a room full of people and snoozing through a general presentation, the five couples at our seminar each had their own club salesman taking them through how often they went on holidays, where, why, how much it cost, how much they thought holidays for 80 years would cost and, finally, how the club worked (see panel).

There was a video of delighted members extolling the virtues of the club, a whiteboard with photos of the club's resorts around Australia, vouchers for free meals and - most worrying of all - a "special deal" with extra benefits and a reduced price if we signed up on the spot.

The alternative deal, for those who did not sign up on the day, was so unattractive that our saleswoman admitted no one had ever taken it.

But the main reason we signed up to something we had no intention of buying was that the saleswoman finally confessed - after my lawyer husband asked - that there was a five-day cooling off period.

So we could sign, have a few days to go through the product disclosure statement and the maths, then pull out if it didn't measure up.

And, after going through the 70 pages with a highlighter pen, and doing some number crunching, we reluctantly concluded that it seemed to make sense for our family. Not as an investment that we will make a fortune selling. That was the trap that the much-discredited timeshare industry fell into when it emerged back in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather, it is more of a lifestyle decision to make us take a family holiday each year and make organising it easier.

As for finances, using some equity in our house to lock in 75 years of holidays in 2005 dollars seemed to make sense, before private school fees and perhaps cutting back on work reduced our disposable income.

Financial planner Louise Biti, the head of technical services at Asteron, says this sort of purchase should be treated as a lifestyle decision about how and where you want to spend your holidays, rather than as an investment.

Biti says some of the issues to consider include whether you can redeem your purchase; restrictions and limitations on the accommodation offer; the real cost of any loans schemes offered by the promoters to fund the purchase; and any ongoing fees.

And what of the sales tactics? If the "holiday club" concept is so good, why does APVC sell it so hard?

The club's chief executive, Martin Kandel, says he likes to describe his sales staff's approach as enthusiastic and passionate, rather than aggressive. He says timeshare, because of "the bad old days", is very tough to sell.

"We are trying to sell a product nobody thinks they want, to people who are at a seminar just to get the free gift and who are determined not to buy anything," Kandel says.

"No one likes to be asked for a decision on the day, but the product is really intangible. A lifetime of holidays is not easily demonstrated. At best, we have a couple of hours to persuade people [of the benefits]."

Kandel says the sign-up rate at the presentations is about 12 per cent, of which 22 per cent will exercise the cooling-off clause.

He says that in Australia the sales task is tougher because timeshare purchases are regulated as a managed investment scheme, under the supervision of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). In 2002 the commission took action against the biggest industry player, Trendwest, for misleading and deceptive conduct over its sales seminars.

Greg Tanzer, the commission's executive director of consumer protection, says it still gets complaints about the timeshare industry, primarily to do with how it is sold.

"The bounds of the law are that you can't harass, coerce, mislead or deceive people," Tanzer says. "But that still leaves room for some quite heavy sales tactics. For many people it is quite confronting."

He says people should think very carefully about why they are signing up, read the product disclosure statement thoroughly and remember they are making a lifestyle decision rather than a financial investment.

"I'd like to emphasise the availability of the cooling-off period. And if people do feel that the timeshare is being sold as an investment opportunity, or that the sales tactics are misleading and deceptive, or overbearing, they should contact ASIC."

Points taken

Timeshare is the fastest growing segment of the tourism and leisure industry globally, according to the World Tourism Organisation, after the entry in recent years of global hotel brands such as Marriott, Hilton and Sheraton.

Australia is a long way behind the membership levels of the US and Western Europe, with about 150,000 Australians owning some form of timeshare at 150 resorts.

Laura Younger, the general manager of the Australian Timeshare and Holiday Ownership Council, says the industry is very different to the original concept of buying a week's holiday in the same place every year. The development of global exchange companies, including Interval and RCI, allows people to "trade" their week with other timeshare owners in different countries. In addition, the new "points" model allows members to purchase an annual allocation of points, which can then be used at different resorts for as many nights as their points allow.

The biggest operator in Australia is the US company Trendwest, which has close to 30,000 members taking holidays at 12 resorts along the east coast of Australia, two in New Zealand and one in Fiji, plus access rights at 60 resorts in the US, Canada and Mexico.

A Trendwest spokesman says it signs up 150 to 200 members each week, mainly married couples in their 30s and 40s with young children.

Accor Premier Vacation Club, a joint venture between the global Accor hotel group and Melbourne's Becton Corporation, has 12,500 members (about double the number of a year ago), using 12 club-owned properties in Australia.

The club's chief executive, Martin Kandel, says it expects to have about 20,000 members by the end of next year, after opening a Singapore office in March, and has several more resorts in the pipeline, including one in Bali.

Typical members are couples in their 40s with children.