Shea and I weren’t sure if we could afford an all-inclusive holiday this winter after buying a new house last fall.
But we decided that if we booked a much cheaper resort than some of the high-end places we’ve stayed at in previous years (we paid almost half what we did last year!), we should be able to swing it.
Having just returned from a great week, this made me realise there are lots of other (potential) benefits to booking a cheaper place (but also some risks.)
FIVE REASONS TO STAY IN CHEAPER RESORTS
1. By booking a cheaper place, you’re helping to pay for future trips. Let’s say you stay at resorts that normally cost $5000/week. After four years, you’d have spent $20,000. If you pick slightly cheaper resorts costing $4000/week, you won’t spend $20,000 until you’ve gone for five years – almost like getting the fifth year free!
2. In the same vein, you can also think of staying at a cheaper resort as freeing up money to do other things on your vacation if you don’t spend right to your budget on the trip itself. To use my last example, by booking a $4000 resort instead of $5000, another way to think of it is that you’ve freed up $1000 in your budget to do other things – upgrade your room, go on an excursion, be able to afford the overpriced food and souvenirs in the airport!
3. Lower-end resorts are often a bit more casual and relaxed than the higher-end ones. This manifests in various ways – maybe you can just walk into the buffet whenever you want without having to stop and talk to a hostess to give your room number, get asked about allergies or even have some sanitizing gel squirted on your hands. Or staff might be more willing to bend rules about what time they start serving booze or the height requirements for kids in certain activities.
4. Some would see this as a disadvantage but since cheaper resorts may have fewer activities and amenities, you might not be worried about “doing it all” and instead, you might focus on quality relaxation time on the beach or by the pool.
5. This isn’t pleasant to think about but the reality is that It’s not unusual for people at all-inclusives to get sick because of too much sun/bad food/too much food/too much booze/too many sugary drinks/etc. etc. If you end up losing a day or two because of turista, it’s much more desirable to lose days at a resort where you’re not paying top dollar.
FIVE REASONS NOT TO STAY IN CHEAPER RESORTS
1. The less you pay, the greater the odds that something is going to be of lower quality to save the resort money – food, booze, level of cleanliness, etc.
2. As I mentioned above, a lower-end resort probably won’t have as many activities and amenities as higher-end resorts – fewer pools, less a la carte restaurants, cheezier evening shows where a magician might come out with his fly undone (happened this trip!) or whatever.
3. This isn’t a huge issue for everyone but in my experience, there’s a direct correlation between how much you pay and how bilingual the staff are. If you want to be able to communicate without a lot of gesturing or consulting a translation dictionary, you might not want to go to a cheaper resort.
4. Cheaper resorts sometimes aren’t “bad” necessarily, they may just not be upgraded or as modern so if you want pristine marble countertops and large screen TVs in your room instead of fixtures that hang out of the wall at weird angles (see photo) and little 32″ TVs, the cost savings of a cheaper resort might not be for you.
5. Whether you’re spending $4000 or $5000, you do want to ensure you stay in a resort that has a high enough level of whatever things are most important to you – beach, food, shows – so that you don’t end up feeling like you wasted your time and money completely!
