Most of the time I go on vacation to a new place, it's a touring vacation. Pretty active. Not like mountain climbing, but a day or two in each location, walking, museums, etc.
I've never been to a resort before, but my travel club offered me a “free” vacation as a reward for prepaying the yearly fee for 10 years. Free in this case ended up being deeply discounted, but required to sit through the timeshare presentation (more on this later).
Most of the Mexican states are under a Do Not Travel warning from the US State Department, but Quintana Roo, where Riviera Maya and Cancun are located, is under a “don't be a dumbass” warning. So I booked into an All-Inclusive resort there.
All-Inclusive Resorts
An all-inclusive resort means that your room fee includes food, most alcohol, and soft drinks. This sort of operation can only really be run in places where labor is super cheap. So you mostly only find them in the Caribbean and Mexico, because 1) cost of labor and 2) Americans really like this type of vacation.
It's basically a free ticket for gluttony. You can feel the Americanness in it, in that regard.
The expectation is that you will spend almost all of your time and definitely all of your money at the resort. Chances are good that even the excursions you go on are booked through a company owned by the resort.
It doesn't seem like they should be able to make money given the army of people it takes to run a place like this, plus all the food and alcohol. But it's a slick operations. The hotel has a very good idea of how much people will eat and drink. And those who don't overindulge (like me) subsidize those who do.
But there is something nice about knowing that you've already paid all you're going to pay.
Except for tips! As a newbie, I didn't know this at first, but you are expected to pay tips to the staff. $1 for waiters at buffets, and $5 for waiters at the sit down restaurants will do. Tip your bartenders. Tip the cleaning staff. Tip the bellboys.
The tips do add up, but to a lot less than if you were paying 10-20% at each meal.
The Marina El Cid
The resort I booked into was The Marina El Cid. El Cid is apparently a big deal in Mexico. One of their most successful companies. They have three “lobbies” at Riviera Maya: The Marina, Ventus, and Ventus Ha'.
The Marina is the oldest and meant for families.
The Ventus is 10 years old and slightly more adult.
Ventus Ha' is No Kids Allowed and only 1 year old. It's also very... nature themed.
Were I to go again, I would book into Ventus Ha' even though it's across the street from most of the rest of the resort.
A stay in any room gives you access to everything on the property: all the restaurants, all the pools, etc. It just defines where you sleep.
Every room has a balcony, which turned out to be great because I spent a lot of time there. This was the view from our balcony.
The first full day we were there was pretty hot and humid. Oppressively so. I was afraid the whole trip would be just like this.
There's an adults-only infinity pool, and so if we went to the pool, that was the one we went to. It had jacuzzi pools on each side.
The white building in this photo is one of the Ventus buildings.
On the second day, a Sunday, it rained rather spectacularly! But this improved the weather a lot and for several days afterward the humidity was down.
I did get sunburn on the very first time in the pool, despite putting sunscreen on. Many days, I sat for hours on the balcony and listened to an audiobook.
We had to make reservations at the sit down restaurants, so we did have to at least get up and be there for our meals.
I have a theory that daydrinking is actually better for you than drinking with dinner. This gives your body more time to process the alcohol so you actually get decent sleep. So! In accordance with this, I more often had sparking wine with lunch than wine with dinner.
In general, I had more alcohol last week than I'd have in two months, but even so less than most people there probably have in a day.
The Pitch
So, one of the reasons that I was able to go to this place for $500 is that we had to get the Vacation Club pitch. They even gave us a special wristband color that marked us as people at the resort on a discount.
This pitch session...
I went with my aunt on the trip, and she likes screwing with people. The poor guy who got us as his clients... She spent the whole time busting his balls. And eventually he just started right back.
I'm not sure if he found it entertaining, but the whole thing probably took twice as long to get through because of it.
Anyway, the idea is that “We're better than a timeshare, which everyone knows is evil!” What they wanted to sell us was a points program. Buy X points per year for 20 years. Come to the resort and spend X points per room. Or spend X points + $220 to go to a resort that isn't theirs. Or spend them on a site that works like the discount site I already have.
I mean, if I wanted to spend a week at El Cid every year for the next 20 years, I guess it might make sense.
$60k for the lowest tier. 25% down. 19% interest.
Basically, they wanted $1900 a month, which is the equivalent of my rent to buy their program. And while I am susceptible to spur of the moment purchases and clearly bought a program that someone sold me at one of these sessions already, it's pretty easy to turn down paying $1900 I don't have.
It was a hard sell, though. They really tried. They tried with three different guys.
The most interesting tactic was telling me that this was all targeted marketing and that they spent so much money on getting me in that chair. The point, of course, is to make you feel guilty for all they've spent on you. And I have to admit, they did manage to make me feel guilty about staying at their hotel for well below retail price.
I managed to get out of there without signing up for anything. And in exchange, we got certificates for a 2 for 1 massage, 2 for 1 swimming with dolphins, and 2 for 1 swimming with sea turtles. Worth it, in the end, since I was going to pay for a massage anyway and we hadn't planned any excursions.
Excursions
The last two days were swimming with a dolphin and going to swim with sea turtles and swim in cenotes.
I don't have pictures of any of these. The dolphin place charged $20 per photo if you bought 10, and we weren't going to pay that much. The sea turtles was in the sea! And you'd need a special camera or camera case.
I do however have a photo of one of the cenotes. I didn't know what this part of the tour was going to be. I thought it was going to be some naturalist tour. Educational.
It was not. It's a swimming hole, basically. There are a bunch of them in the same place, and it functions like a public pool. Tourists and locals can buy a pass and just swim.
The Summary
It was a really relaxing time off. Having now been to a resort, I think I would do this sort of vacation again. Maybe not immediately and probably not in Mexico again soon, unless someone else wanted to. But I can see the benefit of a vacation that involved largely just sitting around instead of touring.
I was so chill by the end that even when my aunt started to act like a jerk and then gave me the silent treatment, I didn't even get mad. I just got sort of amused and went about being pleasant.
The majority of my travel-related reward points are with IHG, and IHG has several resort brands, including Iberostar and Six Senses. Six Senses is $$$ but I'm eyeing some of the cheaper ones for future visits.