HotelChatter

Escape the Economy Hotels / Caribbean Hotels / Elite Island Resorts / All-Inclusive Resorts / → All Tags

Trade In Your Almost Worthless Stocks for a Beach Vacation

The Palm Island Resort in the Grenadines.

Wanna get rid of your flailing stocks and actually get something in return? The NY Times reports that a resort in the Caribbean is offering guests stays at their hotels in exchange for stock. Seriously!

Elite Island Resorts, a chain of upscale hotels — including the St. James’s Club on Antigua and the Palm Island Resort in the Grenadines — announced Friday that it would accept payments in stock for vacations booked by Jan. 31, using the value the stock was trading at on July 1. The deal, in effect, gives travelers a chance to roll back the value of currently depressed stocks to levels before the market began to really sink.

Of course you can't just pass off any ole' stock. The Elite Resorts company has a list of 100 "preferred stocks" listed here. Not on this list? Lehman Brothers. But Merrill Lynch did make the cut.

The company is also limiting the maximum credit in stocks to $5,000. If your trip costs more than that, it will be charged to a credit card. But the good thing that some of the Elite Resorts are all-inclusive, meaning your crappy stock will take care of everything from start to finish. This is one trend that we wouldn't mind more and more hotels copying.