We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
The beauty that is the Hyatt Regency Cancun has graced our pages before as a luxury hotel that is quieter than nearby hotels along the spring break strip.
Thanks to holidaymaker and Flickr-lover Chor Ip we now have the romantic vacation version of the Cancun Hyatt. This is the view from their balcony where they also got to devour a delicious-looking breakfast. Unfortunately they say that they never took a dip in this inviting Caribbean Sea but who needs to go swimming when you can stare at views like this.
The Hyatt Regency Cancun offers quite a few interesting packages for vacationers, and our favorite is the "Balance" Relaxation package which includes a full breakfast and a $100 massage credit; the package price varies but with a minimum two-night stay we found deals starting from $337 as a total; but if you want to be sure of an ocean view you'll be starting from $377.
The Aqua Hotel Cancun is the newest hotel to open on Cancun but instead of waiting for guests to check the place out, Aqua brought the hotel to the guests in New York City on Feb. 6th.
The hotel's celebrity chef Michelle Bernstein cooked up haute cuisine from her new restaurant MB. Steve Olson, a wine and spirits guru (what, is mixologist so last year?) created signature cocktails from his resort lounge, AKA Wine & Mezcal Bar; and DJs Sky Nellor and Gotardo spun some tunes.
Also on hand were some VIP celeb guests like Kim Cattrall along with Neil Patrick Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Alan Cumming, fellow SATC-er Mario Cantone and some Top Chef alums like Sam Talbot, Dave Martin and Lee Anne Wong.
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on January 15, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
If you're looking for some room rate love around Valentine's Day, avoid the romance packages and just search for a good deal instead. As opposed to this week's Amour Package, the NH Krystal in Cancun offers up lots of goodies for a price that doesn't leave us bewildered.
Renovated this past summer, the NH Krystal gives you a refreshed room on the 7th or 8th floor and throws a lot into its $191 Club Room deal over Valentine's Day, including a biggie that you rarely see in large hotels here: complimentary wireless Internet access!
The club level includes upgraded amenities, access to an exclusive rooftop terrace, and a concierge-staffed lounge with Continental breakfast, coffee and pastries during the day, and "evening appetizers and house wine."
We're not sure if Mexican "house wine" and V-day romance mix very well together, but for only a $33 a night premium over the lowest standard room rate, this is an attractive deal. (If you want a few days of debauchery, you can double down and go all-inclusive.)
We found this $191 deal on Expedia and Travelocity, but not on the company's own site. Like your momma always said, shop around.
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on January 15, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
We've said it before and we'll say it again: any hotel package featuring the words "romance," "honeymoon," "lovers," or "amour" is likely to be a raw deal. This is especially true with the big corporate chains run by accountants. Pull out a calculator and you find that you are paying a serious premium for those extra chocolates or that bottle of bubbly.
Take the current "Amour" package currently being pushed hard by the Hyatt chain. At their Hyatt Cancun Caribe resort the French word for love means paying $42 to $61 extra per night, mostly just for breakfast.
The screen shot here was taken from the Hyatt site's rate details when we went to book a 3-night stay around Valentine's Day. At every room category, the Amour Package added $125 to $183 over the cost of just a regular room with no extras: starting at $264 a night.
For that amount you get an unspecified bottle of sparkling wine, some strawberries, and daily breakfast. Ouch. Book a regular room instead and put that $42 to $61 a night toward some nice romantic dinners. Make your own amour and you'll be better off.
ME Cancún, a Sol Mélia resort, is full of pretty things: pretty people, pretty views, and pretty nice furniture, but is it worth the trip?
The resort is full of pretty things: pretty people, pretty views, and pretty nice furniture. It's not hard to understand why the majority of TripAdvisor reviewers love the property and why the oceanfront hotel was recently awarded the AAA Four Diamond Award for 2008.
Room service is prompt, the pool offers separate areas for adults and kids (the hotel caters to adults, but occasionally those adults bring children), and the front desk staff is friendly, helpful, and good looking, if not a little slow in checking guests in and out.
Even so, a stay at ME leaves you feeling ambivalent. Surely the décor is trendy and modern and the infinity pool is a nice touch, but a stroll down the beach reveals that aesthetically, ME isn't all that different from neighboring properties. (Perhaps the only distinguishable feature--and one not in ME's favor--is that all of ME's rooms except suites lack balconies.)
Giving new meaning to the notion that beauty is only skin deep, ME doesn't give any indication it provides guests a better experience than any other hotel lining the northern beaches of Cancún. So while you're guaranteed a nice stay at ME (at around $350 per night), experienced Mexico vacationers might want to book a resort with more personality.
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven CeCe returns to the scene of a Spring Break. Enjoy.
True statement: The view from our cubicle includes a multi-function printer, one of those plants with the plastic-looking leaves that lives despite severe neglect and sunlight deprivation, and a rotating Christmas tree with functioning bulbs on only the lower tier.
That is why our only method of survival is to think of a pretty place, the way our mother told us to do when our doctor administered a vaccine. Since our stifling surroundings have sapped all our creative juices, the only escape we can think of is Cancun, and the only hotel that comes to mind is the tried-and-true Hyatt. Luckily, the Hyatt Regency Cancun is a great hotel with luxury amenities, though similar pricing to the spring break brothels down the strip.
And yes, we know this because we attended Cancun spring break as a misguided coed, and discovered that this family-friendly hotel and its picturesque beach provides refuge from the debauchery.
Capella Hotels is wasting no time breaking ground in Mexico. The luxe resort/condotel brand is at work on Capella Pedregal in Cabo San Lucas, and they've just announced a project on the Riviera Maya: Capella Bahia Maroma. (Nevermind that they've only actually opened two hotels worldwide.)
The Caribbean outpost 26 miles from Cancun International Airport isn't scheduled to open for at least another year. (They don't even have renderings of finished rooms yet.) But that isn't stopping Capella from hyping it. Along with 82 guest suites, plans call for 130 vacation "residences" with price tags starting just under $3 million.
Besides the almost-mile-long beach, guests and owners will have a private golf course and golf club at the ready. A massive Capella-branded spa is also part of the plan.
New passport rules and Cancun's attempt to draw more upscale travelers means fewer revelers are headed that way this year. So says this story from USA Today.
Quite a few former party havens that welcomed students made a 180 degree turn after Hurricane Wilma, figuring that if they were going to spend millions on upgrades, they might as well go for a higher room rate when they were finished. The jury is still out on how many hotels are going to be able to pull this off. How many people can ever utter "Cancun" and "Upscale Destination" together with a straight face?
They're trying though, which means more hotels have turned their back on loud and puking college kids taking advantage of a lower drinking age. That seems to be just fine with South Padre Island (hope you have a room already) in Texas and Panama City, Florida. In the latter, "We decided back in 2000 that if we were going to have (spring break) here, we'd embrace it," tourism chief Robert Warren says.
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by amandak
