Resorts: The Killing of a Holiday
Sometimes you will just have to accept that you can’t win them all.
Granted: in our consumer-driven world, it’s become more and more possible to minimize any type of risk, thanks to the internet with their ratings-driven websites. If there is a product out there, you can google it, and the likelihood is there that somebody (or actually some hundred or thousand people) knows about this said product, or can recommend others like it. Although this isn’t necessarily a foolproof method (thanks to paid trolls and the like), I think it’s safe to assume that quality will survive in the end.
Ditto for holidays. Within minutes, you can find all the information you needed to know about this hotel, that resort, this airline and even the travel agency that booked it. Where are you going? What is there to do? Is it kid friendly? What languages do they speak? Is it a police state? Is the juice worth the squeeze in the end?
Regardless of how many stars a hotel, airline, or travel agency claims it has, I don’t think I’ll embark on another all-inclusive holiday. In our most recent case, the ocean the hotel was located on smelled like a plugged-up toilet on a good day, and like a sewer on a bad one. Is this the price of progress?
Sure, the hotels will say, we’ll pay for the ocean cleanup. But in the end, I would have even preferred an oil slick over the raw sewage I smelled. Some guests at our hotel didn't seem to care in the slightest. In the beginning, the guest will take a quick look at the all-inclusive resort, grow eyes the size of saucers upon spotting the buffet table for the first time and will think, “Well, I got quite a deal here. These people are getting robbed. Har har har dee har, chortle, snort.” But that’s what the gambler thinks before entering the MGM or the Luxor in Vegas. Here you go, Champ. Free drinks, free food. Hell, we’ll even comp your room and throw in a ticket for the white tiger show! It will offset the sting you will feel after you lost every penny of your kid’s college savings. In the end, the house (hotel, store, telecom giant, paper towel manufacturer) always wins. In that regard, capitalism will make damn sure it does.
Our vacation: walking around the hotel, you’ll find the friendly salesman, who needs to drum up business for his restaurant, his spa, his travel agency organizing the overpriced camel tours. Meanwhile, the activities offered by the hotels themselves, especially in third world countries, will depend on the whims and likes of the merchants themselves. Do you want to have your photos taken? Won’t cost you a penny! Never mind that it will be three bucks for every photo ordered in the end. And sometimes, the guy just won’t show up, should he or she think that his efforts don’t warrant the razor-thin profit margin in the end.
The odd thing I find these days is that you have a certain amount of time you will need, like a recovery period, from the vacation itself. You come home tired (not necessarily refreshed, although that can depend on the transportation), and now you will need to add two or three more weeks to shed the extra pounds you just gained from eating dessert and drinking wine every day. Living like Caligula for that one week always has broader ramifications.
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