Value from the vacation club

I wanted to make a quick post about the realized value from our vacation club. We just came back from a trip to Secrets Riviera Cancun. You can read the review here. Our vacation club gives us discounts and amenities and included that all inclusive resort. I’m tracking our expenses so I can determine if the deal was as good as it sounded. This trip was our first time using the club. The first thing you need to understand is that we decided to join the club because we wanted to have vacation experiences in our retired life. This type of vacationing seemed well suited for us and incidentally includes other benefits domestically that I’ll blog about later this year. But today I want to highlight our experience and what I think that experience was worth.

First, I wasn’t sure if the reservation process was going to work. You see in the club you don’t make reservations with the resort itself. They have no knowledge of your reservation. I believe the club waits until a certain time to coordinate the booking of the room. Any and all updates, add-ons, etc. must be done with the club and not the resort. They do give you paperwork illustrating your reservations so there is that.

Second, you will need transportation from the airport to the resort. Normally I’ve found these services to be provided free by the resort. In this case, since your reservations are with the club you also need to book that transport through the club. AMstar is the vendor this club uses. This is a huge operation in Mexico for all things transport and excursions. They have good logistics and I trust the brand. I’m happy to use their services. The thing is, its not cheap… at least not until you get to your destination and understand what’s going on. A shared transport cost me $70 for a 2 way ticket trip. Seemed expensive at the time given it was free the trip prior. I only learned the truth about transport in Cancun when we queued up to go back home. While waiting for the transport I noticed a sign that listed the prices for transport options from the resort to places in Cancun. Now I’m not going to remember the exact numbers, I should have taken a picture of the sign. Getting a taxi to the airport was listed at around $1000 MEX (+/-). That equates to about $58 USD and that is 1 way. You also have to understand that the location of this resort is miles through a mangrove forest with scary looking abandoned buildings along the way. You are basically trapped on the location unless you pay someone to take you somewhere else. Suddenly it all makes sense why $70 for transport is a good deal.

Third, one of our amenities is a free room upgrade. We did in fact get that upgrade and we moved from a tropical view room to an ocean view room. The view was amazing! Talk about a romantic setting and the sunrises were also amazing. We used that patio every day. When we got home I started wondering what the price difference was for that view. I know I can’t compare the rate I paid to any given rate in the future as demand and conditions affect those price points. What I did was take a future date and compared fresh bookings between the 2 room types. I calculated there is 19% premium for the ocean view room. So I’m estimating here using that 19% to place a value on the upgrade itself. That came out to about $388.

Lastly, since we have to book our rooms on the clubs website and we’re promised we get at least a 25% discount I wanted to see how true that was. During booking I found our destination and compared apples to apples using the club site verses the Hyatt site. Remarkable that I found a $1400 difference. That’s right, booking through the club saved me $1454 to be precise. Sure, its possible I could have found a cheaper version of the vacation using some aggregator but that always comes with some trade off like when you can travel, what type of room, etc. No I use the main site to avoid all that crap.

In summary, the vacation club saved me about $1800 on the first usage. I believe I will have no problems breaking even with my investment. Assuming the trend continues, I believe we will make back our investment by 3 or 4 times. Here’s to you vacation club!