BootsnAll Travel Community

I don't understand the appeal really. I might be going to an all inclusive resort in the fall for the wedding of a family member. It will be fun because my family will all be there but I am finding the cost of the all inclusive ridiculous! Everyone tells me it's not so bad because the food and drink are all included, but that is not appealing to me. You end up pretty much staying at your hotel to eat and drink all the time because you've already paid for it. You don't see much except your hotel. Food and drink are not terribly expensive to buy on their own so it just seems crazy to be paying a ton for a resort when I could be staying at a smaller hotel and trying different restaurants all over instead of just the hotel buffet. Plus for the amount of the resort for one week, I could stay for a month if I was careful about where I stayed and ate. Anyway, I will be looking for a deal on the all inclusive, I hope I find one or I might choose not to go. Rant over!

All inclusives, like organized tours or cruises, are for people inexperienced in independant travel and/or like creature comforts, on short time frame, or who are more interested in partaking in what the resort has to offer than seeing the local locals.

I think that I wouldn't mind doing it once for a sports minded vacation. Though, I would still venture off to see what's around.

All-inclusives are for stressed out folks who have more money than time, and who need to unwind before they have a meltdown. They are not for the likes of us, but they aren't necessarily bad, if you have that sorta money. Those people are the opposite of us, and they wear matching socks.

I've never had any desire to do an all-inclusive, but I have to admit(cringe) that I wouldn't mind trying a cruise ship once. ONCE!

I don't understand the appeal either - why do people spend mega-bucks to fly to some remote island just to hole up in a hotel? They could do that at home!

I have been on a cruise - I took the Nile cruise three times when I lived in Egypt. It was a wonderful, but I was glad it wasn't my only experience in Egypt.

All-inclusive = brain off. Entirely.

That's not (entirely) unappealing, sometimes. Depends where you are in life, yadda yadda.

That said, I've never done an all-inclusive thang. (But I have been on a cruise ship!!! ONCE!!!)

I have been on 2 cruise ships. Both were to hang out with my family. The last one was just a couple of months ago and there were 43 of us. No cooking, no cleaning, not a lot of whingen. I'll tell you it's not a bad way to spend time with your family. Was kind of bummed I had to cut my South America trip short to do it, but I don't get to see the nieces and nephews nearly as much as I'd like. Plus had to eventually introduce the little woman to everyone. So I actually gotta do it all at once. No complaints there.

Then there was the time we spent a few days at the cheapest all inclusive resort we could get on the Maldives. We were already in Sri Lanka so we figured what the hell...when else are we going to go to the Maldives. I always hate to miss a country when I am in the area. What a waste that was.

Anyway, there are plenty of reasons people travel the way they do. To each his own.

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Then there was the time we spent a few days at the cheapest all inclusive resort we could get on the Maldives.

Halfnine,

Since I plan to be in Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks, would you recommend a side trip to Maldives for 2-3 days for the same reason? If so, or if not, why?

Kendrick

It is just a different style. No better and no worse than whatever style of travel you choose.

It is all relative. Some people simply do not like the idea of backpacking around a strange town all day long where everyone around you looks different and half the time are begging you for money while at the end of the day you may or may not find your way back to your stained guesthouse bed sheets before the public transportation stops running.

Some people however, find the above rather appealing.

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Since I plan to be in Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks, would you recommend a side trip to Maldives

The one thing I will say about the resorts on the Maldives is that in one place you can get

An island you can walk around with
Your own hut right on the beach, and
Pretty much your own beach (at least in the non-holiday season), with
Snorkeling right off the beach, and
Your meals, etc included all in one price

Most of these things you can get some other place in the world. But, probably not all in one place. So, I am not sure there really is another place in the world quite like that. That’s about the only thing it really has going for it. If all those things in one place aren’t important to you, the resorts of Maldives are missable. If I was there by myself (not with my girlfriend) I would have been bored off my ass. The so-called “local fishing” islands are the biggest bullshit tourist trap around.

Now, Male itself is worth a day or two. There is not much to it, but it’s a different variation of Islam and culture you’ll find in Bangladesh.

If you are going to be in Sri Lanka, I’d skip the hill towns of India (Darjeeling). You’ll know what I mean when you see the hill towns in Sri Lanka. Spend the extra days in Calcutta, Bangladesh and eastern Nepal. Trust me...

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It is just a different style. No better and no worse than whatever style of travel you choose.

Thank you Joey. This need not be an "us" vs "them," because, some, if not many, on this board have done all-inclusives. The "us" vs. "them" is an unneeded attitude.

I have been on cruise ships. I did an all-inclusive a few years ago for a friend's wedding. Not the way I would have done my wedding, but, rather than bitch about how I could have spent so much less money doing it another way, I went to help my friend celebrate her special day. I could have chosen not to, and so could you. If you chose to go, however, go and enjoy it. If you don't think you can swallow that, then don't go.

One thing people need to realize is that not everybody travels for the sake of learning / experiencing new cultures and countries or for exploring or wanderlust. A lot of people simply want to leave the stress of their job and cold weather of their home and sit on the beach for a week or two. In fact, I would say that's what the majority of Americans, maybe excepting 20- and early 30-somethings, would prefer. An all-inclusive makes it a lot easier. In addition, it's not like they put up prison fences around the resort. Some, if not most, offer excursions outside.

That said, it's not really my kind of travel.

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One thing people need to realize is that not everybody travels for the sake of learning / experiencing new cultures and countries or for exploring or wanderlust

Exactly, it is all in how you approach it.

I have never been so free and relaxed while traveling as I was when confined to a cruise ship for 3 days eating pizza and fries and listening to terrible karaoke on my way to Mexico. It is because I allowed myself to enjoy it for what it was. A time to not concern myself with anything other than not concerning myself with anything.

Backpacking can be relaxing at times but for the most part it is an adrenline rush and a freak out that requires an entirely different mindset that even I am not always in the mood for.

Resorts and all-inclusives are for people with more money than time. Backpacking is for people with more time than money. I've found that backpackers are far more intolerant of resort-goers than vice versa, when really, their worlds don't overlap much. It's a kind of reverse snobbery, as ugly as any other kind of snobbery. My mother, when she goes to Mexico, wants to scuba dive and eat something approximately Mexican. She doesn't have the time to spend three hours a day in Spanish lessons, or the wherewithal to eat fried grasshoppers to astonish her friends back home, so she goes to Cozumel. I did have that time until recently, but I didn't think her travel somehow less valid than mine.

And really, backpacker tourists can be just as insular as package tourists. It's pretty rare to see people traveling for extended periods with others from outside their mother language. A lot of long-term backpackers make snide assumptions that all backpackers share their fashionable but vague politics, and will get irritable if you attempt debate rather than mindless consensus.

I don't want to give the wrong impression - I love long-term budget travel. It's just one of my pet peeves the way some people use it to hold themselves out as superior to anyone who travels in a different fashion. We're all tourists, after all.

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Resorts and all-inclusives are for people with more money than time. Backpacking is for people with more time than money.

I don't even think that's true. I've seen plenty of deals to all-inclusives that are cheaper than I could do a decent backpacking trip for the same amount of time. At the same time, I don't think time available has anything to do with it, since there's plenty of people around here happy to plan a short 2-3 week backpacking trip. It's all in what you want in a holiday.

Most of the people I work with lust after 2 weeks at a resort in Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica or Hawaii. It's their idea of a fun way to spend their vacation. I would be bored to death. And it's better that way...crowding is already a problem at many of the places I'd like to go, keeping a lot of people pleasantly fenced in at a resort keeps that crowding under control.

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I've found that backpackers are far more intolerant of resort-goers than vice versa, when really, their worlds don't overlap much. It's a kind of reverse snobbery, as ugly as any other kind of snobbery.

That's true, too. Of course, I don't blame backpackers who get pissed off when the worlds do overlap (I find it really frustrating to see a cruise package person walking around in Egypt in short-shorts. It's just not acceptable), but being snobby while they're staying out of your way - no good reason for it.

As a side note - there's cruises and there's cruises.

Carnival and their ilk create experiences on boats that are essentially the same as a beach resort or Disney vacation. I have no interest whatsoever.

But as a kid, I did a cruise on a boat owned by the University of Pittsburg, where it was a big ship that still had some of that resort feeling, but it also definitely had more of a "see the culture, understand the people" focus in their stops. I don't think I'd do that trip again, but it's an interesting medium for people who want comfort and great memories.

Then there's the third type - the small boat cruise. We did one of these in Turkey, and are planning another for the Galapagos islands. This sort of cruise seems to me to be more in line with the backpacker ethos. Sure, it can be pricy (actually, in Turkey, I think the days on the boat were some of the cheapest) but they are more about seeing the place your visiting, not the creature comforts.

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Originally posted by 2wanderers:

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I've found that backpackers are far more intolerant of resort-goers than vice versa, when really, their worlds don't overlap much. It's a kind of reverse snobbery, as ugly as any other kind of snobbery.

That's true, too. Of course, I don't blame backpackers who get pissed off when the worlds do overlap (I find it really frustrating to see a cruise package person walking around in Egypt in short-shorts. It's just not acceptable), but being snobby while they're staying out of your way - no good reason for it.

Erm...
I gotta say, having lived in Islamic culture I can say with confidence that it is backpackers that 99% of the time disrespect the locals.

I've found most package tourists, or resort tourists are generally of an older ilk. Certainly not always, but the majority were in the late 30's to mid 60's relm. Those people generally dont walk around in miniskirts. Most woman I met covered their arms and legs with light clothing (perhaps experience has tought them it is smarter in hot climates to do so) and the men followed suit.

Actually I've found most resort types to be fairly nonirritating. Usually they just remind me of my mom or my aunts and they make pleasant conversation, nothign to radical, and share a drink and walk away, wishing you safe travels. Oftemtimes they get wide-eyed expessions when you tell them you're travelling alone, and compliment you on your ballsy behavior.

Ya actually, I sorta love inclusive resort folks when I travel. Rather then the pissing contests that take place in the hostel. Or the I'm-not-a-snob-snobbery that goes on.

That said, I often get my biggest kicks out of people who are unashamedly themselves. If they want margaritas and pineapple buffets then rock on. If you want to eat a market-bought orange with a Cliff bar while waiting in a taxi pool to get to Ouxahanabihia then yay you.

I agree that the package tourists and the backpackers generally get along quite well when they encounter each other.

It is the corporate business travelers who more often than not despise and look down on backpackers with disgust.

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I gotta say, having lived in Islamic culture I can say with confidence that it is backpackers that 99% of the time disrespect the locals.

You may be talking about more ways than dress, which I wouldn't always be in a position to notice, but this observation simply doesn't jive with my experience. Not saying it's wrong, just different from what I've seen.

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Originally posted by braslvr:

It is the corporate business travelers who more often than not despise and look down on backpackers with disgust.

The only time the backpacker's and business traveler's worlds intersect is at the airport. Besides, business destinations typically aren't backpacker destinations. Think Sao Paulo rather than Rio, Brussels rather than Amsterdam, Tokyo or Seoul instead of Bangkok.