Three reasons for sending your vacation at an all inclusive resort.

You’re Getting Married, Or…

…you’re planning a family reunion. Or a corporate retreat. Or you’ve just got a large group of friends travelling with you. In any case, if you’ve ever tried to organize something even as simple as a night out at a local pub, you know getting everybody to the same spot at the same time and keeping them happy all the while is like herding cats. Now imagine you’re charged to organize a unique itinerary for a dozen people — all coming from different cities, all with different tastes and different requests. Solution: book an all-inclusive and tell them when their flight departs. And that is all. In this case, no choice equals no hassle. They all will arrive at the same hotel. They all will have rooms near one another. Everybody will eat at the same restaurant(s) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everybody meets at the same bar for after-dinner drinks. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid.) If you want a headache, try to organize a dinner meet-up at an agreed-upon restaurant at an agreed-upon time amongst relatives staying in hotels scattered up and down a sunny coastline. Then after it all falls apart, tell them all you’re booking an all-inclusive — next time.

Your Complicated Life Demands Simplicity

I will admit my life is not incredible complicated (except when I try to bake). However, there are many of us whose day-to-day is a balancing act of hectic family life… kids, spouse, soccer practice, PTA meetings; and others who have board-meeting after board-meeting and whose everyday job security ebbs and flows with the chaotic stock market; and still others who toil and labour harder than I ever have to earn their keep. Vacation, for some, needs to be easy. Easy peasy. Easy with a capital E. Easy like Sunday Morning. Prerequisites are a sandy beach, a warm pool and ample alcohol. Enter the all-inclusive. Pick a date. Pick a duration. Show up. The rest is taken care of. Sure, there’s no adventure, no risk, no surprises — and for many, that must sound like absolute paradise.

You’ve Got A Week & A Grand

I will admit, there have been times I’ve looked into all-inclusive resorts in Mexico and Cuba simply because I couldn’t fly there and find a hotel for cheaper. Some of the deals are just that good. I’ve seen deals on Expedia hovering around the $600 mark for one-week all-inclusive in Mexico, departing Canada. Six-hundred! I can barely do a weekend at Whistler/Blackcomb for that! In a nutshell, if you find yourself with a week to kill and $1,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than jetting off to Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, Mexico, for seven days. Best thing — if the time-off comes unexpected, you can take advantage of last minute deals (as long as you can depart on particular days and with little notice). It’s true — while flight tickets will get progressively higher in price as the departure date approaches, vacation packages almost always get cheaper. I know friends who have purposely left their vacation time unplanned — they simply booked a week off work and set forth to take the cheapest last-minute deal that pops up during that time. It’s about the riskiest thing you could do in this inherently un-risky form of travel, and a virtual surefire way of getting poolside on the cheap.