If the financial crisis has made you think twice about spending money on a vacation, hotels in the Caribbean are trying to sway you with discounts and deals.
The Hyatt Regency Aruba Resort & Casino, for example, is offering a fifth night free, a room upgrade, and free breakfast for two every day on stays before Dec. 18. For the first time during the off-season, the Turks & Caicos Club, a small luxury resort on Providenciales island, is offering rates starting at $247.50 until Nov. 9, a 50 percent discount from rates at the same times last year.
To be sure, the travel industry overall may be in for tough times ahead: Hotels in other regions of the world have recently started to see revenue fall. But on a broad level, room rates are still rising — as they have for several years. That isn’t the case in the Caribbean. In August, the average rate for a room in the Caribbean was 8.2 percent lower than last year, according to Smith Travel Research, a hospitality-research firm.
Online travel agencies such as Travelocity and Orbitz say they also are seeing big discounts. “We have crazy hotel promotions going on now in the Caribbean,” says Brian Hoyt, an Orbitz spokesman. For example, average daily room rates for Puerto Rico during October through December are down about 11 percent for hotels on the site, compared with the same period last year. Average rates in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, are down 16 percent.
In addition to dropping rates, hotels are offering added perks like free meals, resort credits and airfare reimbursement to keep travelers coming before the typically busy winter holiday season.
Sandals Resorts has extended a promotion, first offered earlier this summer, which gives guests an airfare credit of up to $550 when they book a three-night stay by Oct. 23 for travel through Dec. 20. The all-inclusive resort, which caters to couples, also is offering additional perks like spa credits this year, says Mitchell Nover, media coordinator at Unique Vacations, which handles sales and marketing for Sandals Resorts.
Hotels are hoping that their deals will offset the pain of higher airfares for travelers.
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In Cancun, Mexico, which isn’t as affected by airline-route cuts but is often considered part of the Caribbean tourism region because it is competing to attract similar travelers, some room rates are also falling.
“It’s been a tough second half, no doubt about it,” says Chris Calabrese, director general for the plush JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa and its slightly less-expensive sister property, CasaMagna Marriott Cancun. Until Dec. 15, CasaMagna Marriott is offering a $109 base rate, and the JW Marriott Cancun’s base rate is $130. Calabrese says those rates are 20 percent cheaper than last year at the same time.