While our accommodations have always remained more than affordable, the price of getting to and from your destination has increased greatly. Over the past few years we’ve seen fuel costs almost double making travel a lot less affordable for many. Airlines are cutting costs and raising prices. Anyone who has flown over the past few months will likely recall not-so-pleasant trips without peanuts and almost-comfortable pillows. While we can’t make the airlines treat you like we do, we can at least make up for their shortcomings in our own accommodations, services, and quality!

We understand that traveling, especially as a family, is something you plan months and months in advance. Even with all that planning, things can still go wrong. Your vacation budget may suddenly be faced with unforeseen expenses and your plans may abruptly change. Things happen. We know this and we have always provided our customers with the option to purchase Vacation Rental Insurance to help when things go awry. This affords our customers the luxury of cancellation refunds, emergency assistance, travel delay reimbursement, identity theft protection, baggage delay, 24-hour emergency assistance, and more!

Vacation Rental Insurance is purchased as an addition to your accommodations at a nominal 6.5% of your total. That’s less than sales tax in many places! Take advantage of this great service the next time you book with us so we’ll both have that extra peace of mind in these uncertain times.

It’s finally summer and the vacation season is hotter than ever! We’re sure your air conditioners are running at max capacity and your sunscreen is within arm’s reach. But with all the talk about ‘going green‘ and ‘global warming,’ we’d like to take a step back and give you some simple tips to conserving energy, saving money, and reducing your ‘carbon footprint’ this travel season.

It’s all about reducing your impact on energy consumption, waste, and recycling. Sure, you’ve probably been hearing the same things for years…”reduce, reuse, recycle,” but that’s not all there is to it. There’s so many little things you can do on an everyday basis to shrink your environmental impact whether you’re on vacation or at home. Here’s some of our top tips for being environmentally friendly while enjoying paradise!

1. Go carbon neutral: Whether you travel by plane, car, bus, or even train, you can purchase carbon offsets from organizations in order to make your journey ‘carbon-neutral,’ meaning that there for every bit of waste generated by your drive, flight, or ride, that something will be done to counteract that waste. Examples include planting trees, alternative energy research, or even waste management initiatives. You can generally offset a flight for less than $40 and feel good about your trip and to the part that you’re playing to make our world a better place!
2. Cut your energy usage: For most of us, we only worry about energy usage when it’s coming out of our own pockets. As time goes on we’re all starting to realize that at some point we all pay a price. It doesn’t take much to conserve energy by simply turning off lights and electronics that we aren’t using! If you leave a room, switch out the light. When you’re not using your computer, shut it down. When you leave your accommodations, turn off the air conditioner and cover the windows. Check out these useful goodies to get on track to going green! You’d be surprised how much energy can be saved simply by getting used to cutting back a little bit! Best of all, when you start saving money from conserving you’ll have more to vacation with!
3. Recycle everything your can: In a world where almost everything we use on a daily basis is made of plastic, paper, or aluminum, it’s easy to recycle! Plastic takes hundreds, if not thousands, of years to decompose. This leaves a huge mark on our environment and it’s not going to go away all by itself. Instead of opting for plastic, choose paper. It’s much more abundant and is easy to replace and recycle!
   

It’s really not difficult at all, but it does take some retraining. It’s up to you to make a difference in your own world! This summer let’s all make it a point to conserve, protect, and prioritize in order to reduce our impact on the environment and shrink our overall energy consumption. Happy (Green) Vacationing!

Our week in Cancun started out surprisingly in Philadelphia… where the storm of the century grounded our Friday morning flight. Instead of sipping margaritas at the beautiful Sandos Caracol Resort and Spa by noon we where shuttled to damp and dreary New Jersey for an uninspired night at Quality Inn. With one day of our 7 down, we were left hoping Mexico could make it up in the remaining time, starting at noon on Saturday.

Arriving at the resort was quite a milestone in our airport laden delayed journey so far and was marked superbly by a warm welcome and outstanding service. (more…)