When doing long-distance trips, I always book a combination of flights and hotels.

On the one hand the EU travel regulations for packaged tours are much more customer friendly, which got an important advantage during the pandemic and on the other hand I just like to have a homebase where I have the possibility to get all in one place including food, in case the weather gets awful.

This time the travel agency had to change our hotel booking because of the pandemic staff situation in our originally booked accomodation to a different hotel and upgraded it to an all-inclusive package.

Normally I book only half-board as a maximum, so when I’m returning to the hotel from a tour I at least have the dinner included, just for convenience reasons. I’m also doing quite some hotel testing and that’s the only way to get a proper view of the cuisine in a hotel. Otherwise I just like much more to go out and test the local cuisine in the country I’m travelling to.

But back to the point:

All-inclusive may seem to be very convenient and cost effective, but what I learned during almost all of my trips that included this kind of food support is:

• As long as you don’t have a really high-end priced hotel, the thing that suffers the most with all-inclusive is the quality of the food. You’re fooled by the impression to save money, but in the end you’re just paying money for very cheap stuff. Even the free cocktails are the most horrible stuff you can find and most importantly just getting the food inside the hotel prevents you from going outside, meeting people and enjoying the local food.
• All-inclusive, especially in the what I call “low cost all-inclusive” sector often attracts a special kind of guests, that are more focussed on a cheap experience and sadly sometimes comes hand in hand with bad behaviour, because of too much alcohol use, especially during the evenings in the bars.
• There are basically no to very low tips for the service people of the hotel at all, which means that the work satisfaction of the people working in the hotel goes down the drain and has a direct impact on your stay in that accommodation.
• Areas with a high number of all-inclusive hotels seem to me to have a significantly lower rate of great restaurants, because the restaurants and bars have to somehow compete with the hotels and therefore my experience is that the quality of the surrounding restaurants also sadly goes down.
• Most pools, hotel beaches and outdoor areas of all-inclusive hotels are overcrowded, because the people visiting these kind of hotels tend to stay in the hotel for the whole stay much more often and just do a couple of organized tours. That’s why getting a sunbed feels like going at war or the areas are just highly overcrowded.

These are the biggest problems of booking hotels with all-inclusive packages, but if you ended up in such a hotel/package, these are the most easy things you can do to break out of it:

• If someone is friendly, helpful and does a good job, no matter if this is in the restaurant, the bar, reception or the maid service:
  Give tips! People will admire it and it will make your stay more pleasant!
• Instead of getting all your food, snacks and drinks directly in the hotel:
  Go out! Visit bars and restaurants and meet local people!
• If the pool area, hotel beach and outdoor areas of the hotel is too crowded:
  Go and see at least the surroundings of your hotel and the beach bars and public beaches!

I can absolutely guarantee you that doing so will enhance your stay, get you more in touch with the local people and also helps the tourism sector in this area to keep it’s variety and therefore improve your vacation experience.

Good luck and I wish you always safe travels!