|
Puzzled by the pricing of his
packages to Cancun and nearby, I placed a call to Monsieur Jacques
Abitan, president of the long-established Vacation Travel Mart of
Miami (www.vacmart.com), and asked, “How could a week on the Mayan
Riviera (just south of Cancun) cost less than the same vacation in
the Dominican Republic?” (the latter being the cheapest of the
cheap). I quickly learned that because of recent excess hotel
construction - 4,000 new rooms in November and December alone - the
Mayan Coast is teeming with vacancies, its hotel owners desperate.
The result: discounts to tour operators of 50 percent and 60
percent, and thus prices rivaling those of the ultra-cheap DR. But
it gets better. According to Abitan (a veteran of many years of tour
operation to the tropics), the radical low-cost fares to the
Caribbean of upstarts JetBlue and Spirit Airlines have wrecked the
normal airfare price structure and forced American, United,
Northwest and Continental to cut their own fares to many Caribbean
locations. Because of that - again, according to Jacques Abitan -
tour operators are sometimes enjoying lower fares to the Mexican
Caribbean from New York, Chicago and Detroit than from Miami!
Contact them and you'll find air-and-land offers for a five-day stay
at an all-inclusive, Caribbean Coast resort in Mexico, including
round-trip airfare from Miami and all three meals daily, for as
little as $587 per person. Those rates will dip further as we
approach the summer. In a travel world where Europe has become the
expensive destination, the Caribbean is now the cost-conscious place
to go.
The next several months also will see a unique opportunity to
vacation on the island of Barbados for a fraction of the normal
cost. Because of its distance from the U.S. and the high level of
its price structure, Barbados is usually one of the more expensive
of the Caribbean islands. Its hotels are mainly elegant and
patronized by well-off British travelers. Its atmosphere is
tea-party British. Its judges wear white wigs, and its population is
a rather formal lot.
But in the Caribbean off-season, its government works hard and
offers subsidies to attract tourism from up north. And the
well-regarded Atlas Vacations will again offer a yearly "Best of
Barbados Sale" for stays from May 1 to July 15. This year, the price
for round-trip airfare and seven nights with full breakfast daily at
the Rostrevor Hotel (studio oceanfront room), including a $25
fish-fry dinner, will be an obviously subsidized $668 from Miami or
Charlotte, N.C., $855 from New York, $1,025 from Los Angeles. Phone
800-634-1057 or access www.visitatlasvacations.com.
Because Easter was early this year, the entire month of April has
become an "off-season" to the tropics, and round-trip airfares to
St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, will be as low as $224 from Boston
(on American Airlines), $214 from New York or Newark (on
Continental), $265 from Atlanta (on Spirit Airlines), and $241 from
Chicago (on U.S. Airways). From St. Thomas, a ferry takes you to the
smallest and least developed (because 90 percent is a national park)
of the U.S. Virgin Islands: the enchanting St. John, with its famous
hillside camp of tented bungalows costing as little as $70 a night
at Maho Bay Camps (800-392-9004 or 340-715-0501; www.maho.org).
As an indication that Maho Bay has plenty of vacancies at that time,
let me quote from the resort's recent plea about conditions in April
and May: “The turquoise waters are warming up to their typical
perfect swimming temperatures of 80 degrees and the snorkeling is
incredible with recent sightings of turtles, spotted eagle rays and
more tropical fish than you can name swimming along the reefs.”
Maho Bay Camps is an American vacation treasure, an eco-sensitive
resort appealing to unpretentious, intellectually curious people of
all ages who value the back-to-nature quality of a resort made up of
canvas-tented bungalows overlooking an enchanting oceanview. You owe
yourself a stay.
|
