Desire Resort Forums

We are arriving at Pearl on October 24th and staying until the 29th. Since this will still be hurricane season, we were considering travel insurance. Does anyone have an opinion on whether the insurance makes sense, is a necessity, or not important? Because of the Desire cancellation policy, we think it might be possible to dodge an impending storm but we just aren't sure.

Are there typically room vacancies to allow date adjustment within 1 or 2 weeks of arrival at Pearl?

Any other advice to make an October trip the best it can be would be appreciated. This will be our first trip to Pearl and although its still pretty far off, we are already excited.

Yes, you need insurance. Do you need to buy additional insurance. Depends.
We are covered out of the USA by our health insurance that we have in the USA. We always pay with our credit card that has trip insurance. Covers cancellation, lost luggage, etc. We do not buy additional insurance because we are covered by what we already have. If you do not have these coverages then by all means buy insurance. Will you need it every time? Probably not, but better safe than sorry. This is a foreign country.
Accidents happen. I was at Pearl last year, playing pool volleyball, someone stepped on a ladies foot in the water. Broken foot. When you are drinking and having fun doing things you don't normally do, shit happens.

We also buy the insurance especially when international as we want the medical insurance. With that said, we haven’t had to use it but it gives us some piece of mind.

We did have to use to the lost luggage insurance once (not to here) so that we would have clothes for day 1 of a trip

E had a pretty serious illness when we were there, two actually. Ended up quarantined and in a Cancun hospital for 6 days before she could (barely) get on a plane and home, still extremely ill but no longer contagious. It was a combination of dengue, bad by itself and hence the quarantine, and an internal issue, passed by a food server not washing their hands, which was pretty disgusting but also much more serious, as it attacked her organs and almost required a late night surgery or airlift to Miami for surgery. We now have MedJet insurance and it is surprisingly inexpensive. I want to say it is $300 or $400 per year, not per trip, combined for both of us and it covers us in both the US and international. They provide ambulance transport, wherever you are, but more importantly, literally provide a medical team and jet for any necessary evacuation etc if you require hospitalization etc, so that you can transfer both domestically and internationally to a US hospital. They provide guidance for medical assistance internationally so you know where you are going if you need medical assistance, and will fly you back to the US and a US hospital, with a medical team, if you require hospitalization but are able to travel (think full medical set up in the plane, like an ambulance). They do the same domestically, if you need to go to a specialized hospital that is not available in your city. Also, in the event of any political unrest, terrorism or natural disaster, they also provide evacuation assistance. Not meant to be an advertisement but for the cost, it provides a lot more comfort when we are traveling, as we have managed to be sick all over the world...

Note: We were at DP when this happened but believe the "infections" occurred prior to our arrival when we were elsewhere in Mexico. And the support at DP was top notch, all of which is why we continue to return!

We always buy travel insurance. About 40 international trips and have used it in an important way on 3 occasions. One required Leer Jet evacuation from Jamaica to Miami hospital for 7 days. ($12000 -- cheap to get out of that 3rd world hospital). While at Desire, wife picked up a parasite, hospitalized in Cancun 2 days. Another was lost luggage for 8 days. NEVER got the luggage back.
got paid quite handsomely for what was lost (but not nearly enough for a gal who is 8 days without her LIttle Black Dresses, all of the packed costumes, etc).

Thanks so much for all the information. We are going to check and see what coverage we have already and then determine what we want to add.

The comments here are definitely pointing us in the right direction.

Once the proper preparation is done, we just want to focus on having a great first trip to Pearl. We're not sure how we are going to be able to wait 6 more months.

I agree with the above posts - buy the insurance. More for the health aspect of it than the trip cost. Neither of the two posters mentioned it but I had heard a few years back that even though your medical insurance will reimburse once back home, that you have to pay the bill in order to get out of the country. Depending on the nature of your illness/injury that could be very significant.

The hurricane is the least of your worries. As you pointed out, if it is bad and the resort is closed you don't need to worry about a rescheduling of your days an the airlines are usually most cooperative. Several years back we were going to RM for Halloween and a hurricane hit several days before. The resort and the airline let us shift our days - it was one of the few times I had forgotten to buy a policy. One thing to note - you can buy a policy and have it in effect for the trip cost up until the depression/hurricane has been named!
Have a fantastic trip.

We get ours through American Express. It's cheap and backed by a good name. We also picked a hospital that Amex Insurance had worked with before in Cancun. I printed information from the hospital website and keep it in my travel folder to give a driver in case of an emergency.