CokeMann wrote:I guess I just don't "get" what the interest/excitement about this is .....
Reality check. The Desire Villas at Rivera Maya are priced for 2019 at $1800 a night(with a two night minimum) in the off season. Figure each of the rooms in the Pearl mansion building are going to be at least a similar if not higher priced and probably have similar minimum booking conditions.
So straw poll - who on here is really going to pony up at least $3600 for two nights for one room in the Pearl mansion building - if actually happens ?
If I had to guess, it's probably about two things for the operators: those who will pay whatever is asked to know they have "the best", and a way to offer preferred guests an upgrade at a discount to make them feel special, while making room in the cheaper rooms for more price sensitive guests.
I managed to forget the number of rooms between just counting the map and looking back in this window, but based on RM, the suites make up 3-4% of the rooms. Most of us won't care about the rooms, but it just takes a few who are willing to pay more than the passion suites cost and compared to the rates on the oceanview jacuzzi rooms they removed, it's even better for the resort. Hopefully I'm not crossing lines here, but we once met a couple that became members by walking in (at Temptations) and saying "we don't care what it costs, we want this". I'm guessing the extra costs to run these rooms is minor compared to how much more the resort charges, assuming the per guest costs (food, drink, etc) are similar no matter what class of room someone stays in.
In terms of upgrades, we've stayed at a hotel in Niagara Falls that is known for pushing upgrades at checkin. I think they get a fair amount of walk-up traffic from the nearby casino, so if they fill up with the basic rooms, they can try to convince people who already had reservations to pay a bit more at checkin to move up a room, and free up basic rooms for walk-ins who might balk if that was the only thing available to them. Higher occupancy at less than rack rate is preferable to empty rooms. I don't know how much last minute traffic Desire gets, so this might not be as applicable, but maybe they occasionally overbook the passion suites and see if they can convince guests to upgrade for maybe half the cost difference. Again, not the full rate, but probably still way more than the oceanview jacuzzi rooms were bringing in.
-R