To think all inclusive holidays are very good value?

Eh?

It's not snobbishness to want a holiday with food you enjoy, served at a table rather than taken from a buffet that's OK at best and not what you'd actually choose to eat.

It's also possible to eat in restaurants where you’re not fluent. Google translate exists if you're unsure. I have a basic understanding of Spanish that I've mainly picked up from eating in restaurants in parts of Spain where English isn't spoken. Because even if there is a translated menu, it doesn't tell you what Spanish dishes such as old clothes or Russian salad actually are.

And you don't need to 'run around' finding restaurants because they're just there when you walk around. No sneering from restaurant staff either.

There's also nothing wrong with buying easy food from supermarkets and heating that up, that's a nice part of a holiday to me.

Plus doing that is generally cheaper than the type of AI where you're served nice food at a table from a choice of restaurants.

With kids they are brilliant in my experience. When they’re little there’s loads to amuse them and loads to drink and eat. When they’re older they can prowl about on their own safely and help themselves when they’re hungry and there’s always loads of others to pal up with.

I see them as base camp and rarely stay on site every day/evening.

I bloody love cheesy evening entertainment after dinner.

I love AI as well as other types of holidays. For us AI is brilliant in big groups of friends or family as there’s no arguing about bills and how to split costs.

mentioned on here already but the Atlantica hotel in Nissi beach in Cyprus is lovely. I also like the TUI sensatori ones.

We mix up cultural and fly and flop holidays. There’s a value to both IMO.

It's great for fly and flop, the Greek island ones we've done have been nice (ikos and grecotel) and good value especially with younger kids who (mine anyway) have 1 bite/sip and then want to try something else. Now we've reached ages 8 and 10 they're more mature and we prefer to adventure so tend to pick multiple small hotels on holiday and drive around, staying in new places and eating new things. It costs less when we book as flights, car hire and local hotels aren't expensive really but we do find food costs come in quite high with 4 big appetites. If we ever wanted to just lie around somewhere chill for a week I'd do it again, but we prefer exploring now and it seems a waste to spend 3 or 4 or sometimes 5k on that when we can fly to Thailand, south africa or Belize and drive around for 2 weeks for not wildly different costs.

Really I had no idea 🙄 Equally I know a lot of people who don’t leave the resort if on an AI 🤷‍♀️ Just expressing preference what with this being a chat forum and all.

Which hotel in Greece was it please? Sounds just like what we’re looking for when we take the Grandchildren away

I find it laughable when people who don't have real money, who are not millionaires (not you, just an example) feel snobby about AI holidays. Like what the fuck are they going to do in the alternative - cook themselves? Or run around trying to find a restaurant without speaking the language like a native, in which restaurant they would be sneered at by the equally impecunious locals feeling snobby about tourists?
AI holidays are brilliant!!!! Only once did I have an opportunity of an AI holiday in a decent hotel (4*), it was Iberostar in Spain and it was just wonderful, but it was very very expensive. School holidays, 7 days, 4K. I wish I could do it more often.

Not enough host protection either.

I've had holes punched in my walls and the place totally trashed. The "guests" left 1* retaliatory reviews when asked to pay for the damage which were allowed to stand.

Airbnb, despite the much vaunted "Aircover" also refused to cover the damage. My own insurance paid the £000s to reinstate.

Google reviews for Calabash aren't great (even discounting silly complaints), and the manager's responses are 'interesting'.

Air B and B are fucking awful. There's not enough customer protection, I know someone who got screwed over because the host cancelled on them.

We've always found AI to be good value, though we've had to fine tune it over the years.

Wherever we stay always has to be a base for exploring. I love swimming, and when we go off season, I usually have the whole pool to myself, which is bliss.

We prefer ones that are not stuck in the middle of a resort, but that give us lots of scope to get out and about. We often half and half holidays so we can beach and swim for five days then AI for a few. But we've even done things like book a couple of nights away in other nearby countries before returning to the AI because it's relatively so much cheaper.

There is no inherent virtue in "preferring to explore local restaurants". It's just a preference.

So it’s not just all about fighting for sun beds?

I can see the advantages if you’re in a big group with kids.

There are lots of hotels and other accommodation providers offering every type of accommodation though. You might just as easily say if self catering or B and B weren't such good value for the hospitality sector it wouldn't get offered.

Certainly they'll have to be making a profit overall, but that's true of everything within the sector. What it comes down to is that customers have different profiles, meaning what's good value for some isn't so for others.

This is an interesting thread. I've looked into it last night and concluded that AI isn't for us but maybe we'd consider a chambre d'hote /gite village setup next year where we'd get our own gite/BBQ, have access to a shared pool, breakfast provided and can pay a supplement to have our evening meal covered.

I think given we go to France a lot, this would be the best of both worlds and we can go exploring and not have washing up. Probably about £4200 for 2 weeks doing it that way with 10 evening meals provided for 4 people, rather than £3000 for 2 weeks self catered with a lot more stress involved.

I also HATE Airbnb. You miss a day of the holiday each year cleaning up where you're staying so you don't get a bad review and I'd rather relax on my last 24 hours of a holiday.

I like the exploring and eating parts of the holiday. I start to feel cooped up on the resort.

But I do see the attraction if you just want to relax and it seems like excellent value to me.

Part of holidays for us is exploring and eating local food at non tourist areas or going to different supermarkets and putting meals together iin different places so no we couldn't tie ourselves down to that

Agree totally on the room thing. For my Bodrum comparison before we had a large comfortable suite with full kitchen and dining and balcony. I want to be able to make a cup of decent tea and sit and read my book when I am up early. The AI options tend to be room only.
Getting harder to find non AI in some resorts in Turkey now though as their prices have shot up through inflation so eating out prices have doubled in last few years. I paid £150 for meze/ meat platter, two beers and four cocktails for three of us in a beach restaurant. Almost UK prices.

If they were actually good value for customers so many hotels wouldn't offer them. Good value for the hospitality sector though!

What makes a holiday is different for everyone.

I'm not bothered about pools or water parks or organised activities.

I like to go and see things - museums, art, wildlife, waterfalls. I feel refreshed by seeing and doing different things.

I like self catering for the space. We will usually eat a big meal out for lunch and then have a light salad type dinner. It doesn't bother me to assemble a salad for dinner, but then for me a holiday isn't about doing nothing, it's about doing different things.

One was Elpida Village in Crete. That was great for the kids.

I would like to know where on earth you got a 5 star AI hotel, during the school holidays, in Greece…for 3k!!! That seems very cheap.

It doesn't seem like value to me as £3k for a week for 3 people is more than I would ever spend. We book ourselves. For the same money 5 of us spent 11 days in Greece in August, some in Athens, some on islands. For the same money we took trains around Europe for 3 weeks, visiting 5 countries. AI doesn't appeal to me as I like to do my own thing, explore etc, but if I had to do it, I wouldn't want to pay £3k.

I don’t mind it for a couple of days but it just feels so samey after a while.
I don’t really like being around loads of people and definitely don’t like only having a couple of hotel rooms to go back to for more than a long weekend.
We have had suites and villas with private pools in AI resorts. They are a better but they tend to come with a level of service that I don’t particularly want.
Also they can cost more than we paid for our first house for our family of 6. So you do then feel like you need to stay on resort and get value for money.
A villa with a private pool, a cleaner and eating out/ordering in or we’ve had a private chef before now is perfect IMO.
We’re not paying for activities, facilities or entertainment we don’t want, everyone has plenty of space and we don’t feel like we have to stay around the villa to get our money’s worth.

Lying on beaches is boring, I agree. I like getting in the big blue thing!

Also fair skinned, so we don't go in summer. I genuinely don't know how people cope in August with how hot the Med is getting. Different strokes for different folks I suppose, but it's not for me.

Yeah - lying on a beach is as boring for me as a pool and I'm far too fair skinned anyway.

I really am not suited to AI!