Please remind me to never go on an all inclusive holiday ever again!

[MouthBreather]

Just back from an all inclusive holiday. Thought it would be easy with teens and a nice rest for the grown ups.

I didn’t factor in inconsiderate, greedy ‘Brit’s abroad’ into my holiday calculations.

Sun beds were all gone by 7.30am, made worse by no one occupying them until after lunch. People playing loud, shit music over the top of the hotel music, kids bombing round the pool shouting football chants, people making ‘communal’ plates of food for their table at breakfast and taking all the freshly cooked stuff, then not even bloody eating it!

I’m looking into a private island for next year. Anyone want to come??

I'm actually finding it really fascinating reading people's different experiences and likes/dislikes.

I've only done AI once and that was over 20 years ago! We did a last minute AI to Dominican Republic because I had just had notice of redundancy so we wanted something where we knew what we were spending. We stayed in Puerto Plata region. Can't remember the resort name and no doubt it's gone now anyway.

I didn't have kids then so probably didn't take any notice but I don't remember any activities for kids, in fact don't remember seeing hardly any kids at all. It was basically breakfast, swim in the pool/use loungers, lunch, swim on the beach/use loungers, dinner. All accompanied by lots of booze. Plus our room had a TV which received some US satellite channels, which was a massive novelty. We spent a fair amount of time watching infomercials!

Since then I spent about 10 years doing hotel/package to various places, but did a self catering villa for the first time about 10 yrs ago and would never want to do anything different again. Own pool, washing machine, can cook own food, no noisy neighbours, no falling into the trap of "eat and drink as much as you can, you paid for it!"

If you have teens then just pick carefully - many villa owners now provide wifi so you can take a games console. Make sure you're near somewhere that has some decent activities eg water park.

One of the things I love most about travelling is eating local food, and I don't mean "Mickey's Sports Bar, Full English Served Daily". Unfortunately I just don't think you can get this with AI. You certainly won't get the experience of something like a mezze.

My DC has issues with IBS and really struggled with unfamiliar foods but I've been able to encourage him to try different stuff when we're away and it's really helped him expand his menu. I'll often recreate meals at home that we've had on holiday.

A divisive factor which I've seen through this thread is that some people want to go on holiday and meet/socialise with others. Whereas others (and I'm in this camp) want to just keep themselves to themselves and enjoy some family alone time.

Someone upthread said that if you book through a UK tour operator then your hotel will be full of Brits. Utter tosh. We booked through TUI to Majorca. There were 6 different tour companies from European companies in that hotel. Its always been that way unless its a small unit you will have different companies within a hotel.

Rivkka Jamaica was a bit "dodgy", tended to stay on site unless we were on an arranged trip, wondered into the local "town" (we were in Montego Bay as you probably know having looked up the hotel) and were offered drugs etc, but we did a lot of trips like Dunns Falls and the such so didn't feel we missed out. There was armed guards either end of the private beach, but it was the same in Mexico, although when we wondered out the only thing we had to worry about was taking enough water! Dominican Republic perhaps felt the safest of the lot, although did not feel truly unsafe in any of them.

We are going on our first AI in October as a family to zante, the hotel looks fabulous but it was an amazing deal so would imagine it will be full of brits hopefully considerate ones. I’m having palpitations thinking about sun bed reserving etc but am planning on doing trips out to turtle beach and water parks etc

We've done AI for quite a few of our past holidays. We dive and find it much more relaxing to have all our meals in the same place and not have to think about it. Breakfast, dive, lunch, dive, dinner, sleep and repeat - bliss!

If you're going somewhere food isn't part of the attraction then I don't see the point of making more work for yourself selecting the least rubbish restaurant you can find. We did a non AI dive holiday once and walked for ages to the best reviewed restaurant in the area...not worth the effort!

@Cerseilannisterinthesnow Can you pm me the name please? I'm looking at zante for next year.

If you want cheap-ish but pure luxury and 5-7* AI then Baron Palace Sahl Hasheesh, Hurghada was amazing.

Snob

If there was a sign saying not to reserve sunbeds with towels, I would remove them and use them

@AJPTaylor I’d actually be really interested to know when you come back, if it was possible to eat out for two meals a day with wine, after dinner drinks and things like ice creams, all for €105 a day. (I’m not saying it’s not, as I’ve never been to Kefalonia.)

We’ve always done AI on the basis that it might not be cheaper per se, but it’s paid for up front which for me makes for a less stressful holiday. If the kids wanted drinks or ice creams or I wanted to try a cocktail I wasn’t counting up how much we had left.

I do find it funny how the OP expected “good behaviour” because she’d paid a lot of money. Do only poor people act like twats then? Are you really that much of a snob? Some of the worst behaviour I’ve seen is amongst the champagne swilling, coke sniffing, so-called upper classes 🤣.

@FuriousVexation and many others, you are allowed out of an AI hotel you know. You can walk down the street and eat anywhere you like. They don’t lock you in and force you to eat their food. The AI hotel we stayed in Gran Canaria last year was all local cuisine to the point that the only “British” style food was bread, plain spaghetti and chips on the children’s buffet. Everything else was authentic Spanish and Canarian food. Plus, why on earth would you want to pick a villa where you could take a bloody games console? Might as well stay at home. I’d rather my kids spent two weeks messing around in the pool and eating ice cream.

@Northernsoullover exactly. We went with First Choice last year, but it wasn’t exclusive and there were Irish, Dutch, German, Polish, Russians and Italians there. The hotel wasn’t even that big.

That sounds like hell. I did my first family all inclusive holiday last month, in Tenerife, and I was dreading that kind of behaviour but actually it was a lovely hotel with well behaved guests. And the lifeguard took towels away if people weren’t using the beds. Don’t go cheap and do look at all the reviews next time!