Or is behaviour at all inclusive hotels hilarious?

[inaminute23]

So in the last 2 months, I've been to Dubai, Cyprus and Jamaica, and now I'm in Greece, and 3/4 of those have been all inclusive hotels.

I've got to admit, and I'm as guilty as any, but it's so weird just observing behaviour at all inclusive hotels!

Getting up and starting to drink cheap and sugary cocktails straight away!

Piling 3 plates full at the buffets.

Getting up for 6.30am to nab a subbed before they all run out.

There are probably so many more but I'm just sat at breakfast, after going to get a second full breakfast (though I've had a gastric bypass so it is all relative) and it's made me chuckle.

I'd love to read any other weird behaviours typical of all inclusive holidays!

This is LIGHT HEARTED for those who soon enough will tell me I'm judgemental haha.

In that case, Club Med is your friend. Its mainly full of French people and the food is better too ( costs an arm and a leg though.. but it was OK since what I lost in pounds, I gained in stones)

Cheap international is definitely a thing - and there are plenty of buffet style restaurants in the UK who serve it all the time (and are always packed).

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record - they're not all like that. The place we went this summer had good food - loads of salads, bread, someone doing fresh cooking of chicken/fish/beef every meal, an evening pasta station outside where you could choose your pasta and sauce and they'd do it fresh for you, massive pans of paella... yes there were chips and nuggets in "kids corner" but there was an awful lot more than that.

Similarly, if you go to an AI in a known party resort island like Ibiza or to a resort like Magaluf or Ayia Napa you are going to get a totally different demographic to somewhere like Menorca or a quiet corner of Crete or Lanzarote.

Absolutely. All pretty grim destinations mentioned too. Attracting everything i dislike about humanity.

Just got back from a 5 star in Egypt and it was nothing like this

@whenwillthemadnessend
No one needs 3 holidays all inc

Noone needs a million pound home yet people live in them. No one needs more than one car, yet C.Ronaldo has twenty. No one needs any children, yet many people have several… ever heard the word “want”?

Never been on one and on reading this thread I am not tempted one bit!

Not my sort of thing at all and I’d be totally miserable and very very bored

'I’m not sure that AI in Dubai, Cyprus and Jamaica would meet my definition of “well travelled” 🤣'

I had a whole reply typed here but deleted it.

This superior attitude to 'travelling' vs 'holidays' can get in the bin.

I wouldn’t ever go to an AI and am not remotely bothered if that makes me look like a snob.

I can see why people go when they’ve got little kids and babies etc and used to suggest it all the time when my kids were tiny and I was exhausted.

But what I don’t understand is:
for the price of a flight,
booking an apartment and
shopping in supermarkets, you can have a much more authentic holiday for much less. I don’t want to sit around any pool all day anyway so I’m probably not the target market - we like stones and bones.

I had a three week holiday in Spain for the same price as my friends week long all inclusive. They felt like it was really hard to leave the resort and were totally sick of pizza and bolognaise by the time they left. Why bother? Just seems so institutional.

You can eat like a king in Spain on so little money, supermarkets are amazing and most pubs will give you a three course lunch for £20 (ancient law from Franco times that the working man had the be given a decent mid day lunch) but you need to look for the fat old men drinking wine and smoking fags outside. They’ll be brilliant. Not the tourist traps where it’s three times the price.

She had visions of me on a rusty overheated bus with farmers wives carrying baskets of livestock. It was actually a lovely air conditoned coach and we spent the day in Gibraltar.

See now I'd love the former much over the latter. I've spent years backpacking and local bus journeys are just brilliant. You get chatting to everyone, see things particular to that country etc. Air conditioned coach is just an extension of AI to me, which yes does sound like hell to me I'm afraid.

The AI hotels you are staying at sound like total dives. I've never stayed at a luxury AI and seen any of the behaviour you describe. People shoving their hands in the fried fruit and cramming it in their mouths, downing sugary cocktails all day, or eating 3 breakfasts.
I have either been very lucky, or we have vastly different views on what a luxury hotel is.

I remember a hotel where there was actually a sign in the dining room, indicating no taking of food to put in bags for later! I don’t think it was AI, just a substantial buffet breakfast.

At a hotel in Prague years ago we saw a table of 4 very well dressed, affluent looking people, who repeatedly went to the breakfast buffet and slipped no end of food, inc. rolls they’d filled with ham and cheese, etc., fruit and yoghurts, into bags for later - while glancing around each time to make sure no staff were watching. We were close enough to be able to hear - thank goodness - that they weren’t Brits!

At least they presumably ate it, though - seeing people taking piles of buffet food and then leaving much of it does make me mad.

We did the getting up super early to bag a sunbed this year in July. You had to, everyone else did and you'd be without otherwise. One morning I happened to be awake at half 4 and looked out and there were some towels out already. I went and did it too. Not ashamed!

I get this. We never went pre kids and I don’t think we will go again now they are bigger unless we decide to go to Cuba or Mexico and do a mix of beach holiday and sightseeing in which case we will opt for one for the beach part. With small children I found it nice not having to think or plan anything at all for a week. You just potter to the restaurant when you are hungry, play in the pool/on the beach with them and send them to kids club in the morning so you can go for a walk or get a couple of hours to sit and read your book with a coffee. This year we are self catering in Billund and going to Lego land and to some of the nearby Viking sites with a day in Amsterdam on the way. I’m very much looking forward to it. Honestly for a non AI beach break I’d be tempted to stay at home and just dress for the weather as we are on the coast and have an awesome set of beaches a 10 minute walk away. Saving on the flights would allow for lots of spending on nice meals out, museum passes etc and buying new equipment for the beach

I went to an all-inclusive in Turkey once, not my idea. I recall there being a vast array of colourful salads at the buffet, but I'm not interested in salad. (One of our party who was came down with a bad stomch.) I came away from dinner every night feeling dissatisfied, like I had eaten a tiny amount of crap food. I remember thinking I wished there was a McDonalds or Subway within walking distance, because I would have paid to eat that rather than have the free food.

This was supposedly one of the best/most expensive all-inclusive places.

Based on a sample size of one, I conclude that all-inclusive food is deliberately made so crap no-one can be arsed to eat more than they need to to stay alive. (I realise OP's post about loaded plates contradicts this though.)

I stayed in an AI place years ago.I booked it directly but it was used as a holiday village by whatever travel agency do them for the season

we overlapped by 2 days with the Holiday Village guests.

i remember we were in the car park and laughed as the last travel agency bus pulled out, the holiday village sign was quickly taken off the walls

The hotel had all these self serve beer taps in the entertainment area which they now opened up so guests (largely Dutch, German and Scandinavian) could serve themselves

The change in the hotel was amazing, far nicer and more relaxed without the HV ‘entertainment’

I love how an abundance of British people (who are hated worldwide for how they behave on holiday) are all competing indirectly on an online forum about what well-travelled and luxurious means 😂

To those who are saying they’ve stayed at luxurious hotels and nobody behaves like that, you are lying to make yourselves look like you only go to places where rich sophisticated people go. Let’s be honest, wealthy people sometimes have the worst manners.

We are a young working couple with two incomes, and 9 out of 10 times stay in “top” hotels/resorts, and you get Apricot man behaviour from people on every level of the wealth and sophistication spectrum.

I’ve stayed at Atlantis in Dubai, a 7* resort, and there was an incredibly trashy family there that would do all this sunbed malarkey, but there were also incredibly wealthy people there who would do the same due to being so entitled.

Also, do people not realise that all inclusive is just a meal option, it doesn’t stop you from touring the country you’re in. Just like staying in a “breakfast only” doesn’t mean you can’t chill and buy other meals in the hotel.

Rant Over :)

Just to be clear, I don't think McDonalds and Subway are fine dining. I'm someone who normally eats anything, and has almost never come across professionally cooked food in a restaurant or hotel I couldn't enjoy. But somehow this all-inclusive hotel managed to offer a huge array of different things, none of which were appealing.

Yep, it’s a style I associate with two things. International all-you-can-eat buffets (which, like AI, have those weird little square desserts that oddly have no flavour) and restaurants and hotels trying to cater to visitors who don’t want local food.

I’m sure there are much better AI places, but it feels a bit once bitten, twice shy now. Tried it once, didn’t really enjoy it so am not rushing to do it again. I was inspired to try AI after a holiday where we were mainly in half board hotels and the food was great, but I’m now wondering if hotels that only offer half board can put more into the meals they do offer than the average AI. We went on to an a la carte half board arrangement for the second part of the Mauritius holiday and it was gorgeous!

Never done AI .I would rather go out and get food from local restaurants. I cant just stay in the complex to eat

With the exception of disney world. But there is around 100 restaurants

Not wanting to go to an AI doesn't make you a snob. It's the superiority attached to 'real authentic travel' that is, if not exactly snobby, very pretentious and irritating. Both AI and staying in 'a fabulous little hotel run by locals, and REALLY seeing the place' are just two different ways of enjoying yourself in accordance with your own tastes. Both are about your own pleasure and entertainment, neither are altruistic or worthy, both annoy local people unless they directly benefit from tourist income. Arguably those who go AI annoy them less, given they're corralled into an out of town complex, rather than getting in their way in local shops and dithering about on public transport.

I stayed at a smallish half-board place recently. No probs with towels on sunbeds around the pool but behaviour at dinner time was grabby.

At breakfast, rolls croissants etc were put out in small baskets but replenished from time to time. On our first morning, one family helped themselves to the ALL of the croissants. They looked like total selfish idiots, sitting at their table looking a bit disgruntled with a huge pile of blimin croissants in the middle. They’d obviously not even tried them yet because when I managed to get one the next morning it tasted absolutely awful 😆

Same family, I was waiting for tomatoes (which are plentiful in Greece) while the man stood in front of me and literally piled up his plate with the things.

On the last eve, we went to the dining room just after it opened at 7pm as we were leaving for the airport at 7:30. I was surprised at how packed it was, everyone seemed to want to get there first so they didn’t miss out. The clever hotel staff we’re onto it though and had just put out lots of leftover food from the day before. The rest of the time, we went between 8-9, it was way more relaxed and the food was fresh and plentiful 😃

AI once, never again. (Portugal)

The food was boring & repetitive and bland. The patrons just kept going back for thirds, fourths...

Somehow people got drunk on weak beer. An achievement!

In the end we thoughts, f*ck it, let's go into town for dinner. We found a nice local restaurant that served food with flavour and we loved it. We never went back to the hotel restaurant, surviving on food from a local bakery and a new restaurant each evening after that.

I understand the appeal of AI if you are on a budget but you feel like you need to get the value out of it by stuffing your face...and there's a whole lot of culture outside the hotel you are missing out on.

We go self catering or B&B now.

Not wanting to go to an AI doesn't make you a snob. It's the superiority attached to 'real authentic travel' that is, if not exactly snobby, very pretentious and irritating.

Oh yes the “I’m a traveller not a tourist” brigade.

There are some miserable people on here

whinging about carbon footprint, saying they would rather stay home, assuming AI means you don’t ever leave the hotel and experience culture r
etc etc….

well you know what?! You stay home! That’s what’s so many mumsnetters are like - they never wanna go anywhere and to them nowhere is as nice as their own home. It’s small minded

@Pacca You are my twin, Dh once suggested it when we were flat broke, I said not a chance, we will do it properly next year and we did.