Worth it?

[Firstshoes]

We (me and DH)are booked to stay in a pretty nice hotel near Benidorm. (Not everyone's cup of tea I know !) We have booked and paid for full board so do have all meals included already but have an option to upgrade to all inclusive. It works out £39 per day more for both of us. We do like a drink and would be having wine with meals and probably cocktail before/after dinner but we won't be spending all our time at the hotel. I can't work out if it would be worth it. It would also include snacks and bottled water but as we are full board anyway I'm not sure we would benefit hugely from the snacks but would from the water.

So an extra £20 per day per person roughly....depends how much you drink obviously. Do you think you'd end up spending more than that each day on alcohol and soft drinks? We went all inclusive this year and half board last year....I think overall it was worth going AI...and we are not big drinkers. I found even the cost of soft drinks really added up when we were half board.

I thought full board was all inclusive?

On a cruise the drinks package can be £70 per day per person and we still buy it. (Cocktails are £14 so I could easily exceed £70 by having 6 drinks in one day). It depends how much alcohol you drink. I also prefer the ease of knowing it's covered so being able to order whatever I fancy or try different drinks without worrying about added expense.

Full board is just breakfast, lunch and dinner but no drinks with meals at all not even water. You are right, even the soft drinks do add up so may be worth it. I suppose at the very least we'll be having 3 drinks a day each and waters...

Yes I'd book AI.. Good for coffees and soft drinks throughout the day as well as snacks if you don't fancy eating (maybe you go out or have a sleep) during the usual breakfast/lunch/dinner times. The snacks are really substantial, thing like burgers/toasties/Ice cream/fruit

That would be a no brainer for me. Its less than £20 a day for all soft drinks round the pool and even if you just had a couple of alcoholic drinks there every night prior to heading off out it would save you money. Plus all the other little add ons during the day you might fancy like coffees or ice cream.

Even a couple of glasses of wine each with dinner would probably cost more than that and I assume that, if you're full board, you'll be spending quite a bit of time at the hotel so might want a pre dinner cocktail at least. It might also get you nicer hot drink options at breakfast?

We've never done all inclusive but I remember once we stayed half board in a hotel and we weren't even allowed to use the water fountain at dinner because any drink at all was only for AI guests unless paid for.

Are you sure your full board doesn’t include some drinks? We’ve been to few full board holidays where the main meals included two servings of wine or beer and unlimited soft drinks and bottled water.

Thanks for all the replies. We are definitely going to upgrade. We'll probably regret it if we don't when getting the bill on check-out! Unfortunately the full board is definitely just food. Not even free water with the meals. As some of you have mentioned just with a drink each with meals, water and maybe one cocktail in the bar each will probably cost the same as the upgrade. I am very indecisive so thanks all for your help

It sounds like it’ll be worth it then. As soon as you’ve paid your upgrade you can then forget about it and start to enjoy yourself without having to think how much everything is. Have a nice holiday ☀️ 🏖️

Thank you