Travel Bargains For Hot Destinations

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In the Caribbean, travelers seeking bargains this winter are finding big ones: beachfront rooms in famous resorts for less than $100 a night; cheap inter-island cruises; all-inclusive stays (including breakfast, dinner and water sports) for less than the normal room rate; and island-wide promotions. On St. Kitts, for example, the Feel the Warmth promotion offers free room nights; food and beverage credits of $75; and even 10 percent off airfares.

The bargains in Las Vegas are so gigantic that I couldn't figure them out myself. I called Howard Lefkowitz, the chief executive of Vegas.com, for a little help. After a little patter promising that "everything is 25 to 30 percent" less than last year, Lefkowitz agreed to a real-time test.

"What would a room at the Bellagio cost me tonight?" I asked. After a few keystrokes—I heard his keyboard clacking over his website—he found a $129 rate for a standard room at the five-star property. "That probably would have cost $225 last year," he said. "What would $129 have gotten me last year?" I wondered. Lefkowitz didn't hesitate: "A night at Paris, a nice four-star resort." What was Paris charging tonight?" I asked. A few more keystrokes and Lefkowitz had an answer: $90.

Needless to say, the miserable winter is exacting a toll on the resorts, which literally (and obviously) live and die on tourism. In Las Vegas, several high-profile new projects have been abandoned, some of them after construction had begun. And Smith Travel Research, the go-to statisticians of the lodging business, says there are just 21,450 new rooms in the city's "active pipeline." That's 50 percent fewer than were being readied last year.

Layoffs are also escalating—even at mega-resorts that once seemed immune from normal business cycles. Atlantis, the sprawling complex on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, recently let 800 workers go. Last Sunday, Our Lucaya, the resort on Grand Bahama Island that is home to both a Sheraton and a Westin hotel, dismissed 181 employees, nearly a fifth of its workforce. And Disney has been forced to put its vast empire on a diet. It offered buyouts to more than 600 executives last week, including more than 300 in Orlando. The company says it will resort to layoffs if too few mouseketeers walk away voluntarily.

I only found one happy hotelier in the sun: Tom McCallum, director of The Reef, a mid-scale, all-suite, beachfront resort on Grand Cayman where rates are a modest $250 a night.

"My hotel is full of people who might have been at the Ritz-Carlton last year," he explained. "There's a lot of 'guilt downsizing' going on. People still want a holiday, but they can't justify an over-the-top place. They do their homework and see that I have a great property at a great price right on the beach. This isn't a year when people are willing to pay for hot and cold running bathrobes."

The Fine Print…
Early in the season, hoteliers in warm-weather spots were pushing value-added deals rather than "naked discounting," the industry jargon for absolute rate reductions. But as the slump has continued into February—the highest of the high season—many properties are slashing rates too. "Call me," the general manager at a new hotel in Miami advised. "I'll offer you a price you won't find on the Web."

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