Palenque and Acayucan Hotels
My how the mighty have fallen. There was a time when the news that the famoso "Mexico" Mike was in town would cause hoteliers to quake in fear and women to shiver in anticipation. Well, maybe the second statement was a little bit of a stretch, but the first was true.
When I was a well-known travel writer, hoteliers knew that my reviews could mean business for them, and often when I started visiting hotels at one end of town, by the time I was finished, hotel managers at the opposite end knew I was coming. In one case, a manager actually chased me down the street to offer me a courtesy (free) room. Most would ask me to stay without charge. The irony is that back then, I had a practically unlimited expense account and didn?t need the courtesies. Today, well, the Nelson fortune is dwindling with each mile we move forward. Who said life was supposed to be fair?
Fast-forward ten years. It?s a different story today. Even though I am now in the business of planning trips for people and making personal recommendations for hotels, sending about 500 people a year to different hotels in Mexico, nobody knows that. Even though I have an Internet page with half a million visitors a year, everybody and his brother has an Internet page. Today half a million is not a huge number, no matter how well targeted. Times have changed. Unless a hotel sees a busload of tourists pull up, he doesn't know where his business comes from.
I have found that marketing is a tough, time-consuming business and I don't market myself as well as I should. This puts me into the same category as the hoteliers. I do not intend to single out speciic hotels, but to use them as examples.
Even with the hotel and tourist business down as it is now (we have seen less than 10% occupancy), the idea of rewarding someone who promotes their business is not in the hotelier's world view. Every dollar counts. I think that is a little short-sighted, but I am not in their shoes. We have been the only guests as some hotels with 50-100 rooms . That is sad.
Selling Mexico right now is a tough sell. I think that the hoteliers who are hurting so badly should be doing more to tell people it is safe to come visit. This is no time for passivity.
On the other hand, for the first time in my 40 years of reporting on Mexico's tourism industry, hotels have actually lowered prices. This is huge. In the past, when business was bad, they raised prices, figuring to squeeze every last peso from the few guests they had. So far, we have seen reductions in prices from 30% in Tecolutla to 50% pretty much across the board in Palenque.
ACAYUCAN HOTELS
Acayucan had no discounts and one hotel was actually full. We stayed at the old standby the Kinaku. $45, great internet, quiet rooms (except on Friday and Saturday nights when their disco on the top floor was loud). On weekends get a room on the bottom floors. We were on the third and could have used some more concrete between us and them. They have secure parking and the same attendant I have known for 20 years. It was really first class. The Hotel Arcos del Parque is decent and quieter on weekends but not very upscale. But I liked it. There is a 3rd hotel on the other side of the square that is funky to the max. The rooms are actually quite nice, but to get to them you walk down darm corridors with strange holes for electical conduits in the walls and puddles of water. But it was cheap at about $20 and they had only 2 rooms left.
PALENQUE HOTELS
The Chan-Kah is still a very nice hotel. If I were a rich guy, I would probably have stayed there. I did not because my feelings were hurt, so this is not a negative review, just the saga of how things have changed. I will still recommend them, but now they are just a hotel to me, not a special place that I think of with love in my heart.
I do believe they are over-priced and would have believed so even if I had been recognized. But, for some people, the ambiance would be worth the extra dollars. If I were running the hotel I would make the price competetive to the others is town. But I am just pobrecito Miguelito, so what do I know?
I pitched the hotel Chan-Kah on how I have written about them for 20 years and realized that the 20 year-old kid there could care less. All he saw was an old guy talking about something that happened before his time. He was very nice, but I was wasting my breath and bruising my own ego by talking to him. I should have insisted that hecall the manager. It is that kind of fear of thinking out-of-the-box that permeates the hotel industry here. Indeed, it is a microcosm of the service industry in general. People are warm, friendly, and eager to please - to a point. A generalization is that employees fear taking the initiative. That is where US and Mexican tourist-related businesses differ. It is my belief that taking initiative is more rewarded on the other side of the border.
I remember the Chan-Kah when it was a few rooms and I wrote glowing articles about it. They needed the business and were such sincere people running it. One of my great pleasures as a somewhat influential travel writer was that I could help "the little guy". I would like to think that that karma was still active. The trouble is that sometimes when the little guy becomes the big guy, he forgets who helped him in the beginning.Â
Today, the Chan-Kah is huge and even advertises that they have a convention center. They still have a gorgeous setting, but seem to be trying to be something different. They have gone from being a reasonably-priced special inn to an overpriced hotel / spa / convention center. At more than $130 a night (normal rack rate), they are pushing the limit of reasonability. During this crises, they lowered their rate (for anyone) to about $90. That is still a lot. Their claim to fame is their surroundings. The rooms are so-so. They now call themselves a Resort Village. We have enough resort villages in the world. We need more unique and honest hotels.
Although their brochure advertises that they have 2 bedroom suites, they were only willing to rent them to us for the price of two rooms. Folks, this hotel was either absolutely empty or doing a good imitation of it. Had they been able to rent their only adequate rooms out for $50 they would have had 2 customers last night. We would probably have appreciated their ambiance. We both lost that night.
As we got ready to leave, we met what I thought was the manager in the parking lot. He, too, was uninterested in some used-to-be-famous old guy. I am sure that if I had showed up with a press trip sponsored by the Tourism Department, I would have been wined and dined. But you know what? I have returned after a few months to hotels that treated me like a king and been reduced to commoner status.
Other hotels in town immediately drop their rack rate by 50%, except for one that tried to charge the full rate of about $90-$100. Their greed cost them two customers that night. We ended up in the Howard Johnson's. This is a very good hotel just before the turn to the ruins on the right, with ample rooms, really hot showers, internet in some rooms and in the lobby, coffee-makers in the rooms and an attentive staff. While they didn't seem to care about the infamous "Mexico" Mike either, they did not insult me and their promotion was reasonably-priced.
Alas, the old Canada has seen better days. Nice people though.
The Maya Tulipanes is now a big hotel, not the quaint jungle hotel is used to be. But it is still a very nice hotel, just modern. The staff is friendly and everything seemed in order. We would have stayed there (even though they did not know me either), but the Howard Johnson was a little less and just had a more comfortable feel.
The Mision Palenque was as I remembered it, classy and like a first-class hotel anywhere. The rooms have either gotten smaller or I have gotten bigger (no laughter, please). But they are a good hotel, on the upper end of the scale here.
Not one decent hotel we saw in any price range had more than 10% occupancy. Not one. The backpacker hotels were the most full. Even they seemed to be about half-full. Times are tough.'
Are Palenque hotels worth the $100 or so a night they charge during normal times? Is it worth the expected rise to $120 next year for a hotel room? That is a tough question. I do not think so. I feel that they are ahead of themselves in pricing.
There are still budget places for the European backpackers, who are the most obvious and plentiful tourists. The Mayabell is still the Maya-Hell peopled by stoners. There are other bungalows nearby on the grounds of the ruins that run about $25. There is now air-conditioning, funky toilets and real live ants on the window sills. They are in the jungle, after all. At this stage of my life, they no longer appeal to me, but then I probably don?t appeal to younger people either.
Tomorrow we head for Merida, Isla Aquada or Xcalak. I will decide in the morning. Nite-nite.
