Cancun Celebrity & Party Updates

Cancun is at 100% capacity for this Labor Day Weekend, and we have plenty of parties, videos, promotions, and celebrities lined up in preparation.

This post is already tearing at the seams with content, so prepare to be overwhelmed and make that transition from the life of a responsible adult, to a three day weekend of Cancun mayhem.

• Our 8th SKYY Mixology Party, hosted at the Rose Bar, wrapped up this month with over 300 people in attendance.

• If you’re a fan of the Real World Hollywood or A Shot at Love, I’ve embedded a few videos from the past season that includes the cast of Real World season 20 and Tila Tequila indulging in the ME Cancun experience.

Real World Hollywood

A Shot at Love w/ Tila Tequila

• The highly-anticipated Cancun International Film Festival is slated for November.

• ME Cancun’s Rose bar celebrates another anniversary with a blowout, October 26th.

• ME Cancun’s top restaurants, SILK and SALT are being completely overhauled, and will feature new menus and new decor. We’re about 90% done with everything, which equates to around 2 more months of fine-tuning before we are ready to re-launch them.

• ME Cancun now has a New Facebook Page, and you should become a fan of it if you have a Facebook account. You’ll discover up-to-date photos, videos, specials, packages, and celeb sightings from all over Cancun in one easy-to-navigate location.

• And speaking of specials, ME Cancun has 2 of them going on right now! One is exclusive to our MySpace friends only; the other is available only until September 10th.

Have a safe and crazy Labor Day Weekend—if such a feat is possible.

- Raul

New Vacation-expectations & Cancun-luxuries

ME Cancun Property Update:

• Restaurants Salt and Silk are both receiving new menus, decor, and day/night ambiance features.

•The 8th SKYY Mixology party was apocalyptic, drawing in over 300 people to ME Cancun.

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Hotels define themselves in one of two ways.

1. Offer the cheapest prices, offer the bare necessities (bed, bath, utilities)
2. Go all out, don’t hold back, shower your guests with any and every conceivable perk so that maybe, just maybe, they will book your hotel over your neighbor’s. Some do it with finesse, and others are just kitsch and sloppy.

These two classes of hotel are best summarized in my last post, ‘Where to stay, hotel or hostel‘; one of them is inhabitable, the other is inhabitable only by reptoids.

In what might have passed for journalism back in a high school weekly, Forbes.com’s ‘World’s Decadent Hotel Amenities’ quotes Stephanie Rica, editor of Luxury Hotelier, as stating, “Having a similar-looking property in different cities around the world isn’t going to work anymore, they [hoteliers] have to keep things fresh…”

She continues by identifying ME Cabo, ME Cancun, and ME Madrid as hotel archetypes by which other brands need take note from. That’s not entirely true, but who would have faulted her if she had?

I’ll go ahead and condense the rest of the article into bullet-points for the sake of brevity. These pedigree of experience-centric hotel offers:

A home away from home
Flat-screen TVs and DVD players
Docking stations
A staff of personal butlers
Room service for pets (Pet ME)
Terraces

- Raul Petraglia

Cancun – Where to stay, hostel or hotel?

First, a response to last week’s blog about the trainwreck that is commercial airflight. American Airlines announced today that they will waive the 3rd-bag fee for the military. In other news, the rest of us are still getting hosed.

Now, on to the hostel/hotel debate…

There’s this great travel lore that states the only way for students to visit other countries and now throw away their meager savings is by staying in a hostel.

For the sake of clarity, the difference between a hostel and a hotel is

Even with the price of gas and the state of the economy and monsters washing up on American shores and whatnot, would you really want your first impression of Cancun to be one where you share a toilet with an entire floor of people? Or would you prefer a Cancun with an oversized bed and a plasma TV?

In Kimberly Chow’s AP article ‘Feeble dollar sends Americans to European hostels’, she quotes a 21 year old Californian as saying, “We chose hostels because I think we wanted a more authentic backpacking experience.”

The guacamole in Mexico—that’s authentic. Sugar-sand beaches and lapping waves—that’s authentic. Corralling our youth into something that resembles a boxcar and forcing them into the lives of complete strangers—there’s another name for that, prison.

Authenticity would be materializing thatched hut on the beach and broiling turtles for sustenance. Because Cancun authenticity is only an unobtainable concept, why not concede and live it in unconditional luxury?

I’m just sayin’…

- Raul

…and this is what else airlines now charge for!

When I was younger, flying on an airplane was special in and of itself, it had that same giddy affect as Christmas morning; the whole sleepless and dreary-eyed anticipation that would keep me up until the witching hours of the morning. They served full meals and played in-flight movies, too!

Now there is nothing but despair; an uneasiness that toils in my belly at the thought of overpaying for a ticket, checking in, waiting in line at the security checkpoint, taking off my shoes, removing my laptop, having my toothpaste confiscated, then being wedged into a seat and herded to my next connection.

Most airport hassles are undoubtedly a product of fear, but the airlines themselves have managed to make up for rising gas prices and their own inability to successfully market themselves by inflating any and every fee and extra to exorbitant heights. Along my many travels, I have compiled a list of the absurdities that are now congruent with flying.

Jet Blue – I haven’t necessarily had the chance to fly them a great deal over the past couple of years, but only recently have they begun charging for pillows and blankets.

• $7 – pillows and blankets
• $40 M. – The amount they project to make this year from customers paying extra for extended leg room

U.S. Airways

• Now charging $2 for bottled and canned drinks. This fee includes water, too.

American Airlines – AA is not acting as shady as some of the other airlines, charging a slightly-annoying $15 per checked bag, however a lot of us are exempt.

• $15 for every bag checked. Does not apply to frequent fliers, international flights, full-fare tickets, and first-class passengers.

Delta – The greediest of the lot, charging lavish rates for any and everything possible.

• $50 for second back checked
• $80 for 3rd, 4th and 5th bag checked and will soon be raising that tax to $125 a bag.
• $150 for checked baggage 62″ – 80″ in length.
• $90 domestic / $150 international for checked bags weighing 51-70 lbs.
• $150 domestic / $300 international for checked bags weighing 71-100 lbs.

And finally, what some of you may or may not have already noticed—and this applies to most carriers, too—the fee for changing a reservation on a non-refundable ticked has jumped from $50 to $150. I found that little disingenuous fact out the hard way.

- Raul