Visit Mexico Off Season and Save

Pssst, amigos y amigas . We’ve got some news on Mexico that may rock you back on your huaraches.

Here it is: Mexico is no longer the absolute bargain it once was. This is particularly true if you are looking for an upscale beach resort vacation in the winter high season. While prices at fine hotels and restaurants in Mexico’s most popular resorts aren’t as high as those in the Caribbean or Hawaii yet, they’re getting uncomfortably closer all the time.

Wait a segundo, you say, eyes narrowing suspiciously. Haven’t we heard plenty about the strength of the dollar in Mexico? And what about the continuing peso devaluation?

The short form explanation is that top hotels and restaurants in popular destinations such as Acapulco, Cancun and Puerto Vallarta pay little heed to the niceties of international finance. They simply charge what the market will bear.

That translates to non-package, high-season luxury hotel rates exceeding $200 a day, $50 dinners and $2 beers. Car rental can be a shocking experience when a rente un auto fellow informs you, with a smile, that the charge will be $50 a day.

What’s more, norteamericanos are often charged in dollars, not pesos, so no one has to adjust the peso price upward to compensate for the downward drift of the local currency. It is an unfortunate system that the Mexican government itself endorses.

Although Mexico’s once formidable price advantage in the tourism market has steadily eroded, it still is possible to find good buys. One trick is to book package vacations that include air fare and accommodations. Such trips usually yield significantly better prices than published room rates.

By far the best way to beat high prices is to visit Mexico during the low season, which usually begins just after Easter (April 15 this year) and lasts until December. Hotel rates then drop 20% to 40%, and sometimes more.

If you time your visit to the beginnning or end of the off-season, you can enjoy in-season weather at discounted prices while avoiding the heat of the summer when scorching temperatures can make tourism taxing.

Here’s a look at the top beach resorts and how hotels adjust their room rates during the off-season doldrums.

ACAPULCO. Mexico’s original beach resort and premier party town nearly lost it as a result of daunting problems in the 1970s. Many have been solved by an ambitious municipal face lift, a crackdown on beggars, hustlers and petty criminals and a pollution-control program that has resulted in a cleaner bay.

Among Acapulco hotels the bayfront Hyatt Regency drops the price for its least expensive double room from $170 to $100 on April 17. At the downtown bayfront Hyatt Continental a double drops from $145 to $85 on the same day. The hillside hideaway Vera Vera asks $110 for its least costly room until April 21, when it goes to $90. Outside the bay area, famed Las Brisas gets $185 for a shared pool casita until April 21, when it slips to $120.

CANCUN. Mexico’s top Caribbean resort has had its troubles, too. It has endured a reputation for hotel overbooking, a madcap building spree and Hurricane Gilbert’s 1988 rampage, which sucked much of the beach out to sea.

But the place is still booming, with nearly 100 hotels and condo-hotels already built or under construction. Such expansion inevitably means problems, but Cancun finally seems to be facing them. And sunstruck vacationers searching for a warm sea and familiar, rather than foreign-seeming surroundings, love it there.

Cancun’s Stouffer Presidente drops its rate from $170 to $125 for its least expensive double rooms on April 17. The Cancun Sheraton’s lowest-cost rooms are cut from $160 to $125 May 1. The Hyatt Regency reduces its lowest rate from $155 to $115 on May 1. Hyatt’s Cancun Caribe lowers its rates from $185 to $135 on May 1. Westin’s Camino Real goes from $185 to $125 on April 23.

PUERTO VALLARTA. Anyone who hasn’t been there for a few years won’t recognize the place. Don’t expect to find traces of the quaint fishing village of outdated guidebooks. Only the cobblestone downtown has escaped the construction frenzy. Marina Vallarta, an entire second city with four big hotels scheduled to open over the next two years, is rising between the port and the airport north of town.

As Mexico’s newest boom town, Puerto Vallarta has changed dramatically, but it still has plenty of fans. There are quiet, special places to stay, and the city’s compact center remains the most interesting and active of Mexico’s beach resorts.

Until May 1 the Sheraton Buganvilias charges $115 for its lowest-priced double room, after which it drops to $80. The Westin Camino Real gets $150 for its least expensive double in high season, but $120 for the same room beginning April 22. The secluded Garza Blanca sets the rate for its least expensive rooms at $195, reducing them to $150 on April 23.

IXTAPA/ZIHUATANEJO. This set of mismatched resorts just a few miles apart share an airport and site 150 miles north of Acapulco but little else. With its old village and placid, enclosed bay ringed by low hills, Zihuatanejo is a funky, languid Bora Bora south of the border. Conversely, Ixtapa is a strip of high-rise hotels and tourist amenities facing an often wild ocean.

Ixtapa has shopping arcades, lively restaurants, golf and big, fancy hotels such as the Camino Real. Zihuatanejo has a strolling village, wonderful bay swimming at beaches such as La Ropa and Las Gatas and the south seas charm of Villa del Sol, one of the nicest small beach inns in Mexico.

During high season Villa del Sol gets $176 (which includes breakfast and dinner for two) for its least expensive double room. On May 2 the price drops to $130. The Camino Real wants $150 (without meals) for its least expensive double until April 22, when the rate drops to $110. The lowest double rate at the Stouffer El Presidente drops from $100 to $70 on April 16. The Sheraton Ixtapa charges $110, then dips to $60 on May 1.

LOS CABOS. At land’s end--the southern tip of the 750-mile Baja California peninsula--the setting has changed. No longer is it the land of nonstop fishing and killer poker, but is emerging as a major Mexican resort.

The small dusty downtown area of Cabo San Lucas is loaded with construction, shops, restaurants and tourists. Big hotels have risen along the 20-mile strip between Cabo San Lucas and the older, more established town of San Jose del Cabo. But the fishing is still wonderful and the climate a refreshing and unusual blend of desert and sea. It is home to two of Mexico’s finest moderate-size beach hotels that also offer summer discounts: the Finisterra and the Palmilla.

The Finisterra charges $85 (plus a 30% service charge) for double rooms until the price falls to $75 June 1. Until June 1 the Palmilla American Plan-only (all meals included) rates start at $230 for two, with the least expensive room then dipping to $95 without meals.

COZUMEL. This diving-crazy island, just 11 miles off the Yucatan mainland coast near Cancun, is a relaxing alternative to Mexico’s mega-resorts. Yes, there are a few high-rise hotels but it also has an appealing undiscovered ambience.

Even if you don’t dive, there’s a good blend here of old Mexico, pretty beaches, Mayan archeology and modern tourism. But if you dive or snorkel, the sea at Cozumel has an almost alarming clarity, permitting visibility beyond 200 feet during the calm winter months. Palancar Reef is one of the best underwater sites in the world.

The Melia Mayan Plaza’s three-night package (room, airport transfers, tax) is $206 per person until April 30, then $188 until Sept. 1 when it drops again to $152. The Stouffer Presidente’s similar three-night plan costs $571 per person until April 19 when it falls to $484. The lowest daily double room rates drop from $145 to $100 at the same time. La Ceiba, which specializes in dive packages, offers daily room rates that drop from $90 to $70 on April 15.

MAZATLAN. This robust little city is just as absorbed with commerce as it is with tourism. It is the most important shipping center on Mexico’s west coast, as well as the country’s major shrimping port.

Yet tourism is no longer the stepchild business it once was. In the past few years a full-fledged tourist industry has roared to life on the beaches stretching from town. But Mazatlan is still relaxed, informal and considerably less expensive than other Mexican resorts.

At Westin’s Camino Real, Mazatlan’s first true luxury hotel, the least expensive double room goes from $100 to $90 on April 21. At Pueblo Bonito, a fancy beach-front condo complex, a one-bedroom junior suite is $118 until April 16, when it drops to $109.

MANZANILLO. Until the whitewashed fantasy called the Las Hadas Hotel was built in 1974, this lusty port city on the Pacific coast probably saw more rusty freighters than gringos in search of margaritas. In the 15 years since, the city has hardly changed a lick.

The lure of Las Hadas, the only major hotel there, has brought cantinas and nice restaurants such as Willy’s to the beaches on the north end of the bay. Westin’s Las Hadas charges $195 for its lowest-price room until April 21, when the price is cut to $125.

HUATULCO. This spot of pretty coves and empty hills 300 miles south of Acapulco will be Mexico’s next major master-planned mega-resort. But that will take years. Meanwhile, the resort being blasted and scraped from the jungle at the base of the Sierra Madre is uncrowded and humming with construction.

Only three places to stay are open. Until May 1 the Sheraton charges $105 for its cheapest double, then just $65. The Royal Maeva has a meals-included rate of about $105 per person a day until April 22, when it drops to about $85. Club Med’s Huatulco Village offers a week package from Los Angeles, air included, for $1,300 per person until May, when it drops to $1,199.

Here are toll-free phone numbers for hotels mentioned. Contact Hyatt at (800) 228-9000; Westin (Las Brisas, Las Hadas and Camino Reals) at (800) 228-3000; Sheraton at (800) 325-3535; Stouffer at (800) 468-3571; Club Med at (800) 258-2633 and Melia at (800) 876-4682. Call Acapulco’s Villa Vera: (800) 333-8847 or (213) 550-7373; Los Cabos’ Palmilla: (800) 542-6082 and Creative Leisure for Mazatlan’s Pueblo Bonito: (800) 426-6367.

For the Finisterra in Los Cabos, call: (213) 583-3393, and the Twin Dolphin in Los Cabos, call: (213) 386-3941; Cozumel’s La Ceiba is (214) 692-5277; Puerto Vallarta’s Garza Blanca: (213) 216-2900. Call Mexico directly for Zihuatanejo’s Villa del Sol: dial 0-11-52-743-4-2239. For Huatulco’s Royal Maeva: 0-11-52-958-1-0000.