We recently stayed at the Hyatt Place Los Cabos in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico (review coming shortly). On the second day of our stay, we met a couple at our hotel pool who said they had just gone on a timeshare tour of the Zoëtry Casa del Mar Los Cabos hotel, and that they received a ticket to go on a sunset dinner cruise as their gift. My ears perked up. The thought of attending a timeshare tour of a Cabo property had not previously crossed my mind but I was particularly interested especially since the Zoëtry hotels, part of the AMR Collection, recently joined World of Hyatt. The couple told us that they had scheduled the tour via the gentleman who sits in the lobby at the Hyatt Place selling or promoting Cabo events and tours. I quickly made my way out to the lobby and signed us up for the next morning’s tour! I should have asked for details on the possible gifts (he had a book containing a list of the compensations available) but I really wanted the SunRider Sunset Dinner Cruise so we quickly settled on that (along with a bottle of tequila).
At 10 a.m. the next morning, we were picked up from our hotel by taxi.
Upon arrival, we were greeted by a number of people, and brought into an office. We were told that they’d want to see our IDs and a credit card (just to see that we had a current credit card – not for any payment). This part was very short – just a meet and greet.
We were introduced to a young woman who’s name began with an A. A escorted us to a restaurant area near the beach for our complementary breakfast. On the way, we passed through the grounds of the hotel. The property is absolutely beautiful. However, the place seemed more serene and oddly more quiet than I had envisioned of an all-inclusive Cabo resort. (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing).
We arrived at the beachfront dining area. A joined us for breakfast. She asked us about how much we spent on vacations, but other than that, seemed to speak with us about everything except the reason we were there.
Breakfast was mediocre at best. When we finished, A suggested that we leave a few dollars on the table as a tip for the servers.
A then took us back towards the main building. We sat with her at a round table and she proceeded to tell us a little about the timeshare ownership offered by Globequest Travel Club, part of AMR Collection. The presentation was confusing – as A drew magic marker circles on the laminated sheet. There were a number of Cabo properties owned by one entity (including the airport, Vidante, Secrets, Dreams, Hilton and Zoëtry), but if you bought a share, you could go anywhere in the world. I was repeatedly told that the plan was not a timeshare, but rather a private residence or vacation club (but if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then . . . ).
Although A (and later B and C), tried to tell us how economical their membership was, I repeatedly said that they had failed to show me how I would be better off buying into their program instead of using the traditional hotel model for my stays at these hotels.
One thing A did not discuss was the price. That was for the next person, a personable gentleman, whom I’ll call B, who sat down with us and started throwing out numbers and special offers (i.e., (a) if you buy now, you get 2 weeks per year, rather than 1 week, and (b) if you want to only use one week per year, we’ll pay you $3,000 for the use of your second week).
On our way to our third meeting (with C), we walked through this room where a few other meetings were taking place.
At this point, A took us to a third area. On the way, I said that I was surprised that we had not been shown any of the residences in question. After all, I would think that would be one of the first things a potential purchaser would be shown. I was even more surprised when A blurted to me If I show you an apartment, will that change your mind to purchase today? I said that I needed to think about it and might be interested in the future, but would not be purchasing today. She did not show me any residences.
At the final seating area, we met C, who took care of the exit matters – he asked me to fill out an exit survey, and then gave us the voucher for our sunset cruise and a bottle of tequila, and called a taxi for us.
I honestly had no idea that so many all-inclusive properties were owned in this manner. In review, the employees we met were all very pleasant and their presentations, although confusing, were not particularly hard or pushy. A was sweet, but inexperienced, only working there for a few weeks, and I think she got baffled when asked questions outside the script of what she’d been taught.
A New York frequent flyer who elegantly combines her passions for worldwide travel, running a gazillion marathons all over the globe and staying fit ... without sacrificing her fancy for good wine and food.
“A suggested that we leave a few dollars on the table as a tip for the servers.”
That’s interesting to me. I’ve done a few Mexico tours – they usually always include breakfast. But our guide was always the one tipping. At some resorts they put you in a separate area from the regular guests enjoying breakfast – was that your experience here? Typically when they separate you, you also get a worse breakfast! My wife is Vegetarian, and at one of our tours all of the limited options in our room paled in comparison to the wide selection the regular, paying, guests had access to. My wife had like one option in our section and asked if she could just grab some regular eggs in the other area. After a few minutes of discussion amongst staff; they agreed to it. Very odd. But even stranger is that your guide made you tip.
Yes, I found it odd that they made us tip. The area where we had breakfast was rather quiet – I think most people were either done with breakfast or had eaten in the area by the pool. Next time I go on such a tour, I’ll ask to be seated where the guests eat!
Also, your tour sounds so bizarre. They didn’t show you any units?! Was this a buy-in to AMR/Zoetry or some bigger conglomerate? Why were they mentioning Vidanta – which is a completely separate group by my understanding. The usual trajectory for Mexico tours is always: Food/Resort Grounds/Units/Pitch – with the guide gathering information along the way. Having three salespeople is typical, but the fact that “A” didn’t even mention numbers is not. “B” should only come in if “A” is struggling to make the sale, and then “C” is clean-up and usually trying to sell you on some sort of encore package so they can recoup some sort of loss. Fascinating report -thanks!
Most resorts aren’t selling units or weeks but points. A possible reason that a unit wasn’t shown. Buying from the developers is always a bad deal, buy resale for pennies on the dollar or possibly free.
I never understood how any timeshare ever made any financial sense. There is the purchase price and if you get a loan, the interest is not deductible. There are annual maintenance payments that can only go up. Then there is the hassle of exchanging weeks and finding another resort if you don’t want to use your designated week. As a travel hacker and someone who was in the travel industry, the timeshare concept never appealed to me. It is much easier using my loyalty points or paying cash where I have the flexibility to choose any hotel I want rather than a limited set of properties.
Strange you never got to your a unit there or get pix of all of the possibilities?? And the price ? When you asked did they give you an average ?
Yes, B’s presentation set forth the prices. I’ll note that a lot of the emphasis seemed to be how many free games of golf the membership included.
My Wife and I stayed at the Breathless in Cabo and tried one so we could go Whale Watching. The resort is stunning with its own private beach, great/clean rooms and right in the marina (close to everything). We had a great breakfast amongst other guests and members. We were fortunate to get a lady from our home State in the US, so we had a ton in common. We also had an opportunity to chat with other members of all levels. Once we arrived back from a tour and given the hard sale, lots of high end liquor and told the cost that had different term levels/cost. We really weren’t interested because of all the “timeshare” horror stories/cost that never end…even after death. After being convinced it wasn’t a “timeshare” we ended up buying in (we were shown the cost of our stay had we been members and that during this term we would only have to pay an annual admin fee and then have access to vacant rooms at a HUGE discount to keep the resorts full and their staff employed. We have since taken many trips using our membership because AMR owns: Zoetry, Secrets, Dreams, Breathless…also Sunscape and some other less expensive resorts. So we have access to everything from high end to party couples only, high end to swim park family resorts. Another big sell for us was we stayed at Dreams for our honeymoon and had an amazing experience, so we were comfortable with AMR. As a member we have a dedicated/separate website and reservation number. It proves our discount against the main website and other travel sites, we also got a free week to use at our leisure (excluding airfare) with only Christmas as a blackout. There was access to another membership for 1 year that had hotels/cruises in the US and Europe since AMR is only in Mexico and the Caribbean. The thing we like the most is we can let family and friends use it by adding them in/out of our membership just by calling the reservation center. We’ve used it just for us, then family vacations (we refuse to do the swim park resorts…too many people). Lastly, during the middle of COVID they offered free PCR testing for guests and free stay for 14 days if your group has anyone testing positive. Things may have changed, but we became members in 2018 and have not regretted one minute.
Yes, I bought in too. First on a timeshare and second one a star option point system. I always feel nervous about them but friends come with me and they always say I have the best vacations and ask about getting in on the fun.
Look on EBay or any other sellers site. You can get time shares now for a dollar.!! Don’t ever pay what they offer because there is always a catch !!
Zoetry is a dump. We stayed in the units used for Globequest. One toilet was handing off the wall, the bath tub had no handles and we had no bulbs in the bathroom, one bedroom had no plugins that worked and the coffee pot had a broken cord. To make things worse none of the doors locked. We called every day and never saw any improvement.
Maybe that explains why they didn’t show us a unit?
Stayed at Zoetry for 7 days in the JR Suite. It is absolutely stunning. There is plenty of food options and all the workers have been top notch and very polite. I have no complaints at all, we also did the tour and the point system was a little confusing to me as well. Honestly seemed like a good ideal but I have owned a timeshare before and did not want to get into that type of thing again.
thank you for your contribution.
Awesome, thank you for writing this. Today is my second day at Hyat Place in Cabo and I was approached about a “definitely not a timeshare” presentation.
How long did it take? Was your sunset cruise worth it? I was thinking about asking for a snorkeling tour instead.
I’m sorry I missed this comment (I was out of town). Did you go for the timeshare meeting?
We just came back from Cabo where we stayed in Casa Dorada for a week. We did the presentation in Zoetry. They did show us the unit. I have never been to a timeshare presentation before, so it was all new to me. The breakfast was very good and all the people very pleasant. It pretty much followed the exact same script as you described. But I was not really prepared to be making any investments, which I told them from the beginning. Nevertheless they followed through the whole presentation where I kept repeating that I am not making any decisions today. In the end it came down to an offer of $3250 for a weeks stay at the juniors suite and a free week at any of the associated resorts, which come to think of it wasn’t a bad offer, but I still said no and we thanked each other for the time and they gave us the voucher for 3 sunset cruise dinners with a show, total value of about $450. And then called us a taxi back to our hotel. We did the presentation early in the morning so we were done by about 10:30, which was just the perfect time to go to the beach. Overall I think it was worth going.
I’m always fascinated by these meetings. Did one recently at Secrets Impressions – I need to write it up.
How was the sunset tour? We go to Cabo about once a year and would consider doing this “not a timeshare” presentation if the sunset dinner tour is worth it.
It was okay, and the views were nice, but overall it wasn’t fabulous. It was good for free though.