HOLLYWOOD, Florida — All-inclusive resorts are no longer a specific niche, Marriott International’s Laurent de Kousemaeker said.
“That [all-inclusive resorts are] restricted by a certain price point or a certain experience no longer is true,” he said. “You can have a lifestyle experience. You can have a very upscale experience, and you can have a luxury experience. You can have a lower-end experience.”
All-inclusive resorts are now a way of purchasing vacations across a spectrum of brands and positioning, Marriott’s chief development officer for the Caribbean and Latin America said in an interview at the Hotel Opportunities Latin America conference.
Marriott entered the all-inclusive resort space in 2019 with extensions of seven of its existing brands, de Kousemaeker said. All-inclusive resorts used to have the value proposition of being the “cheap fun, sun and rum vacation,” but now have shifted to a “convenient, holistic vacation experience” that targets…