Medium and Larger Older-Style Hotels

These hotels make up a large fraction of the recommendations of this book. Many veteran travelers find it hard to understand why people come to Mexico and spend $200 or more a day for a hotel room when good alternatives are available for as little as $35.

Many such hostelries are the once-grand first-class hotels established long before their towering international-class neighbors mushroomed along the beach. You can generally expect a clean, large (but not deluxe) room with bath and toilet and even sometimes a private beach-view balcony. Although they often share the same velvety sand and golden sunsets as their more expensive neighbors, such hotels usually lack the costly international-standard amenities—air-conditioning, cable TV, direct-dial phones, tennis courts, exercise gyms, and golf access—of the big resorts. Their guests, however, enjoy surprisingly good service, good food, and a native ambience more charming and personal than that of many of their five-star neighbors.

Booking these hotels is straightforward. All of them may be dialed direct (from the United States, dial 011-52, then the local area code and number) and, like the big resorts, many even have toll-free U.S. and Canadian information and reservation numbers.

© Bruce Whipperman from Moon Puerto Vallarta, 7th edition