January blues? This is a great time of year to find great travel deals, to escape cabin fever or just to escape. Take the chill out of winter and save money with these offers, including free nights and free museum passes.
Caribbean getaway deal:
Half Moon, a 400-acre luxury resort situated on a crescent-shaped white sand beach in Jamaica, is offering an “Endless Summer” promotion through December 2016. Get 25% off all rooms and villas, plus a $150 resort credit per room to use for anything from meals to spa treatments. Rates start at $224.50 per room per night, and there are 197 rooms, suites and cottages, plus 31 private villas with four to seven bedrooms. The resort features the award winning Fern Tree Spa, 18-hole golf course, equestrian center, 54 swimming pools, children’s village, dolphin lagoon, and more. The Half Moon deal is for travel between April 10 and to December 16, 2016, with blackout dates over holiday weekends.
- ecoXplorer tip: This is a RockResorts property, known both for its luxury and attention to sensible, sustainable operations.
Hotel loyalty deal:
Marriott Rewards, Marriott International’s award-winning loyalty program, is offering a FREE night after a second paid stay at more than 4,000 participating hotels, motels and resorts across 17 brands in 60 countries. Marriott brands include Ritz-Carlton, Autograph, Renaissance, Courtyard, and Fairfield Inn. The free night deal is on stays between Feb. 1 and May 15, 2016. Of course, you have to be a member of Marriott Rewards, which is FREE to join.
- ecoXplorer tip: In addition to bonus points, you get perks like FREE Wi-fi. Anybody who’s ever had to pay $14.95 a day, more or less, for hotel internet will appreciate that deal.
Free museum passes:
Seattle Museum Month is celebrating with FREE museum passes for guests staying at one of 59 participating downtown Seattle hotels during the entire month of February. Participating museums include the Museum of History & Industry, Museum of Flight, Woodland Park Zoo, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Northwest African American Museum, Living Computer Museum, Seattle Pinball Museum, Pacific Bonsai Museum, Chihuly Garden and Glass, and LeMay America’s Car Museum in Tacoma.
- ecoXplorer tip: It’s a great idea to visit a city when it’s having a special “month” or even a “week”, like the annual NYC Restaurant Week, which is really three weeks, in January and February, when you can get a three-course meal at a top gourmet restaurant for $25 at lunch and $38 at dinner.
Airport shuttle
SuperShuttle, the nation’s largest airport shared ride service, is offering 10 percent off all rides to and from more than 80 airports. The discount is for online booking only, for travel through March 15, 2016. There’s also a 10% discount for the company’s on-call black car service ExecuCar, Note – SuperShuttle requires pick-up at least three hours ahead of your flight for domestic flights and four hours for international, which can be a hardship for early morning flights.
- ecoXplorer warning: I have not used SuperShuttle since a driver picked me up more than 30 minutes late for a recent international flight, then drove around picking up additional passengers for another hour, then refused to alter the prescribed route around the airport terminals to drop me off first because I was dangerously close to the check-in cut-off. I missed my flight, and SuperShuttle refused to apologize or even refund the shuttle fee. And forget about compensating me for the additional costs of rebooking my international flight or the internal flight at my destination. I haven’t used SuperShuttle since.
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