You can combine the space One & Only Palmillaof a villa with access to resort facilities at this new 4-bedroom villa at theĀ One & Only Palmilla in San Jose del Cabo.

I’m in the Los Cabos area right now, checking out what’s new on the luxury hotel scene here, at a time when it’s very easy to do so since there’s hardly anyone else around. (More on that later.)

Yes, that picture above is of the private infinity pool, which is part of an outdoor terrace right on the ocean with a barbeque pit, lounge chairs, and a dining table. You don’t have to actually do any cooking though since a staff of 12—including two chefs—have the job of making sure your party is happy. There are four bedrooms and spectacular baths, one of the rooms pictured below. (See the telescope is for whale watching or stargazing.)

The extras really make it though. There’s a full office with leather floors and all the needed gadgets to make some day trades to finance your tab of $8K to $12K per night. Then when everyone gets tired of walking the beach and eating, there is a fantastic private theater that had an investment of a million dollars in soundproofing. Some 1,500 movies are queued up and ready for you all to watch on a screen that’s as wide as the room itself. There’s also a private excercise room and massage room as part of the complex.

You might not want to leave, but if you do you can take advantage of the stellar restaurants and other facilities at One & Only Palmilla—clearly one of the best resorts in the region.

Last year we ran a reader contest with the N/A Town & Country group of small hotels in Argentina, giving away a week of stays among their boutique hotels around Buenos Aires.

Our winner was Ralph Blessing and he and his wife just returned from their trip. He agreed to let me share some of his comments and a couple hotel photos of where he stayed.

The Blessings explored Buenos Aires from their base of MyBA hotel in Belgrano. “Even though management at both places knew we were non-paying guests, we were treated like family. My BA even upgraded us to the suite for our first two nights since it was not already occupied,” Ralph says.

“Hotel del Casco, our second free hotel was an elegant old mansion converted to a hotel in San Isidro, a bedroom community about 20-25 miles outside of town, though now part of the metropolitan area. A relaxing commuter train connected the area to downtown as well as the weekend getaway community of Tigre, a few miles further out.”

The Blessings wisely extended the trip to head up north. “Right off the bat we asked ourselves why go all that way for just a week? So we decided to add a second week to explore areas outside the capital region, namely, the colonial city of Salta in the northwest and the desert country to the north in lovely Jujuy (say hoo-HOO-ee!) province. We flew to Salta, an Andean city more culturally akin to Bolivia and Peru than to the most of Argentina. We rented a car to drive north to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a valley that stretches for miles and which contains some truly gorgeous scenery, in particular the area around the village of Purmamarca with its ā€œHill of Seven Colors.ā€ We spent a couple nights in the delightful town of Tilcara, a bit farther up the road, before heading back to Salta.”

The Blessings have a slew of great photographs and some even better memories. Ralph says, “Think Iā€™ll keep entering those online contests!”

See our rundown of these and others in our Boutique Hotels in Argentina feature.

At times we will write a hotel off as not being upscale enough for Luxury Latin America, but then the owners will put through an upgrade and it’s a different story. That’s the case with the Panamonte in Boquete, Panama.

For a long time this has been the hotel of choice for real estate buyers coming in to check out the scene, but when it started out the area was pretty sleepy and undiscovered. All that changed as the Boquete real estate market took off and the region started pulling in more tourists. Thus renovations to the rooms, an addition of suites, and a spa. See our new Panamonte Inn & Spa review.

We also recently added another hotel in Panama and more are on the way as the country wakes from its tourism slumber. When Chavez went all loco on us, a flood of wealthy Venezuealans high-tailed it out of their country and headed to Panama. That has driven up real estate prices, packed out the hotels, and created a whole new class of domestic travelers who can afford to splurge.

One hotel benefitting from Panama’s rise is Hacienda del Mar in the Pearl Islands.

This is one of those hangouts that the “in the know” people love: it’s on a private island with its own airstrip. Your plane lands, vehicles transfer everyone to the resort, and you relax with welcome drink in hand before heading to your casita or suite.

I spent some time in the Pearl Islands while on a Panama yacht trip and can attest that this is a gorgeous area, though one mostly enjoyed by Panamanians rather than foreign visitors. They’ve been happy keeping this secret to themselves.

Casa Palopo, Guatemala (Photo Al Argueta)

Marketing guru and all-around smart guy Seth Godin has a great concise post on his blog about “luxury” vs. “premium.”

Luxury goods are needlessly expensive. By needlessly, I mean that the price is not related to performance. The price is related to scarcity, brand and storytelling.

Premium goods, on the other hand, are expensive variants of commodity goods. Pay more, get more.

We decided to call our site “Luxury Latin America” because it conveys the right feeling and it’s easy to understand in different cultures and contexts. Premium just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Sounds like something from a gas station.

But we talk a lot more about value in our honest hotel and tour reviews because we refuse to believe that luxury implies “overpriced.” In some cases yes, and we’ll say so, but in many other cases the guests would say the experience was worth every penny. Plus a hotel may be a commodity at the business chain level and many tours of Costa Rica or Patagonia could be considered commodities since they are so similar, this is certainly not the case at the true 5-star level.

So that’s why we leave out many hotels that Travel + Leisure would go all ga-ga over because we don’t have to care how it looks in a fold-out photo spread. We care more about how you’ll be treated by the staff and whether the amenities will exceed your expectations. Part of the reason we focus on Latin America is because overall, the hotels and tours are a great value, even at the very top end. When it is clear to us that guests feel like they are being ripped off, we’ll either leave that option out or—when it’s a prominent hotel that needs to be in here—we’ll note that the rates don’t necessarily reflect what you get for your money.

Some of the Brazil luxury hotel reviews we just posted fit into the latter case. Many would say the Sanctuary Lodge at Machu Picchu does as well. Overall though, in each feature story or review we try to answer the question, “Will you get your money’s worth by booking with this company?” We’re not about the travel equivalent of a $50,000 handbag. We’re the travel equivalent of the custom-made suit.

As you can imagine, the Mexican luxury hotel operators have seen their business fall off a cliff in the past few weeks. Thanks to the 24-hour news updates about the pandemic that never was, destination weddings got canceled, business travel stopped, and several airlines canceled flights for those who still wanted to visit.

The irony is, the places hit the hardest haven’t seen a whiff of swine flu. So if you are looking for the deal of a decade right now, the top-end hotels in places like Puerto Vallarta and Los Cabos are ready to throw everything but the kitchen sink into your reservation to entice you back.Ā Here are a few examples.

At Las Ventanas in San Jose del Cabo, book three nights at currently discounted rates and get:

- Upgrade at check-in if available
- Complimentary breakfast for two daily
- $200 resort credit per stay

(And they’ll provide a “personal motorcycle escort” if you are driving down from the U.S.)

Book five nights at One & Only Palmilla in San Jose del Cabo and get:

- Two additional nights complimentary.
- Complimentary continental breakfast daily
- Two complimentary rounds of golf
- A $500 resort spending credit valid towards dining, spa or more golf.

Las Alamandas, one of my favorite hotels in the world, is offering an incredible $370 per night rate through August. This resort on 1,500 acres of pristine coastline is the kind of private hideaway that A-list celebrities fly into on their private jet to escape photographers and be alone. Be a VIP without spending like one. (Mention promotional code LAS1.)

Grand Velas in Nuevo Vallarta is probably the best large all-inclusive resort in Latin America, a major cut above the usual mold. They’re running specials now though of $300 to $352 per person all-inclusive in a suite, with two kids (up to 12 years) free, free greens fees, a 25-minute massage for everyone, and more.

These are just a few examples of how you can score luxury for less right now, but see all our reviews of luxury hotels in Mexico and then go surf around for deals. If you don’t see a great one, make an offer. High-end hotels don’t like to discount their rates too much, so they’re throwing in all kinds of extras instead. If you’re booking anything in Mexico over the next few months, you should definitely not settle for the room alone. They really want your business right now.