A whale of a hotel comes to Cabo
By Bob Schulman
There's a new kid on the beach in San Jose del Cabo where a hotel called the Grand Baja used to be. The $149 million newcomer, opened late last year, is the Barcelo Los Cabos Palace Deluxe, a brand marking the top of the line among the 180 worldwide properties now flying the flag of the Spanish hotelier.
Developed by Barcelo as its new flagship property, the hotel features a whopping 626 suites, seven restaurants, a spa, a sports bar with lots of TV screens, a theater with shows every night, three swimming pools and what's billed as “the largest meeting and convention facility in all of Los Cabos.”
Scattered around the property are design touches symbolizing the whales often seen thrashing around in the warm waters of the Sea of Cortes. For instance, you'll spot half-arched structures soaring over the front desks of the lobby like whale ribs. Look outside, and you'll see a whale's tail high up on one the hotel's towers, and the animal's head and flippers on another tower. Mounted binoculars allow guests to check the offshore waters for whale sightings.
Among novel features of the all-inclusive resort are “swim-up” suites where guests can hop into one of the pools right from their rooms. “We took 34 bottom-floor rooms no one wanted to stay in and turned them (thanks to the swim-up feature) into rooms everyone wants,” says Claudio Zboznovits, Barcelo's vice president of sales and marketing for the U.S.
All 626 suites have luxury amenities such as whirlpool baths, marble and stone bathrooms, fine linens, plenty of pillows and – said to be the first system of its kind in Los Cabos – an interactive 40-inch flatscreen TV on the wall operating much like a giant laptop.
You can use a wireless mouse and keyboard to surf the Web, open email, play games, watch the news (in your choice of 60 languages) and so on. Click other icons to open and close your drapes, control the air conditioning, set a wakeup call and even post an outside “Don't Disturb” sign.
One wonders how guests are going to get their kids out of the room.
While Los Cabos has no more lots available along its 20-mile-long beachfront, developers can buy existing properties and either bulldoze them to the ground, as recently done to the venerable Twin Dolphins property up the coast (one of the area's half-dozen original hotels) or renovate them. Barcelo renovated one of the old Grand Baja towers and built two additional towers along the beach.
More info: Visit www.barceloloscabos.com.