Phenom Travels | The Travel Edit

  You’ve chosen the resort. Now comes the question that can easily add hundreds of dollars to your vacation: Do you book the swim-out room or pay for the ocean view? Both look great in photos. Both sound like an upgrade. But they can give you two very different vacation experiences — and the more expensive room isn’t automatically the better choice. I’ve stayed in and toured enough resorts to know that I wouldn’t choose either based on the room-category name alone. For me, there’s another question that matters just as much: What is actually outside the room? What are you really paying for with a swim-out room? A swim-out room is really about access and experience . Instead of leaving your room, walking through the resort and finding a spot by the pool, you can step outside your terrace and get straight into the water. If you like slow mornings, afternoon dips and spending some downtime around your room, that convenience can be worth the upgrade. There’s also something undeniably ni...

  If your idea of a great vacation is an adults-only resort, a good pool, great food, a kid-free atmosphere and enough going on that you can do as much—or as little—as you want, you may have more in common with a Virgin Voyages traveler than you think. I hear it all the time: “I’m a resort person. I don’t think cruising is for me.” Fair enough. A cruise and an all-inclusive resort are not the same vacation. But Virgin Voyages is one cruise line I think adults-only resort lovers should take a closer look at. It starts with one very important thing: no kids Virgin Voyages is exclusively for guests 18 and over . Every ship. Every itinerary. For someone accustomed to an adults-only resort, that matters. You’re not giving up the grown-up atmosphere just because you're moving from land to sea. You can spend your afternoon by the pool, have a long dinner, see a show, head out for drinks or stay up late without the experience being designed around family activities. And adults-onl...