Some Bragging Rights

Hello everybody. We’re sorry we haven’t blogged for awhile, but it has been pretty busy here in Playa. With Easter coming early this year and March being the high point of the spring break season, we really haven’t had much of a chance to sit down and blog. The hotel has been and is completely full of people. We also spent a couple of weeks doing some fundraising for our local fire department, the Bomberos of the Riviera Maya. And of course we have the new bar to watch over. We have gotten away on some day trips with friends visiting from out of town, and we will be blogging about that in the very near future. But tonight we have a little bragging to do.

First of all, within a year of starting our blog, we now have had over 100,000 hits! We’d like to thank everybody who has visited us here at PlayaZone and especially those who have left their comments, opinions and ideas. We really enjoy hearing that the information we write about brings people to our adopted home of Playa del Carmen or helps them enjoy their vacations more. We’re going to keep blogging, and we hope you’ll keep reading.

Other big news is our latest award. The April edition of Outside Magazine contains its 2008 Travel Awards. Our own Luna Blue Hotel & Garden was named the “Best-Beach-For-Cheap Hotel” in the world. As part of their Trips of the Year 2008, Outside Magazine suggests people wanting a cheap beach vacation should come to Playa del Carmen and stay at the Luna Blue! We are very honored. Outside Magazine is America’s leading active-lifestyle and adventure-travel magazine and has a readership of over 650,000 people.

In the past, we have received awards from TripAdvisor.com and been recommended by such respected travel writers and publications as the Today Program’s Travel Editor Peter Greenberg, the New York Post and USA Today, among others. This latest award came as a complete surprise. When the magazine called us over a month ago to tell us that we were a recipient, we were thrilled. Unfortunately, this being Mexico, we had no way to get a copy of the magazine announcing our award. At the time, we weren’t even sure what we had been commended for. We sent out the word to family and friends to please be on the lookout for the April issue and call us if and when they had a copy in their hands.

Our good friend Tim Smith, who lives in snow covered (at least at this time of year) South Dakota, braved the chilly weather to hunt a copy up for us. He not only called us to let us know the exact nature of our award but sent us photographs of the magazine which we’ve included here. Since there we have gotten our hands on a couple of copies. The plan is to frame them and display them prominently.

It really is very gratifying for us to have the work we’ve done at the Luna Blue recognized by others in the travel industry as well as by our friends and guests.

That’s all for now. We will be back very soon with stories of some adventures up and down the coast and life in Mexico. And if you’re going to be traveling in Playa del Carmen anytime in the near future, please stop by and say hi.