A Helpful Breakdown Of Resort Room Views To Avoid Getting Deceived By Marketing Photos

What could be better and more peaceful than looking out the window of the suite at your perks-loaded all-inclusive resort and seeing rolling white sandy beaches and crystal clear water stretching out to the horizon? Unfortunately, if you want to make that dream a reality, you may have to look beyond the photos on the website, which tend to be of the best views, and may not be representative of what your room's view will actually look like. Resorts typically describe what you might see out your window in different rooms using terms like "tropical view" or "partial ocean view," which aren't particularly intuitive. We spoke to Victoria Fricke, owner of Vic's Vacations Travel Agency, to get to the bottom of it.

"Unfortunately, travelers fall victim to deceptive marketing photos from resorts daily," Fricke exclusively explained to Islands. "If there are 200 ocean view rooms and the resort is a U shape, the photo online will show the view from one of the first couple rooms in that U closest to the ocean, where as the actual view most guests will have will be much further back."

Whether you're just spending a couple of nights or booking a longer stay at an all-inclusive resort, you want to make sure that you understand exactly what you're paying for. Of course, resorts want to make their rooms seem as appealing as possible, so they're going to use the nicest-sounding terms to describe what you'll see out the window. According to Victoria Fricke, the most common descriptions that you'll hear are tropical/resort view, ocean view, oceanfront, and partial ocean.  All of those sound pretty attractive, but the reality may be different than what the names imply.

Technically, any view from any window in the resort is a resort view, and if it's in a tropical place, it could be considered a tropical view, too. Fricke warns that these views could include anything from surrounding foliage to maintenance roads. "This room is for the client who thinks, 'we're just sleeping in the room,'" Fricke exclusively told us. Now, the various ocean categories are even harder to parse.

If you're dreaming of views of the sea right outside your window, your best bet is an ocean-front room. But Ocean view? That's a different story. Ocean view does guarantee that you'll see some water, but there's a risk it'll be far away or blocked by other things. "Here you should see water," Fricke said. "No promise of how much." According to Fricke, partial ocean view is the one that suckers most people. "Partial ocean view means a wide array of views, but most common is a sliver of ocean," she explained. "So long as you can catch a glimmer of blue, it constitutes."

Knowing what the different marketing terms mean is the best place to start when trying to book a room with the view of your dreams (and your budget), but there are a few other things you can do to ensure you really know what you're paying for. There are a lot of all-inclusive resort hacks to get the absolute most out of your trip, but one ingenious one from Victoria Fricke is to look up not just your resort, but the exact room that you're interested in online to see if anyone has uploaded room tours. "You'd be surprised what you can find!" she exclusively told us. There's a chance you may be able to get an accurate preview of what it looks like outside the windows before you book.

If you arrive at the room and it's still not exactly what you hoped for, you can always politely ask the resort if an upgrade is possible. If they won't offer you a room with a view you like better for free, you can always try paying for an upgrade. Fricke added: "If you want to gamble, it's often cheaper to upgrade once you're at the resort ... that's a great way to score an upgrade at a fraction of the cost so long as rooms are available."