This post will be for the dad's that want to pick the best activities for their families while protecting them and as a tertiary consideration, save money :).
My wife planned our trip to Puerto Vallarta. She picked the activities. She wanted to make sure our 9 Year old daughter Emma would get to enjoy everything she could. She picked the hotel because she works for Hilton and we stayed in the all-inclusive Hilton Puerto Vallarta at a fantastic rate of 115.00 usd per night. WOW! What a deal there.
Now we come to the stage of the vacation where I need to earn my dad creds.
First off: When to buy
DO NOT purchase prior to arriving in Puerto Vallarta. The best deals are obtained by purchasing day trips, activities and adventures from store vendors. Any deals you might find on websites are not the best ones. Wait till you get there.
Next: Where to buy
DO NOT purchase from the hotel you are staying at. DO NOT purchase from vendors at the airport. After you are settled in, take a taxi to the Malecon. The Malecon is an attraction in itself. Hundreds of shops right on a very nice boardwalk that extends for several miles. In many of these shops you will find purveyors of every single attraction or activity you can possibly do in Puerto Vallarta.
Last of all: How to buy
Most importantly exchange into pesos. Bring a calculator if you must. The vendors will undoubtedly try to confuse the exchange rate back and forth between dollars and pesos. On your way to the Malecon, ask the cab driver to stop at a ScotiaBank atm or go inside. They provide a very reasonable exchange rate and a very low transaction fee. Do not change your money at the airport or at the hotel or hotel atm. Now you will know exactly how many pesos per dollar you are working with. And you are working in their currency. They do not know what exchange rate you received. This puts you in the drivers seat regarding the exchange rate.
I got an exchange rate of 17.5:1 pesos to dollars. Several times I started negotiating in dollars then asked them what their exchange rate was. Their rates varied from 2 pesos lower than mine up to 26 pesos per dollar.
You can utilize a tactic of getting all the information first, then deciding your price point.
Now you haggle for 3 steps.
First ask him for his best price
Then ask him if there is a discount for pesos/dollars depending on the opposite of what he quoted the starting price in. Now give him your final price. If he accepts it, say thank you and tell him you will be back a bit later after checking a few more stores. If he declines it, you now have a "BestPrice" to work with. Simply keep checking more vendors until you have a pretty good idea of the bottom any vendor is willing to go to.
Make sure to write this stuff down or make a verbal note to yourself on your phone. Also ensure you are matching apples to apples. Do they include transportation, do they include meals, are there different levels of the activity, etc.
Let me give you an example of everything we did wrong from start to finish.
My wife wanted to make sure our daughter got to swim with dolphins. Online indications were that there was only 1 company that offered this. Not the case. She saw a 50% discount online and purchased at 190 usd for herself and our daughter. We arrived at the airport and found that the same activity was offered at a discount of 20%.
Some of the vendors told us we needed to change our money to use the taxis. Definitely not true. We exchanged our dollars at the airport for a rate of 14:1. Abysmal. Once out to the taxi stand we negotiated a price of 18 usd for a 7 minute trip to the hotel.
After settling in at the hotel, we visited the concierge. After asking what was our best price found, my wife purchased the upgraded package including meals for 149.00 for 2 people.
We decided to head to the Malecon. We found that we could get 3 people to the same dolphin activity for 120 usd. After figuring out the negotiation techniques I described we rarely paid more than 25% of the starting price for everything we bought.
On a side note, the bellman told us the total taxi ride for a 15 minute ride to the Malecon would cost us 85 pesos or about 4.50 usd. Wait! What? A 7 minute trip from the aiport was 18 dollars which equaled 18 dollars times 14.5(our exchange rate at the airport) 301 pesos, while a 15 minute trip to the Malecon only costs 85 pesos. Wow did we get taken on that deal. Thats when my negotiating drive kicked in.
After that I negotiated everything. Everything!
I have to tell you, the people everywhere in PV were wonderful. My wife and I commented numerous times on how everyone smiled and was pleasant and patient with our lack of Spanish. Puerto Vallartans are a fun people to visit.
Everyone should take a trip to Puerto Vallarta!