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My review of Global & Mera Lounge, Cancun T3
My four-day vacation in Cancun has come to an end and I’m heading back to London. The last stop would be the airport lounge, and I do have some expectations since Cancun relies so heavily on tourists.
British Airways uses Terminal 3 of the airport, where all airlines as well as Priority Pass share the same lounge: The Lounge by Global Lounge. It is a landside lounge located at the departure hall, before security, which is not commonly seen.
It looks quite trendy from outside, but the indoor area appears tiny.
It has all the functions though: meeting room, work desks, bar and kids’ club.
And then I found out about the first floor, which is larger and bright.
There are some small plates for you to take, but you mostly order from a menu. All items are local Mexican food, including tacos, chicken soup and cheese pie.
I appreciate the effort they make. Many airport lounges, for understandable concerns, offer only “safe” options such as fried chicken, pasta and salad, and it’s a treat to be able to enjoy something local and special. The quality is quite good by the way – all the tacos I’ve had in Cancun are amazing.
The menu for cocktails shocked me!
As many as 35 different cocktails are on offer and prepared freshly by the bartender. I don’t expect this level of experience even in first class lounges!
We ordered one Sunrise and one Sunset to pair, which would cost around $15 per glass in the hotel zone. Although the facility here isn’t great, food and drink options are impressive.
There’s actually an airside lounge as well – Mera Business Lounge. It is part of the Plaza Premium group – they don’t take Priority Pass but Amex Platinum is fine.
Although slightly bigger, the furnishing is dire with zero natural light. It’s just about to closing so no longer taking any orders. I had a quick look at the menu, which is mainly the kind of pasta and sauteed vegetables etc. Alcohol is free but no cocktails.
So it’s a wise choice that the airlines pick The Lounge over Mera. If you like cocktails, reserve plenty of time before your flight from Cancun! But don’t get too drunk to board. As it is a landside lounge that accepts Priority Pass, I suspect that arriving passengers are admitted too.
Black Friday Flight & Hotel deals roundup
Etihad
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between January 15th and June 12th
- Use promo code WHITEFRIDAY20 or BLACKFRIDAY20
- Save 20% on economy and business class fares
Note that the 20% discount applies to the base fare only, which means in reality the savings will be much less.
Aegean
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between January 15th and October 26th
- No promo code needed
- Save up to 50% on all tickets across the network
The actual discount depends on your travel date.
ITA Airways
- Book by November 27th
- Travel between December 1st and December 31st
- Use promo code BLACK
- Save 30% on all tickets except Economy Lite
The offer is available to many markets including UK, Europe and US (20% off).
Cathay Pacific
- Book by November 26th
- Travel between December 1st and June 28th
- Use promo code UKBLACKFRI for flights departing from the UK
- £100 off business class and £75 off economy / premium economy
Similar deals are available for France and Germany etc.
Air China
£100 discount on UK flights to China / Asia. Claim your voucher on Trip.com – they have other Black Friday offers as explained in this blog post.
TAP Portugal
London – Boston in business class for ~£1000 return, and the cost can be further reduced if you add a stopover (>24 hours) in Lisbon to avoid the UK APD. Example:
Use Google Flights and Skyscanner to find cheap date combinations. Book by November 28th.
Virgin Atlantic
- Book by November 27th
- Travel by September 30th
- Pay 30% fewer points for all reward flights
This is an incredible deal for flying to/from Shanghai:
Redemptions for US destinations are unfortunately bundled with outrageous fees, so they might not be a great deal even with the 30% discount.
Melia
- Book by November 26th
- Stay by December 20th, 2024 (hotel dependant)
- Save up to 50%
Remember to stack the Gold 20% off and App 5% off. The discount is genuine although not necessarily at 50% at most properties, and many of the rates are flexible.
Accor
20% bonus on digital gift card purchases. Gift cards are valid for 5 years, and can be used at participating hotels in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece and Poland.
Kimpton Hotels
The following UK Kimpton hotels are offering 20% discount of gift vouchers:
- Kimpton London Fitzroy
- Kimpton Manchester Clocktower
- Kimpton Edinburgh Charlotte Square
- Kimtpon Glasgow Blythswood Square
Gift vouchers are valid for 12 months and can be used upon hotel checkout. They work well with pay-at-hotel rates, including Amex FHR and IHG Luxury & Lifestyle.
Malmaison / Hotel Du Vin
Malmaison – rate starts at £100, including £50 dinner credit
Hotel Du Vin – rate starts at £145 for two nights, including £50 dinner credit
£100 flight / hotel discount with Trip.com
We wrote about Trip.com’s constant flight discount recently, and they’ve just revealed their Black Friday promotions which are worth a look.
The landing page is here. Note that the specs here are for the UK market, but similar promotions run for France, Germany and Spain as well.
Flight discount:
- Nov 24, 5pm – £50 off £200
- Nov 24, 8pm – £20 off £30 on flights to Spain, excluding budget airlines
- Nov 25, 12pm – £100 off £500
- Nov 25, 8pm – £30 off £40 on flights to Turkey
- Nov 26, 12pm – £15 off 100
- Nov 26, 8pm – £100 off £150 on flights to Thailand
Supply will be limited and they will probably go fast. The flight must depart from the UK, but besides that there are very few restrictions. Keep your alarm clock on if you have flight tickets to buy!
Hotel discount:
- Nov 24, 6pm – £50 off £150
- Nov 25, 6pm – £100 off £250
- Nov 26, 6pm – £20 off £100
Unlike the flight offer there’s no geographical restriction on the hotels, although they can only be applied to “selected hotels”.
My review of JW Marriott Cancun
Having spent three nights at the unusual Canopy hotel, I wanted to move to a proper resort – after all we are in Cancun right? I was very undecisive between JW Marriott, Westin Lagunamar and the Royalton Chic, and JW Marriott finally had the upper hand as it’s very close to the restaurants and snorkelling tour that I was interested in.
The JW Marriott hotel is located in the middle of the hotel strip, which is where many luxury hotels are. Although buses pass by, the hotel’s entrance is a good walk from the road, and there’s no immediate pedestrian cross.
We visited the Mayan site at the Westin Lagunamar in the morning and then took an Uber to the JW. We arrived at 1pm and the room wasn’t ready yet, so we headed to the Fred’s House for lunch first.
Unlike the Canopy, you can easily tell that the JW Marriott hotel is a massive resort, which is what most tourists expect to see in this destination.
The concierge offered us an ice lolly whilst we were waiting for checking in.
Many of the Marriott hotels in Cancun are part of the Vacation Club, implying minimum benefits for Bonvoy members, e.g. no breakfast or suite night award redemption. That’s exactly how the JW Marriott stands out – my suite night award cleared into the best suite of the hotel!
The hotel has a special club lounge, Club 91, and access isn’t complimentary to elite members. You can purchase at the daily price of $85 per person, but I wouldn’t recommend. If you intend to dine fully at the hotel, it’s better to choose an all-inclusive property instead.
My ocean view suite is located on the 11th floor.
Living room:
Bedroom:
Walk-in wardrobe and two bathrooms:
The design is simple and has got the chilled vibe, which suits a beach-side resort well. Coffee machine:
The living room and bedroom are connected to different balconies. It’s not a joy in Cancun’s summer though.
The ocean view however is impeccable, and you see people doing water sports, for example parasailing.
I’m only here for one night, so no poking around and let’s go down to the swimming pool! The outdoor pool is not so much “swimming” to be honest, more of a pretty venue to sunbathe and relax.
More photos of the pool:
You can walk down to the public beach, but remember to bring your key card as you need it to come back.
The sea is beautiful, and you can go down tens of metres yet the water is still quite shallow. The waves are not to be taken lightly though so swimming is not practical.
The indoor pool on the other hand, is absolutely empty.
The gyms:
My research suggests that elite members are entitled to free continental breakfast only, which is fine by me. When I’m in the restaurant however – what kind of continental breakfast is this?!
You can find everything you expect from an English breakfast buffet, with the addition of paella and some local specialties. There are also eggs cooked to order.
In honesty the quality is not great, and I definitely prefer the breakfast at the Canopy. But the spread is very impressive, and the only thing missing is the a-la-carte menu for the paying guests.
The hotel has many restaurants but we didn’t visit any except the pizza shop.
We requested 4.30pm late check-out, which was granted without any hassle. However as the suite was unavailable we were moved to the standard room instead.
Having a view of a construction site isn’t fun for regular guests, but we just need a room to rest so no complaints at all. I am very satisfied with the stay, and it was definitely a great decision to use my suite night award here!
Temu Shopping is in the UK and I tried it out
Ok, this is an unconventional post for our blog, and feel free not to read it! But since we cover Amazon offers from time to time, I suppose some readers might be interested in other shopping deals too.
We’ll be talking about Temu today, that entered the UK market only in April 2023. Temu is an international spinoff of Pinduoduo / 拼多多，one of the largest e-commerce companies in China. Pinduoduo was born after I left China so I haven’t got a chance to use them, but I used Temu recently and has so far been quite happy. If you are intrigued as well, we have a coupon code available at the end of this article.
[Product Catalogue]
As we’ve said earlier Temu is a B2C e-commerce company, so you can see it as Amazon in a way. They have a pretty big catalogue, and you can find clothing, jewellery, electronics, office supply and household supply etc on Temu.
I guess a closer comparable would be AliExpress, the counterpart by Alibaba which is also a Chinese company. AliExpress sells more stuff including furniture and large appliances, but on the other hand Temu can be ridiculously cheap, as you’ll see later in this article.
What you won’t find on Temu is “big names”, or premium products with top quality. So it really depends on your expectations: if you are looking for cheap merchandises and not so fussed about quality, for example socks and t-shirts, then Temu is worthy of checking out.
[Shipping]
Free shipping is available on purchases of £10 or more. However the products are shipped from China so it takes a while to arrive, typically one to two weeks. If you need something right away, buy from Amazon or in store.
If your order arrives later than the expected date you’ll be compensated with £5 credit. Their tracking system is well designed – you get email reminders for dispatching, the cargo flight and delivery etc. Temu takes care of customs so you won’t pay any additional fees.
Their main logistics partner in the UK is Evri, which has a questionable reputation. My experience is fine though – no problem encountered and it doesn’t feel any different to other delivery services. One of my orders was delivered by Royal Mail, probably due to it being a “valuable” item worth £50+.
[Unboxed]
Here are some of the items that I bought.
Plain white t-shirts, £1.19
Shoes, £5.26
Belt, 90p
Sunglasses, £1.92
Kitchen sink strainer, 16p
Oil sprayer, 87p
Garden watering gadget, 4p
Wiko T10 dual-sim Android smartphone, £54.81
I applied a coupon on every order, and the numbers above are what I actually paid after the discount. I am genuinely impressed by how cheap Temu is. In fact it is almost as much as what you expect to pay in China!
Every order comes with a free return within 90 days. I haven’t used it so far, but it is a typical returning process which involves printing out a return label and bringing back your item to an Evri collection point. A friend did a return and received refund after approximately two weeks.
[Price Adjustment]
One very interesting feature Temu offers is Price Adjustment, which means if the price drops within 30 days after you’ve placed the order, they will refund the difference.
The refund doesn’t happen automatically. You need to check the app regularly, and when the Price Adjustment button pops up you know there are eligible items in that order. The refunded amount can be affected by the coupon you applied, and it is processed right away.
It is very courageous for Temu to offer this gesture. As far as I know, although Amazon has something similar, it is only available during special period such as the Prime Day and Black Friday sales.
[Precautions]
A big warning: Pinduoduo is the notorious pioneer in upping clickbait to a totally different level. They have all sorts of “promotions” in the app which encourages you to invite your friends for free money and huge prizes etc. They are most of the time a waste of time and can be very annoying.
Unfortunately you’ll see such things in Temu as well, and I know people who uninstall the app immediately when they see how toxic the app is. My advice is to ignore all these messages, and only pay attention to the coupons they gift you.
If you are curious to try Temu out, our referral link will give you 50% off the first order (max. discount £20) and a £100 coupon bundle. You could also enter the coupon code apu94348. Temu tends to offer you many other coupons in the first weeks, so take advantage of being a new customer.
My review of Canopy by Hilton Cancun
This is my first time in Cancun (and Mexico) and there are so many hotels to choose from! I did extensive research and finally set my eyes upon the Canopy by Hilton hotel. The deal is hard to resist: Amex The Hotel Collection comes with a 3-for-2 offer plus $100 credit, and I have the $200 Amex Travel credit from the Platinum card.
So I paid just over $300 for three nights. However, I had my doubts as this is not a traditional resort like others in Cancun. The Canopy hotel is not next to any beach and the nearest one is about 15 minutes away. Although they’ve signed a deal with an external beach club, you must pay $30 for entry and it’s a few minutes drive.
In summary, if you are looking for a staycation or beach holiday this hotel is not for you. However I had planned a lot of tourist stuff for the first two days so we didn’t mind.
There’s a pedestrian cross right in front of the hotel and a bus stop nearby. Frequent buses bring you to all the major sites at the cost of $1.
Uber is quite convenient too. Note that however Uber’s airport pickup is banned so I booked the hotel’s transfer at a fair $35. You can ride with Uber to the airport.
The hotel sits beside La Isla which is a massive shopping complex. There are many shops, restaurants and cafes here.
As you can see from the pictures above, the hotel is basically one standalone building and not very big. The lobby is nice though.
I booked a Sunset Double Double room, and got upgraded to Sunset Premium after I made an inquiry in the online chat. Then I arrived just to find that they changed my reservation to a Sunrise Premium instead.
Although they tried to convince me that it’s a better view etc I didn’t buy into that nonsense. They didn’t have any Sunset Premium Double left, and Premium King with a rollaway bed was not ideal, so I had to begrudgingly accept the assigned room.
The room is nice and functional, the bed very comfy. I was aware that there’s no balcony, but to my surprise there’s no bathtub either.
The so-called Sunrise view has an aspect of the opposite hotel, and the sea view is quite poor.
There’s a transfer lounge on the second floor, serving guests before their transfer to the beach club.
Come with me to the rooftop!
This is the very best part of the hotel, and ideal for your Instagram shots.
Sunset rooms have exactly the same view of this ferry wheel, and I hope you understand my perseverance with the room type now. The infinite pool is pretty good for a swim.
The jacuzzi on the other hand is pointless – who would want to soak themselves in hot water when it’s 32 degrees and humid?
Gym is next to the rooftop bar.
Breakfast is complimentary for Diamond members, which is buffet-only except for the egg-cooking station.
The spread isn’t the best that I’ve seen, but the quality is top-notch, and they change the hot dishes every day. They’ve put a lot of thoughts into the breakfast and the menu is very nicely curated, thanks to it not being a massive resort overwhelmed with guests.
In addition to the usual breakfast offering, there are some local delicacies including grilled fish and pork / beef stew. I’m most impressed by the dessert section – all the pastries here are incredibly fresh, special and tasty!
This is the only restaurant the hotel has, so I used my $100 credit on two dinners with my Mum.
Even better than the breakfast offering, the dinner menu here is outstanding. We ordered tacos, grilled octopus and spider (beef) steak, and every dish is simply amazing. The spider steak especially is probably the best steak I’ve ever had – awesome charcoal touch, crunchy surface and soft inside.
My 2pm late check-out is granted with no issues. This Canopy hotel has its very obvious pros and cons. If you intend to travel a lot when you are in Cancun, it’s a great base to explore the area at a very reasonable price.
£45 off Amazon Morrisons / Fresh orders, £3 instore coupon
If you have never used Amazon Fresh or Morrisons, you could potentially save up to £45 on your first grocery orders. Check your eligibility on the following pages, and if it works out you could apply coupon codes when checking out.
Note that you must be an Amazon Prime member to benefit.
[Amazon Fresh]
- £15 off £60: coupon code FRESHNNEW15, valid three times and you only need to enter the code once. The offer expires on October 4th.
[Morrisons on Amazon]
- £15 off £60 spend: coupon code MOR15OFFER1 / MOR15OFFER2 / MOR15OFFER3 , valid three times (note that there is a different code each time). The offer expires on September 30th.
There are a couple of codes that might work for existing customers:
- NEXT10MOR £10 off £70 spend
- LONDON20OFF £20 off £70 spend
[Fresh Instore]
If you are based in London and can pop into one of the Amazon Fresh stores, here are a two coupons for you:
Once added to your account, visit the mentioned store and spend at least £7 for the discount to apply automatically. You have until December 31st to redeem the offer, and note each coupon is valid only once.
Other Amazon offers:
- £10 off your first Amazon App purchase
- £20 off your first Amazon Fresh and Morrisons order
- Get £10 Amazon voucher for using its Photos app
- £4 off your next Amazon pickup order
- £5 Amazon bonus when topping up £60
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Music
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Podcast
- Earn £5 voucher for using Amazon Pay
- Free £5 Amazon voucher to claim
- £5 voucher for watching Amazon Prime Video
- £5 reward for creating an Amazon wish list
- £15 free money to spend at Amazon Fresh stores
- Amazon Warehouse £5 free voucher
My review of LATAM VIP lounge, Santiago
I’m making my way back to Europe from Santiago on LATAM. I flew LATAM a few years back – they didn’t and still don’t have an own lounge at Peru and I don’t remember anything about the one in Brazil, but now I get to try the Santiago Lounge, which turns out to be exceptionally good.
The lounge opened in April 2022 and is proclaimed to be the largest airport lounge in South America. After emigration and security check, turn left and the lounge is in front of you upstairs.
The receptionist lady puts on a very sweet smile after scanning my boarding pass and welcomes me to their best Signature Lounge. I was a bit surprised to find out there are three VIP lounges here:
- Signature – Business Class / LATAM Black Signature & Black / Delta Diamond & Platinum
- Premium – LATAM Platinum / Delta Gold
- WorldMember – Select Santander customers
As you can see from the entry requirements, Signature is clearly the most prestigious out of the three.
The wooden “huts” are eye-catching when you walk inside the lounge.
The Furnishing is mostly wood and leather in dark colours, which fits the “Signature” branding. Many Visa Signature cards are black or dark grey.
You have many different styles of chairs to choose from:
I find the dining area more comfortable though with proper desks and power sockets.
The bar is quite fancy, and they can make barista coffee!
There is a huge buffet section that includes cold and hot food, snacks and desserts. The selection is more than great.
Today’s hot food menu is:
- Rice with nuts
- Chicken breast with citron sauce
- Tortellini stuffed with ricotta
- Roasted beef
- Potato millefeuille
- Polenta
- Pea and mint soup
They are quite tasty.
There’s a kids club on the side. The press release mentions interactive games but I didn’t see any.
Hidden at the very inside is the sleeping and rest area.
There are quite a few sleeping pods here with real beds! No reservation is required, which is a luxury that you rarely see even in first class lounges.
Finally the bathroom:
The LATAM Signature Lounge at Santiago is not only the largest airport lounge in South America, but probably also the best if I hazard a guess. Except for not offering an a-la-carte dining experience, it is pretty much up to the standard of a first class lounge, so don’t miss out if you have the opportunity!