jdrtravel

1) You are seriously missing out on some great restaurants that are a 5 minute drive away. With black car taxis waiting outside the hotel and the restaurants, they could not make it easier. The food is better and in many cases less expensive than on property, and it's all still catered to tourists (english menus, ice/water is all safe, etc).

2) Re: tipping at the St. Regis. I was curious exactly how this works and so I asked about it. The 10% automatic service fee gets split between all service staff on the resort (gardeners, housekeeping, etc), so it does not end up being a standard restaurant tip to your wait staff, but much less.

When you add a tip to your bill over and above the service fee, it gets pooled and split only between the folks at the particular place you are (so on the beach, the beach staff split that, at Carolina those staff split it, etc). Most guests, according to staff I spoke with, leave a tip in addition to the 10% service fee (and tip housekeeping and others as is customary), and those tips are the primary source of income for many of the people who work there. The hotel only pays minimum wage (under 5 USD per day) but many people take the long shuttle ride up from PV to work there because the tips are good enough that they can provide for their families and live a good life.

So it's important to know that most hotels guests do tip (beyond the service charge), as is customary (and especially at luxury hotels) and the tipping is both expected and greatly appreciated by the staff, even though they are not allowed to tell you that outright. What's nice is that if you want to be cashless, you can still always add a tip to the bill. The only people you'll need cash for tipping are housekeeping, butlers and bellhop, and those people can all be tipped from cash you keep in your in-room safe, so it's all kept very easy.