I booked a budget-friendly, all-inclusive resort in Mexico for a family trip. I wouldn't do it again.

The author (right) said she and her family tried to make the most of their stay, but didn't have much to do beyond enjoying the pool. Courtesy of Alana Dawson.

I booked a family vacation at a budget-friendly all-inclusive resort in Mexico.

When we arrived, disappointment set in immediately.

Sargassum and our inability to get dinner reservations led us to move to a sister property.

My oldest daughter looked at my husband and me in horror and said, "This isn't our hotel, is it?"

That describes our family's only, and perhaps ever, all-inclusive experience in Mexico last summer.

And indeed, it was our hotel .

There were unmet expectations

After a quick flight and short wait at customs, we had our bags and were ready to begin our vacation. It was all our teens had talked about for weeks. We were all excited to see the beach and relax by the pool we saw in photos while booking our trip.

If the wait for our included transportation was any indication of how the rest of the trip would go, we should have turned around and headed right back home. After an hourslong wait, in the blazing sun, without cover, we finally got into a van with curtains and sparse cool air coming out of the vent for a 45-minute ride to our resort.

Once we arrived at the resort and stepped out of the van, a strong odor hit us. It was shocking, like a mixture of death, decay, and a rotting dumpster, but in humidity. I immediately worried about what we had gotten ourselves into.

Things seemed different online

We booked this trip to celebrate my daughter's high school graduation. Though budget-friendly, the travel website advertised it as a luxurious beachfront family resort with a picturesque pool and a pristine beach. Reviews were positive, and the price felt right. As I was checking outa small pop-up appeared, a warning that said something along the lines of "seaweed/sargassum may cause some inconvenience." I ignored it and didn't give it a second thought until I got a whiff of it in person.

The author said sargassum made the beach unusable at the first resort they checked into. Courtesy of Alana Dawson.

The putrid smell we experienced upon our arrival turned out to be massive piles of sargassum , a floating brown seaweed that is a type of marine algae. This was no minor inconvenience, but yards and yards of decaying seaweed right on the beach of our resort. On the sand, a few men shoveled, barely making a dent in the piles of seaweed we could see. As soon as they filled one trash bag, another wave would bring in more. Spoiler alert: The next hotel we transferred to had backhoes removing seaweed , not guys with shovels.

The beach was unusable. The teens were devastated. So was I.

The author said that, in addition to looking unpleasant, the sargassum also had a very strong odor. Courtesy of Alana Dawson.

We had to pivot

If this were a movie, this would be the scene where a montage of me growing increasingly frustrated and then completely melting down would play.

I quickly shifted gears; even with no beach, I figured we could still eat and entertain our way through our vacation. This was, after all, an all-inclusive. I turned my back to the beach and headed inside to make dining and spa reservations and book excursions.

Unfortunately, reservations of all types were hard to come by. What's the point of an all-inclusive if you can't use the amenities ? There was a lackluster buffet, but all the other restaurants on the property were booked. I started to panic, we couldn't even eat well on this vacation we had all been looking forward to.

We cut our losses

If our only food option was the buffet and we had to spend more out of pocket to get away from the smell, I knew there was only one real option for us: transferring to another hotel.

After a call to the travel site we used to book our trip and a long conversation with the hotel manager, we paid for a taxi and new rooms at a sister hotel thirty minutes away.

Now our budget-friendly vacation was going to cost way more than we had originally planned.

The author was able to switch her family to a sister resort with a cleaner beach for an added cost. Courtesy of Alana Dawson.

I learned some lessons

I learned you can't trust reviews, pictures, or even big-name travel sites. You need someone who has relationships with the hotels, who has been there or had clients there recently.

This vacation actually became the catalyst for a new career. I'm now a certified travel advisor . Will I be suggesting budget all-inclusives to my future clients? No. After this experience, I firmly believe that you get what you pay for, and if a rate seems too good to be true, as the saying goes, it probably is.

Would I book an all-inclusive again? Maybe. Though not anytime soon, and I'll make sure to speak directly with people who have stayed there recently before I do.

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