An all-inclusive resort is a bet. You pay a fixed supplement up front and the resort wagers that you will eat and drink less than the supplement is worth. Almost every argument about whether that bet is good gets made without a single number in it. Here is the arithmetic, and the published figures to run it against.
The short answer
Work out your supplement per person per night, then compare it against what a full day of food and drink can cost at that destination. The US State Department publishes a usable ceiling for the second half: the Meals and Incidental Expenses rate it will reimburse a government traveller. It is deliberately generous, it assumes three restaurant meals, and it also covers tips and laundry. If your all-inclusive supplement is above that number, the plan cannot pay off. If your supplement is under half of it and you drink alcohol, the plan almost always wins.
| Destination | Published daily meals ceiling, per person | Rate in force since |
|---|---|---|
| Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | USD 155 | August 2025 |
| Cancun, Mexico | USD 135 | August 2024 |
| Maldives | USD 134 | April 2022 |
| Crete and the rest of Greece | USD 127 | August 2025 |
| Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt | USD 114, rising to USD 123 from 29 September | July 2026 |
| Cozumel, Mexico | USD 109 | March 2026 |
| Jamaica | USD 99 | November 2024 |
| Turkey, outside the named cities | USD 98 | August 2024 |
| Dominican Republic, outside Santo Domingo | USD 94 | 1 September 2026 |
Two rules follow. If you drink, take the plan in expensive destinations and at any resort with nothing within walking distance. If you do not drink, and there are restaurants outside the gate, take room only or bed and breakfast, because the plan is priced on the assumption that you drink.
How do you calculate your own break-even?
The supplement is the only number that matters, and no brochure prints it. Get it yourself:
- Price the same resort, the same room category, the same dates, on the same site, on room only or bed and breakfast.
- Price it again all-inclusive.
- Subtract, then divide by nights, then divide by people.
A worked example using your own quote, not a market price: 1,840 all-inclusive against 1,360 room only, two adults, seven nights. The difference is 480, which is 240 per person, which is about 34 per person per night. That is the number to test. One adult’s food, drink and tips has to cost more than 34 a day before the plan has earned anything.
Run adults and children separately if the quote breaks them out. Child board is usually discounted or free, which drags the family average down and can make a plan look better than it is for the adults paying full rate.
What does a day of food and drink actually cost?
The ceilings above come from the State Department Office of Allowances, which sets them so that a travelling official is not out of pocket. Read them as an upper bound, not as a typical holiday spend. They also age: the Antalya line has not been revised since 2004 and the Maldives line not since 2022, so treat both as soft. The Dominican Republic figure was reset for 1 September 2026 and the Egyptian figures in July 2026, so those are current.
The table below models three drinking profiles as a share of the published ceiling. The ceilings are published figures. The percentages are our model, so treat the middle columns as a sighting shot rather than a quote.
| One adult, one day | Eats cheaply, no alcohol | Mixed meals, two drinks | Restaurant meals, six drinks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share of the published ceiling | about 35 per cent | about 60 per cent | at or above the ceiling |
| Cancun, ceiling USD 135 | about USD 47 | about USD 81 | USD 135 or more |
| Crete, ceiling USD 127 | about USD 44 | about USD 76 | USD 127 or more |
| Jamaica, ceiling USD 99 | about USD 35 | about USD 59 | USD 99 or more |
| Dominican Republic, ceiling USD 94 | about USD 33 | about USD 56 | USD 94 or more |
Seasonality moves the target as well as the price. Athens is rated at USD 144 a day from 1 May to 31 October and USD 133 from 1 November to 30 April. Sharm el Sheikh runs at USD 114 from 5 January to 28 September and USD 123 for the rest of the year. A plan priced flat across the year is better value in the expensive months.
What is the plan not paying for?
“All-inclusive” is not a defined term. In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority has repeatedly had to rule on what it can be taken to mean, including against Travel Service (Wimbledon) Ltd in September 2022 over an “Ultra All Inclusive” claim that never said what it included. The regulator’s position is that the marketer has to spell out the contents, which is a good sign that operators do not do it by default. Get the board basis in writing before you pay.
The usual carve-outs are branded and premium spirits, bottled wine above a house list, the a la carte restaurants beyond a fixed number of sittings per stay, room service, minibar restocking, motorised watersports, the spa, the faster wifi tier, excursion transport and the airport transfer. None of that is a scandal. It is the resort recovering margin, and it is why the plan is priced where it is.
Which charges land outside the plan?
Board plans cover food and drink. They do not cover the taxes and levies that the destination charges on top, and those fall on every peso or euro you spend outside the wristband. Nor do they cover a mandatory resort fee, which is charged on the room.
- Dominican Republic: article 228 of the Labour Code obliges hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars to add 10 per cent to the bill as a legal tip, on top of 18 per cent ITBIS. Anything you buy off-plan carries both.
- Jamaica: tourism activity is taxed at an effective 10 per cent GCT. The February 2026 budget proposed raising it to the standard 15 per cent, phased over two years. That is a proposal at the time of writing, not law, and the hotel association is contesting it.
- Greece: the climate resilience fee is charged per room per night, at 15 euros for a five-star and 10 euros for a four-star from April to October, falling to 4 and 3 euros from November to March. It sits under Law 4389/2016 as amended by Law 5162/2024 and it is never inside a board plan.
- Quintana Roo, Mexico: Visitax is a one-off charge on foreign visitors set at 2.5 UMA, currently around 285 pesos. It is indexed, so it moves each year, and hotels do not collect it.
Where does the math go wrong?
Six mistakes account for most of the bad decisions here.
- Comparing two different resorts. A cheap all-inclusive against an expensive room-only tells you about the hotels, not the board. Same property or the comparison is worthless.
- Leaving flights in the total. Package quotes bundle them, so strip them out of both sides before subtracting, the same way you strip the headline rate out of a car hire quote.
- Assuming the plan ends tipping. It does not, and in the Dominican Republic the legal 10 per cent is a wage mechanism rather than a gratuity.
- Ignoring the walk-out test. If the nearest alternative restaurant is 40 minutes away, you are not buying value, you are buying out of a monopoly, and the plan is usually still the right call.
- Booking full board for a trip spent outside the resort. Every excursion day is a day you paid twice.
- Taking the premium tier. If you cut one thing, cut that. It buys branded spirits and reserved a la carte sittings, priced per person per night across the whole stay, however often you use it.
Frequently asked questions
Is all-inclusive cheaper than half board? Only if the step up costs less than your lunches plus your drinks. Half board usually covers breakfast and dinner, so the all-inclusive supplement is buying lunch, snacks and alcohol. If you do not drink, that is a thin proposition. The same subtraction settles a cruise drinks package.
Do children break even? Rarely on their own numbers. A child eats less and drinks nothing chargeable, so a child priced at half the adult supplement is usually a loss. Children priced free are the reason family all-inclusive quotes look strong.
Does the plan cover tips? Assume not. Service charges required by local law are added to bills you pay yourself, not absorbed by the resort, and staff at all-inclusive properties are tipped in cash as a matter of practice.
Is a resort day pass a fair proxy for the plan’s value? It is the resort’s own retail price for one day of the same food and drink, so it is a useful upper marker. It is not a break-even figure, because day passes are priced for non-residents and usually carry a minimum spend.
Does booking all-inclusive change my rights if something goes wrong? Not by itself. What matters is if you bought a package, which is a separate question with a separate answer, set out in our guide to the rights gap between packages and self-assembled trips.
Sources: US Department of State, Office of Allowances, Foreign Per Diem Rates, allowances.state.gov. Advertising Standards Authority and CAP, travel marketing guidance, asa.org.uk. Dominican Republic Labour Code articles 228 to 230, drleyes.com. Dirección General de Impuestos Internos, ITBIS, dgii.gov.do. Jamaica Information Service on tourism sector tax, jis.gov.jm, and the February 2026 budget measures as reported by KPMG, kpmg.com. Greek climate resilience fee, Law 4389/2016 article 53 as amended by Law 5162/2024 article 24, AADE circular A.1202/2024. Quintana Roo Visitax, visitax.gob.mx.
Researched from primary sources and checked August 2026. General information, not advice.
