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How far from the airport should your resort be
The arithmetic people skip
A transfer is a round trip. A ninety-minute drive is three hours of holiday, not ninety minutes.
On a fourteen-night stay that is under one percent of your time. On a four-night stay it is more than three percent, and it lands on the two days that matter most — arrival day, when you are tired, and departure day, when you are watching a clock.
The same transfer is trivial or significant depending entirely on the length of the trip. That is the whole calculation.
Real published figures from our coverage
These are operators’ own numbers, not estimates:
| Cluster | Published distance | Published drive time |
|---|---|---|
| Montego Bay corridor, Jamaica | 2.7 km from MBJ | under 10–15 minutes |
| Bavaro, Punta Cana | 11–15 miles from PUJ | not published |
| Arena Gorda, Punta Cana | 25–28 km from PUJ | 30–45 minutes |
| Negril, Jamaica | approx. 80 km from MBJ | not published |
| Ocho Rios, Jamaica | 90 km from MBJ | about 90 minutes |
| Los Cabos | 40 km from SJD | about 60 minutes |
| Dhaalu Atoll, Maldives | two legs | 45 min flight + 15 min boat |
The range across one industry runs from ten minutes to an hour of flying plus a boat.
A rough rule
Under 20 minutes: irrelevant at any trip length. Book on other criteria.
20–45 minutes: fine for a week or more. Noticeable on a long weekend.
45–90 minutes: needs a week minimum to be sensible. Below that you are buying a lot of vehicle.
Over 90 minutes, or multi-leg: long stays only. Every Maldives resort we document falls here, and none of them suits a short trip.
The factor that outweighs distance
Whether the operator publishes a drive time at all.
Distance without time is a partial fact. Riu Negril publishes approximately 80 km from Montego Bay and no drive time. Riu Ocho Rios publishes 90 km and about ninety minutes. The distances are comparable; only one of them can be planned around.
Kilometres do not convert to minutes on roads you have never driven. An operator that publishes both has told you something real; one that publishes only the distance has given you half.
What the short transfer is actually worth
The Montego Bay corridor’s 2.7 km is the shortest figure in our coverage across four countries, and three separate resorts publish it.
That is worth real money on a short trip, and it is worth noticing that it comes with no compromise on resort quality — the corridor holds three adults-only properties at different grades. A short transfer is not usually a trade against anything, when it is available at all.
Two things nobody publishes
Whether the transfer is included. Almost never stated on a resort page. In the Maldives it is frequently a substantial separate cost.
Whether the drive time is for a private car or a shared shuttle. A shuttle stopping at four resorts is a different journey from the published figure, and the published figure is essentially always the direct one.
Ask both.
The summary
Price the transfer against the length of your trip, insist on a published drive time rather than a distance, and ask whether the ride is included and whether it is shared. Three questions, and they change more holidays than the pool count does.
Last verified 2026-09-13.
Last verified 2026-09-13.