What a club level or Elite upgrade buys

The product

Most large all-inclusive brands sell a premium tier inside the resort: RIU calls it Elite Club, Barcelo calls it Premium Level, others use Club Level, Royal Level, Diamond Club, Preferred Club.

The structure is consistent. You pay more, and you get a set of rooms in a particular part of the resort plus some combination of extra facilities and services.

What operators reliably publish

Across the properties we document, the published detail is thin but consistent. Where a tier is named, you can usually expect:

• Specific room categories reserved for the tier, often with the best positions. At the two Aruba and Los Cabos RIU properties, the Elite Club categories are the ocean-front ones.
• A dedicated pool.
• A dedicated bar, and sometimes a dedicated restaurant.

That is close to the whole of what gets stated plainly.

What is marketed but rarely specified

Premium spirits. Very commonly implied. Almost never enumerated, and the base all-inclusive’s own spirit list is rarely published either, so you cannot see the difference you are paying for.

Priority a la carte reservations. Frequently mentioned. The mechanism — how many bookings, how far ahead, whether it is a guarantee or a queue position — essentially never.

Upgraded room amenities. A stocked minibar, better toiletries, a pillow menu. Specifics vary and are seldom listed.

Concierge or butler service. The word appears; what it does is left open.

The two questions that decide it

1. What does the base rate already include?

This is the one people skip. A club tier that promises premium spirits is worth a great deal at a resort whose standard rate is restrictive, and almost nothing at a resort that already includes premium brands.

One property in our coverage publishes premium brand drinks, room service, laundry and spa access as part of the standard rate. At a resort like that, the marginal value of an upgrade is mostly the room position.

You cannot evaluate the upgrade without first evaluating the base.

2. Is it a room upgrade with extras, or extras with a room attached?

If the Elite categories are the ocean-front rooms — as they are at both RIU properties we document with a named tier — then a large share of what you are buying is position, which you can often buy directly by booking a better room category without the tier.

Compare the cost of the club tier against the cost of simply moving up a room grade. Sometimes they are the same thing with different labels.

When it is straightforwardly worth it

• The resort is large and the a la carte restaurants are hard to book.
• You will genuinely use a quieter dedicated pool.
• The base rate is restrictive on drinks and you care about that.
• You are travelling for an occasion where the room position is the point.

When it usually is not

• Short stays. Reservation privileges and concierge access need time to pay back.
• Resorts that already include generously at base.
• Families with young children, who tend to be at the children’s pool and the buffet regardless of tier.

What to ask before paying

• Which restaurants does the tier give access to that the standard rate does not?
• What is the actual reservation privilege — how many, how far ahead, guaranteed or not?
• Which spirits are included at base, and which are added?
• Is the dedicated pool adults-only?
• What is the room-category difference, and what would that category cost without the tier?

We publish no prices and hold no verified rate data, so we cannot tell you whether any specific upgrade is good value. What we can tell you is that the published information is almost never sufficient to work it out, and that those five questions are the ones that make it answerable.

Last verified 2026-09-13.