The perks of being an executive vary wildly by company. At Walmart, execs travel coach and frequently share hotel rooms (as a former COO loved to tell me). At Datadog, a 5-star hotel room is often within the travel budget. And some large pharma companies keep a couple of private planes on hand, just in case. I’ve been fortunate to get to stay at a number of nice properties as part of executive offsites and gatherings, but Southall Farm & Inn might be my favorite.

One of my hobbies is opportunistically booking resorts shortly after they launch and are still in the “shakedown” phase; the price is frequently cheaper before the resort is at full capacity. As a result, my travel schedule is littered with random trips booked years in advance that resurface at unexpected times. This year I booked Secrets Tides Punta Cana for both May and December, because it was such a great deal at the time.

Every year I attempt to find the best cheapest place to stay near MIT campus for MLK weekend. I've stayed in Kendall Square quite a few times, but the last couple years have seen more options open close to Central Square, and I decided to try something slightly further afield. While walking to Le Méridien in the bitter cold of a January night I was sure I would never stay there again because the twelve minute walk from campus was too unpleasant; by the end it was my favorite hotel in Cambridge.

YouTube video by Senator Cory Booker

One of the ways to get deals when traveling to resorts is to make a booking right when a new resort opens. It's classic hotel arbitrage of securing a price when it might be artificially low, and then having the option to cancel and rebook later if the price goes down. I was interested in Secrets Tulum generally as a new Secrets property, but also specifically because it has a novel design not on the ocean, and I thought that being a beach-indifferent person I might like this setup more than the average resort-goer.

It always feels a little unfair to review places I visit for work, as the experience is so much different being in meetings all day as opposed a true relaxing vacation experience. Not only was my trip to Bishop's Lodge a work trip, but it also coincided with an unusual and out-of-season snowstorm, so I'm quite confident I did not have a "normal" experience.

When I knew I would be spending some time this summer unemployed, I kicked off a chain of status matches designed to get me free cruises through casino programs (see Frequent Miler's excellent post on how to go about it). What I failed to realize was how long that chain of matches would take to come to fruition, along with the fact that earning a free cruise doesn't mean you can book it immediately.

2024 was an unexpected year. In January, I would have predicted that this would be a "holding steady" kind of year, gearing up for making some real changes in 2025. Instead I end 2024 in a different job, 8.5% body fat lower, and having spent more days away from home than any other year of my life. Of all the unexpected changes, I think the results of working with a nutritionist were the most surprising.