A Rose Penthouse by Any Other Name

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?”

— Caption, New Yorker cartoon.

Quick!

Guess how tall the hotel pictured above is (located in Cancun, my wife and I recently celebrated our 21st(!) anniversary there).

According to the resort’s owner and its marketing literature — not to mention the hotel’s own elevator buttons — it’s 29 stories.

But, a cursory count of the actual floors from outside suggests that it’s really only 19 stories.

Another tell: the exercise room that’s billed as being on floor #12 looks curiously more like floor #4 (in the photo above, it’s the dark blue band of taller windows a couple stories up).

Missing: 10 floors

So, how do you conjure up an extra 10(!) floors, seemingly out of thin air?

There are no floors #2 – #11; instead, there’s only one floor in that range (albeit with high ceilings), for conferences and meeting rooms.

In addition, there’s no floor #13, presumably for superstitious reasons.

The takeaway?

Apparently, at least some credulous vacationers will pay more for a 29th floor suite than a 19th floor one (not us: we got a discount room on the 16th — I mean 6th — floor 🙂 ).

See also, “What’s Below the Penthouse? “The Sub-Penthouse” (as many as 14 of them).”

About the author

Ross Kaplan has 19+ years experience selling real estate all over the Twin Cities. He is also a 12-time consecutive "Super Real Estate Agent," as determined by Mpls. - St. Paul Magazine and Twin Cities Business Magazine. Prior to becoming a Realtor, Ross was an attorney (corporate law), CPA, and entrepreneur. He holds an economics degree from Stanford.

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