Suites or swim up rooms in hotels

Sandra Candal

Article updated on 02/04/2024

What is a Swim Up room?

A Swim Up room is a room, located on the first floor of a hotel or resort and having its own private terrace, with direct access to a swimming pool which can be private or shared.

In Swim Up rooms, guests can literally step out of their room and dive directly into the pool.

This novel concept has gained popularity in recent years, and every year more and more hotels and resorts around the world are incorporating swim-up suites into their luxury accommodation offerings.

But what is swim up? Why are they called that? Swim-up means you can swim up, so these exclusive rooms that are usually sold as suites, with a surcharge, aim to offer guests the opportunity to enter and exit the pool from the terrace of their own room.

In their early days, the all-inclusive resorts that popularized them focused their marketing on special vacations, such as honeymoons and anniversaries.

Nowadays they have become so popular that there are swim-up rooms for everyone, from couples in adults-only resorts to rooms for families with children, who, by the way, tend to love this type of room.

The origin of the Swim Up rooms

In its quest to captivate guests with comfort and unique experiences, the hotel industry is constantly innovating, and swim-up pool rooms are one of the most recent examples.

The concept of "swim up rooms" surely came about by accident: when a savvy revenue management department realized that rooms on the second floor (which, traditionally, were not considered a prime location within the hotel) could actually be sold at an even higher price, because they gave guests direct access to the hotel pool, without having to go through the common areas, by simply stepping out onto the pool deck.

Iterating on this idea, the concept was taken to the design of a new resort, where the pool was brought even closer to the room and everything from access stairs to a semi-private area was built for each swim-up suite.

The first swim-up rooms appeared in all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, around the 2010s.

The Coco Palm Resort on the island of St Lucia, the Sandals Negril in Jamaica and the Grand Riviera Princess Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, are among the first hotels to incorporate this type of room into their offerings.

Actually the term Swim Up room has its origin in the swim-up bars that many resorts and all-inclusive hotels have in their pools, a swim up bar is a bar with at least one of its bars in a pool, where you can sit and have a refreshing piña colada on a stool submerged in the water. These bars emerged in Las Vegas in the 1950s, and quickly became flagship services of the resorts of Acapulco and the Riviera Maya in Mexico, and as has happened with the swim up suite, they were quickly exported to the entire category of all-inclusive hotels around the world.

Types of Swim Up rooms to choose from

Converted into a true haven of relaxation, there are thousands of types of swim up rooms, with nomenclatures to suit all tastes, such as family swim up suite, apartment swim up, junior suite swim up. Designed for all types of public, you can find swim ups in hotels as heterogeneous as resorts for the whole family or luxury hotels for adults only.

Swim Up with access to a shared pool

They are the most common option, at the rear of these rooms, located on the first floor of the building, there is usually an exclusive small furnished terrace with stairs leading directly to a pool shared with adjoining rooms.

Most naturally, this is an elongated body of water to which only guests of these more complete rooms have access and not the main hotel pool shared with the rest of the guests.

Swim Up with private shallow area

These types of suites, ideal for both families and couples, stand out for having a private terrace with direct access to a section of the shared pool that is for the exclusive use of the guests of that suite.

This section has shallow water and stairs leading to the rest of the pool shared with the adjoining rooms. On that terrace, within the pool itself, loungers are often placed to lie out and sunbathe from the water and sometimes even include sun loungers submerged in the water like the ones you might find in the wet circuit of a spa.

Swim Up with access to a private pool

If you're looking for the most romantic setting, the swim-up suites with private pool are the perfect setting for your couple's getaway.

Along with their considerable size, these suites stand out for their direct access to a completely private pool that offers maximum privacy to their guests.

In reality, these rooms tend to be villas that are part of a quiet luxury resort, where each villa forms a luxury property only available and accessible by its guests.

One of the main spaces where guests can relax in these villas are their private pools and terraces just a few steps away from the bed.

Swim Up with direct access to the beach.

This type of Swim ups are the most well-kept secret of some Caribbean resorts and, like the previous typology, they are commonly found in the Caribbean or Southeast Asia.

This is a room where in addition to providing direct access to a swimming pool, which can be shared or private, the room has views and direct access to the resort's beach.

In these rooms, guests can choose between jumping into the pool from their terrace or swimming in the sea, which is located just a few meters away.

To safeguard the privacy of their guests, these rooms incorporate many natural elements such as bamboo barriers or bushes of local flora.

In short, the Swim Up rooms are that refreshing plus that your vacation needs.

Forget about fighting for a poolside space; just put on your swimsuit and glide from your room straight into the water

t's like having VIP access to relaxation paradise. Whether you're looking for a romantic nook, family fun, immerse yourself in a dream vacation, in the most literal sense!