Quote Originally Posted by 2nutz4travel View Post
In my experience, if you go to the tour rep "meeting" it's the tour reps that try to discourage you from leaving the property on your own. They only do that because they want to sell you their overpriced tours. That's pretty much the case in any country (Mex, DR, Cuba, Jamaica) that we've been to an AI. It's not the hotel itself or the hotel staff in my experience but the travel company reps...
This has been my experience, as well. On my first trip to Jamaica, I stayed at the Sunset Jamaica in Ochi. This was about 10 years ago. I remember the meeting with the Apple Vacations reps, where they tried to warn us about the dangers that lurk outside the resort walls. We did do a few tours with Apple, but after a couple days we decided to just walk off the resort, as there was a craft market and restaurants right across the street. I remember passing the funky roadside craft stalls while on the tour bus thinking, "This looks cool. why can't I just walk over and here and check it out?"