Contact us at: reservations@panamacasa.com

(PRWEB) February 10, 2012

Each year spring gives new life to the beachside Holiday Inn Resort on Panama City Beach. This year spring holds even more excitement than ever! Since the name changed from the Holiday Inn SunSpree to the Holiday Inn Resort a few years back, this hotel has gone through many changes inside and out. These changes included an increase in resort entertainment, enhancements to the rooms with new mattresses, new locks, new flooring, and of course, the hotel’s new sign displaying the new name.

For the start of the upcoming summer season, the Holiday Inn Resort is proud to announce they will have new Tommy Bahama style furniture and 37” flat screen TVs with HD service in all 341 rooms. The resort has also converted 50 rooms into new Family Suites; this is a great way for families with kids of all ages to travel. Family Suites offer the safety and comfort of having your kids in the same room with you, but with a little more privacy for you as a couple on vacation at a beautiful beach destination. Family Suites are rooms that partition off one section with 2 sets of bunk beds. The kids’ partition even features its own 26” flat screen TV!

“This year is going to be an amazing year with all these great changes, we even have plans in the works for a Grand Re-Opening this Memorial Day Weekend. ” Says Philip Colvin, Director of Marketing. “We’ve always offered great entertainment but we’re really going to step it up this summer, and with the great new furniture and the addition of the new room type, we’re definitely hoping to ‘wow’ our guests this year.” Says Colvin.

The Holiday Inn Resort has always been family friendly, but with new entertainment and the addition of their Family Suites this resort has really worked hard to give vacationers an even better experience and at a great price. “We’ve got a wide variety of money saving packages, and with the amenities we provide both in the rooms, like the full size refrigerator and microwave, and around the resort with the Kid’s Eat Free program, Kids’ Activities program and all the entertainment… there’s no better value on the beach” Colvin says.

Some of the spring specials include a Gulf-front room and breakfast for 2 adults (don’t forget Kids Eat Free) starting at only $119 per night after April 15th, or for that same price you can get a Gulf-front room and a set of beach chairs / umbrella every day! The best value is the Pick Your Way to Play Package, where you get a Gulf-front room, breakfast for 2, beach chairs, and $25 Beach Bucks each day (you can use Beach Bucks around the resort for lunch, dinner, beverages at the bars, etc.) for only $134 per night starting April 15th. To see all Panama City Beach Holiday Inn Resort’s packages visit http://www.hipcbeach.com and click the “Specials” tab.

The resort’s spring and summer entertainment schedule soon be announced so vacationers can watch their website http://www.hipcbeach.com and facebook page http://www.facebook.com/hipcbeach for all the exciting announcements and for upcoming pictures of the newly enhanced rooms.    To see all the fun the resort has to offer guests check out the hotel’s YouTube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/HolidayInnResort. If you would like more information or to reserve your Panama City Beach vacation call the resorts friendly reservations team at 800.633.0266.

Historical “gold” uncovered in Panama

The world will be reminded this month that that Panama has more than one kind of gold and a long history.

The publication in National Geographic of  an article on artifacts recovered  during a “dig” reveals a  new treasure for archeologists and, if properly handled, for the citizens of the country and for tourism.

 Panama’s Big Dig, by A. R. Williams, photographed by David Coventry (Page 66).

“In a grassy, sun-parched field in central Panama, gold was coming out of the ground so fast that archaeologist Julia Mayo was tempted to yell, Stop, stop!,” writes author A.R. Williams. Determined to uncover new evidence of an ancient society, Mayo followed her instincts and has unearthed one of the richest discoveries in the Americas in decades. By 2010, Mayo had uncovered an ancient cemetery more than a thousand years old, with tombs of two warrior chieftains adorned in gold. The artifacts are shedding new light on the region’s little-known culture — and this is only the beginning, as Mayo believes her cemetery holds about 20 more

The latest find is one in a long line of discoveries dating back to the early 1900’s and the National Georgraphic article gives details of many of them and says: “Specialists at the Smithsonian Institution are analyzing the array of materials Mayo’s team has unearthed and have already made a major discovery. Natural impurities in the gold indicate that the metal was mined and worked in the region. This firmly puts to rest any debate about whether Panama’s treasures were imported from farther south, where cultures were supposedly older and more advanced. The native people in this area may have lived in simple huts, but they were rich enough to support master craftsmen and sophisticated enough to appreciate fine art.

“Mayo believes her cemetery holds about 20 more tombs of chiefs like the two she has excavated. When she estimates how long it would take to uncover them all, the number is so extreme it sounds like a joke—until you do the arithmetic. Her team of ten works slowly, scraping back the hard alluvial soil with care to gather the smallest pieces of evidence. In four years they have exposed 2 percent of the cemetery. If work were to continue every year at that pace, the last artifact would be plucked from the ground 196 years from now.”

Just a few miles upriver  Mayo  has found signs of another cemetery. “If it’s as rich as El Caño and Sitio Conte, this area could be Panama’s Valley of the Kings. In Egypt, though, most of the tombs have been looted. Here they should still be full of surprises.”