Know someone who'd really appreciate a vacation right about now? Okay, yeah, we would, too. But we're talking about someone who really, really needs a vacation. Someone who wouldn't or couldn't skip town for a beach in Mexico unless the opportunity was handed to them.

Hilton is offering travelers a chance to win a three-night vacation in Mexico when they submit a video that creatively sums up just how much your chosen person needs to get away with a music video, song or humorous skit.

Visiting Mexico's Rosarito Beach is even more of a deal than usual this fall. The Rosarito Beach Hotel - once a favorite of Hollywood greats from Sinatra to Monroe - is offering rates as low as $19.25 for stays between Sept. 14 and Oct. 29.

True, the beachfront Baja hotel is no longer the glitzy affair it once was. But plenty of travelers still head here for the location (on the water about 30 miles from San Diego), the storied past and - since 2007 - the promise of newer suites in the hotel's two-year-old Pacifico Tower.

Imagine showing up to your beachfront hotel in Cancun only to find the beach closed. That's what happened to tourists visiting the Gran Caribe Real Resort and Spa over the weekend, when government environmental officials shut the property's beach down and lined it with police tape after determining hotel management had illegally obtained sand to bolster its beach against erosion.