The Westin Resort & Spa, Puerto Vallarta — Hotel in Jalisco

One Review To Rule Them All:||||First, property is nice. There are a good amount of restaurants and the lobby is immaculate. We received generally good service everywhere but there are a few things to note (later)||||The most important thing to highlight is that some of the pictures are deceiving. It looks like there are three rather large pools in between sort of a V-Shaped building setup, but that's not the case. It looks like when this was a Starwood property, all of the buildings were one, but at some point in the past 15 years one of the pools, and one of the two large towers became a separate property (Club Regina). These properties are so close, and so intertwined that its almost awkward. Even in some of the photos the Club Regina uses, and vice-versa, they have photos of each other's stuff, and no clear delineation what amenities are part of what property in photos. What's more important though, is that means you will just randomly be hit with a fence, or a wall, while wandering through the property, and your room will most certainly be overlooking a vast pool area, of which you can only access about half. They have even put vendors and rocks on the beach between the two, to deter you from walking down the beach and "accidentally" going to the part of the beach that is the other property. It's weird. If you want to see how impactful it is, and how much of the "stuff" you cant get to, go to Google maps and go to satellite view. The two pools that are different colors of blue? Different properties. Check my picture to see where the wall is across the property. I marked it in red. The parts through the middle where i made a red wall? You literally have a fence erected that you can see right through to the other side. Super awkward. And its literally half of the grounds that your room looks at that you can't access.||||Ok, back to things that matter...the service was great everywhere except for the lobby bar. I'm not sure what is wrong with those people, but everyone that was working at the lobby bar in the evening were some of the most ungrateful, rude, and unhelpful people I have ever met at a resort. It was seriously inconveniencing them every single time a person came into the lobby bar area.||||Breakfast. The breakfast restaurant is a bit chaotic and could be streamlined. Its set up weird, its open air, and its hard to keep everything free of bugs (although there was a serious effort to do so, it wasn't always successful) ... also, getting seated was difficult, even when they weren't busy, and the service was sort of, here is your coffee then "bye" and you wouldn't see them again unless you flagged them down. Which is annoying if you want more juice, or even a check. Speaking of checks, breakfast included with room for Titanium Elite members? Sure, but you still have to sign a receipt every time, and only for 2 people. So do you have kids? Yup, extra. Furthermore, would have two free and two paid? thats two receipts, not one. Why? Probably to confuse you into figuring out how/where/what to tip and on which receipt. They also don't actually show you a "zero" receipt even for the comped breakfast, they just drop the receipt for MXN $960 and say "dont worry, its actually free, just sign it" ..... "trust me bro" attitude.||||Aside from Breakfast being weird, and the lobby bar people needing to be fired, I would likely come here again, because the food was good, there is a lot to walk to with the marina near by, easy taxi to the malecon and other activities...and it is a good value for the money. It seems like in early 2026 this is converting to a full all inclusive, but will still be westin branded. It was obvious they were building a breakfast buffet type situation down on the ground level (below the current space for the breakfast restaurant) and it looked more like was you would expect for a traditional buffet (we peeked in one day) and although its not open yet, and will likely be part of the all-inclusive re-brand, it does look like a better fit for a lot of the breakfast woes we experienced.||||Also, last thing about the pools, due to there being an awkward layout since one pool is inaccessible from the Westin property, it also makes the chair layout really terrible. The resort wasn't that busy when we were there, but there were still people hoarding chairs, and there aren't that many. We always found a place to sit, but there really aren't many chairs, and with as low occupancy as it was when we were there, i would hate to see it busy. They have plenty of room for more chairs with some strategic planning, but they are choosing not to do so. Maybe that will change before the all-inclusive rebrand too, but if not, godspeed everyone trying to fight for a chair. The resort did absolutely nothing to stop the idiots form coming out at 6:00am and putting an upside down flip flop on...

I have stayed at this hotel several times now. I have always rated this property 5 Stars, but this time I was only able to give it 4 Stars overall.

I arrived very early and as I expected the two rooms were not ready. What I did not expect was how poorly I was initially treated after making a couple of simple requests to sit in a private area of the hotel and work. I was repeatedly told it was against SPG Policy. I was told my request couldn’t be honored until the 3 pm check-in time. I have never run across rule citing before, especially for rules that I don’t think exist - especially considering Flex 24 benefits; if requested and approved (I had not requested them – nor did I expect my room to be ready early).

When the two rooms weren’t ready at the 3 pm check-in time, I was a bit irritated given the initial problems. However, Josephina, the platinum desk check-in person quickly offered a regular room while the other two rooms were (still) being cleaned; she offered to even go to help clean them herself. She did her best to make up for the initial denial of request of a quite area to work. Had she been working check-in when I arrived, I know that no situation would have even occurred, as she would have made sure I had a quiet place to work.

Now having identified the initial problems at check-in; Martha O. and Dany G. made sure that the rest of my stay and departure were fantastic, impeccable, and flawless. I cannot say enough good things about them and their sincere acknowledgements and apologies for the misunderstandings at my arrival. It is really nice to know that the management cared enough to make sure I was 100% happy before I left and followed up and followed through during the stay to make sure I was. I am looking forward to my return to this property in October! I also had two other staff members come up to me during the stay to make sure everything had been resolved and that everything else was going well. I think everyone on staff was very sincere in making sure that the rest of the stay went smoothly.

This property is a nice hotel in Puerto Vallarta, however the rooms are not modern and have not been updated, but it is kept in good enough shape to make you feel comfortable. The gardens and pool are fantastic! The water pressure is out of this world!

The pool has a sign up that you cannot reserve chairs by the pool, however it doesn’t seem to be enforced. Even with it not being enforced it is not as bad as the other SPG property down the road with chair saving.

The internet seemed to work better during this stay; a nice improvement.

While this property is less than 5 minutes from the airport, you do NOT hear the planes. The actual beach is not super nice, but the property location behind the marina cannot be beat for peace and quiet! This place has some of the nicest sunset views on the bay! Also, many times you can see the dolphins and whales just off the shoreline.

Also, this property is only 30 minutes by bus, or 15 minutes by taxi to downtown. I do recommend that you try this place sometime if you are in...

It’s a really hard one for me to rate. It’s our first time to PV, and we tried 3 different hotels. We went to Marriot first and then a boutique hotel in the city and then back to Westin. I really wanted to like the Westin because of the architecture, the tasteful design of the lobby bar, rooms and the best pool I’ve ever been. But for some reason I just can’t really say I will come back again……

Here’re the pros: The architecture and design was clearly tasteful modernist piece even it’s from a different era. There are many small little spaces and nooks that frames the incredible landscape of the hotel. The pool is truly the best pool I’ve ever been. My daughter, husband and I had so so so much fun in these pools. Coming from the Marriot, this pool offered so much more personality and different types of activities you can do in the pool. We got a room on the 11th floor with a spectacular view into the ocean and the pool. The room is very spacious and I really like the originality of the designs in these room. (My husband thinks it’s a bit dated, but I think they are tasteful). The lobby bar has pretty decent drinks and small plates. We were so excited when we first got here and got food from the bar thought if this is the standard, everything else must be amazing! But we were proven wrong.

Cons: food. So….. it turns out the best food is at the lobby bar. Same goes for the drinks. I mean, I think the drinks may be slightly better or at least comparable to the Marriot but food wise it’s undoubtedly worse. We tried the Arrecifes, the pool bar/restaurant, the Cebicheria. La Casacade was not open when we were here. Non any food meets our standard. Like, I would not eat any of them without being very hungry. Another Con is that this hotel is a lot less accessible than Marriot, if you are traveling with handicapped people you should take another thought on this hotel. The main areas are all accessible but some of the area that has very cool views, or the lobby bars are not accessible. And the ramp for the hotel entrance is way too steep to be accessible. The last but not least, is just that compare to the service provided at the Marriot, the Westin is short on the small little things miles away. The rooms don’t have robes, tissue paper, no extra sheets, the shower water temperature is unstable, thermostat doesn’t respond well to settings, etc. The pool area don’t stock enough floaties for kids. The long hallway on the lobby floor is always totally empty and kinda feels abandoned.

Overall, even though I think there’s a lot going for this hotel, I don’t know if we will come back again. I traveled with my 2yr old toddler and my husband. We were looking for a as relaxing as possible stay. Despite how much I loved the overall ambiance, I feel like we won’t be back because of the lack of good dining options, and the small little things that does make it feel like it’s a bit outdated. Again, we left this 4 star only because we shopped around a bit so there’s something to compare to. If we had nothing to compare to we may feel...