Aloft Playa del Carmen — Hotel in Playa del Carmen

We found this to be an excellent all around place to stay during our too-brief stay in Playa del Carmen recently. ||We did arrive early and had to wait until check in time, but the staff was kind enough to securely store our luggage while we explored Playa del Carmen for a few hours. ||By the way, we found Playa del Carmen a very nice, walkable city. The hotel was very well located. There is a nice grocery store and a few restaurants right below the hotel. It was a short walk to the beach, and to 5th Avenue, where most of the shopping is. The front desk staff was kind enough to print us a paper map of the immediate area. We salsa dance, and discovered lessons on Monday and Tuesday evenings at the sports complex just across the street from the hotel. Monday is beginning Salsa and Bachata, Tuesday is intermediate and advanced Salsa. The floor, there, however is rough concrete and it is outdoors (covered). We did discover a few other places to Salsa dance in Playa del Carmen, but we did not like the often-mentioned Zenzi (very crowded and small dance floor). ||The room was clean. It was well equipped with enough electrical sockets and USB power ports. Our room had a mini-fridge and coffee maker (no microwave). There was temperature control in the room, though honestly, that did not appear to work. The room tended to be a little too cool no matter what we did with the temperature setting. It was possible and easy to hook an iPad into the TV to watch streaming media (though we did very little of that). Internet speeds were around 15 mbps. ||The on-site restaurant was excellent. We were tired and had dinner there the first night. We were the only customers at that time. Food excellent and well presented. My wife is gluten free and they were accommodating. Prices were very reasonable for the quality and quantity of food (this was true everywhere in Playa del Carmen). The busier meal of the day during our stay was breakfast. There is an OUTSTANDING breakfast buffet. Eggs, meat, other side dishes, yogurts, fresh fruits, excellent Mexican pastries, pancakes, bread, coffee, tea, and juices. They will even make you a made-to-order omelette or eggs fixed another way if you don’t like scrambled eggs. Wait staff was attentive without hovering. ||We found the entire hotel staff friendly and accommodating. Every staff member we met was friendly, greeted us, and was accommodating to our wishes. We speak a little Spanish and it was very helpful. Some of the staff also speak English. In particular, we found the guest experience manager, Victor, incredibly helpful with information and advice. Our only complaint about him was that he would not accept the leftover beer we had as a gift :-). We are mentioning Victor by name, but as we said, everyone on the staff was fantastic. They have assembled a great team at this hotel. ||As an aside, the contrast between this hotel and the Aloft in Cancun was very noticeable. Front desk staff in Cancun were rude and refused to honor terms of our reservation, even though we had all the emails, etc. from Marriott. We also found Playa del Carmen a much nicer city than Cancun. We could not decide between Playa del Carmen and Cancun when we were trip planning, so we ended up splitting our week. We will definitely return to Playa del Carmen and this hotel. But we won’t be back to Cancun, except to the airport to take the shuttle to...

Customer service seems good, everyone is nice and tries to assist. Although I've had to request some things multiple times, over days sometimes, due to being busy or other.

The hotel is under construction in some of the hallways and rooms. When I first arrived, the hotel elevators was getting fixed or undergoing maintenance and later only one had the same thing happen. They look to be doing basic renovations but not fully updating the rooms, you can see the tiles, floors, wallpaper aren't new or in great shape, but also aren't really bad or dirty either. Many things stopped working during the stay or had people fixing things outside my room and many places.

If you get a taxi or order anything you will likely go to the marked Door which seems more like a service area or package delivery spot, from there, go up the elevator and walk across the courtyard. The other way is Around the closest corner there is an escalator that leads to the same area.

More than likely, most rooms will hear music/ sub wonder from nearby clubs and restaurants, depending on what where you're located on what floor it can be heard faintly to pretty easily going all night long.

The room has a L shaped corner couch with a small circular table next to it, they also are long cushions so it's not able to sit up against the wall and reach the table. So trying to eat, do work, or anything isn't ideal with no back support or chairs.

The fridge in the room works okay, but I don't plan to put much in it, since it's pretty small and can fit drinks not really food. And if you overload it things don't get cold.

Air conditioning works, but it doesn't work well all the time. Whatever number I set it to, it does drastically different sometimes; 23.5 but it's at 18, 22 it was at 23, 24.5 it was at 23 to 24. (A week plus later they are doing maintenance and the entire air conditioning system is down from early morning to late night, so it's hot during that time but hopefully that fixes the issues)

The fire alarm has gone off maybe 5 times since i've been here with only one sounding like the whole building that lasted for a minute or so, the others were for much less.

The gym is okay, but the only resistance machine needs to be fixed. There is a water machine, bathroom, dumbbells, two adjustable benches, and many cardio machines. There is also a pool with a bar that has a good view and closes at 11pm.

I've had some issues with the wifi not working, failing to connect for a few hours or it being pretty slow, but overall it's been fine.

They do not provide toothbrushes or anything else. Although they did say you can request a toothbrush, If they had...

I’ll start off this review by saying we booked 2 rooms and paid in advance in January 2025, received confirmation via email.

Once we arrived at the hotel for check-in on March 24th /25’ (3 PM) we were told that our rooms would be ready soon, about half an hour which we said fine, things happen. So we waited around, went up at the 30 minute mark and were told yet another 20 minutes. With this being our first day arriving in Playa Del Carmen we were hungry so decided to eat in the lobby restaurant. After snacking and a drink we went back up to the front desk to check how our rooms were coming along (our meal had taken more than 20 minutes) and were told ANOTHER 5 minutes. So, yet again we sit and wait around wasting time. Finally, I told my spouse to go up once more and see what’s going on. After asking for the third time (now have been waiting well over an hour) we were told that the manager was in a meeting but would be out soon to chat. Okay…we were starting to wonder why as no explanation by the front desk agent was provided. Again, waiting - the manager finally showed up to tell us that our prepaid rooms (2) had been given away and the hotel wouldn’t be able to accommodate our stay! Why was this not told to us upon arrival? Guess our time doesn’t matter as we wasted about 2 hours sitting in the hotel for no reason!

I can’t believe how unorganized this hotel is and to be honest, the careless attitudes from the employees is concerning. After waiting some more, the manager found a different Marriott hotel where we could stay rather than at the Aloft, but that wasn’t what we paid for. No compensation was offered other than switching to a random hotel we had no research on. At first, we were provided with the address and told it was 5 minutes away. We had arranged a taxi from Cancun to Aloft Playa Del Carmen, and with it being our first day - we had no idea where this different hotel was. It was like pulling teeth to try and get an Aloft employee to help with a luggage cart and show us the way to the hotel we were being switched to. They did eventually get a guy to push the luggage cart, down the street with us on foot to show us where it was. My mother in law is also in her 70’s and has mobility issues, the least they could’ve done was put us in a cab or used a company shuttle for all the back and forth hassle!

From a Marriott company I expected much more professionalism and compassion regarding their mistake, instead we seemed like a hassle to them. After that whole experience, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay at the...