El Taj Oceanfront & Beachside Condo Hotel — Hotel in Playa del Carmen

WOW what a find for our family vacation! Best part is walking to 5th Ave for restaurants,music, shopping and turning the corner for a quiet Oasis of this oceanfront condo/hotel. I will start with the pros; The penthouse offered a private Terrace large enough to fit 20 people! It offered a Jacuzzi, a couple of lounge chairs and an outdoor kitchen. It was four of us and the living room alone could probably hold another 10 or more with the open concept of the kitchen and dining room area. We had two bedrooms each with sliders that went out to the terrace overlooking the city and the ocean and each bedroom had its own bathroom. There was a washer and dryer and plenty of closets and storage space. The safe was at a convenient eye level and you get two keys for your convenience. Each room has a television. Filtered water in the room!! The bathrooms are nice and spacious. The landscaping is absolutely beautiful. There are two beautiful pools. Everything is very clean and I couldn't stop taking pictures! The beach area for the hotel is a little on the small side in comparison to other places I've been to but still plenty of seating for everyone. There's also a hut-like area with a few tables in it above the sand overlooking the water which was nice to have lunch at. The restaurant also offers tables inside and right outside their doors as all of it is beach front. The food was okay. And all the people that work there are willing to help are nice. Best person to coordinate trips and transportation with is Pedro at the corner who sells trips or Isidoro for his help at the hotel. The cons: out of the six days that we were there, four of those days we had no hot water for showers. And after a day of snorkeling, you just want a warm shower, though it's really hot weather. Three times I went to complain all three times a service man would come and try to address the problem. Always succeeding but it always set us back as far as when we could take showers and that really was too bad. Especially when you have sand all over you and you just want to feel fresh and get ready for your next activity. The phone in the room did not have a directory so that meant that we had to keep going downstairs to complain about the water. Tip: the QR welcome kit could have helped but forgot about it. The place was very clean but there was always some kind of miscommunication with the housekeeping. At times they would just leave the towels in a bag outside the room and I would just put them where they belong which I didn't mind but they didn't understand at what times they could return( not a language barrier as I am Latina). For example, we told them that we would be leaving the room at noon and they could come back then. But instead they came back at 11:00 and we reminded them that it would be noon when they could come back. Then we were gone for several hours and when we came back we didn't have any towels,not even outside the room and the trash really needed to go out. There is also a $25 beach towel fee if you lose one and that is per towel. I find that to be very expensive as I travel a lot and usually those fees are about $10. The other inconvenience was that you have to go to the main office every time you want to switch out your towels. When we first got there we couldn't use the elevator as it was out of order, we had two kids with us and one is special needs. We were on the 4th floor (penthouse with the oceanfront and private rooftop), never mind the fact that it was like 100°! Somehow we managed. The next day. The elevator was fixed thank goodness. However, there was a cover over the elevator doors on the actual 4th floor. We don't know why that was never removed but we would just move it aside and use the elevator. Lastly, on the list of frustrations, one night we decided to use the private rooftop and use the grill. It seemed the light bulbs were never replaced, there was no gas to cook and we had to bring everything back to our room. Too tired to complain and it was late. Overall, I still would go back w less...

Let's start with the good. We stayed in the Ocean Front 3 bedroom. The condo itself was beautiful. The decor, the view, the kitchen. Everything was well appointed. The bed was extremely comfortable. The ASI Beach Club had outstanding sea food and wonderful service. But....the bad. The smell of rotting seaweed was a big turnoff. The beach is extremely small covered in seaweed and there were active fishing boats everywhere. But the really bad was the customer service of the condo unit. |Our flight from Toronto was delayed 13 hours due to a heavy snowstorm. We contacted the concierge 16 hours ahead of time from the Airport as soon as we were informed of the delayto and asked them to cancel our airport shuttle. They said we were too late to cancel as per their policy. I asked if an exception could be made as they did have 16 hours notice and this was clearly out of our hands. They said they would look into and call me back. When we arrived in Cancun at 3 am there was of course no shuttle. The entire flight was without shuttle service due to the late arrival. We waited over an hour in cue for a taxi. When we finally arrived at the hotel at 4am the person at the front desk was clearly not impressed. Pretty sure the guy had been sleeping. News flash buddy! We aren't exactly happy about the situation. Terrible customer service. No assistance up the 17 stairs with luggage. Just overall a super bad start. We stayed for 3 more nights. As we were just a couple in a 3 bedroom condo we didn't require any housekeeping or interaction with the front desk for the remainder of our trip. Never had a single staff member say hello or give a smile or offer a minute of assistance. Which was fine but weird. When we checked out the took the key without making eye contact and said 'you still have a $90 fee for your airport shuttle '. We disputed the charge but they reiterated that we had not cancelled 24 hours in advance. I shared with them the time of my call 16 hours before the service. It didn't matter. They eventually told us we could pay half. More infuriating than the payment. We were tried to communicate that this was a policy that needed changing the time of flights was clearly public information and when there were circumstances that were out of everyone's control such as delayed flights than there should be reasonable accommodation made. When this reasoning was laughed at we told the woman this would reflect badly in a review and would definitely ensure we didn't come back she was extremely rude stating 'good. We never want you to come back'. That kind of customer service is just completely...

We had a mostly great experience at this condo hotel. We booked a premium room on the first floor of rooms for a week over thanksgiving break. The first day we were tired from travel and had dinner at the restaurant on site (Asi). The prices were a bit high and the food was just okay. The pervasive sewage smell was a turn-off while eating and persisted on and off throughout the week depending on the breeze I think. I never found exactly where it was from but it seems it may be from a damaged system a few properties down that is just dumping sewage directly into the ocean near the beach (!).

A day or two after, we booked an early morning deep sea fishing trip with Santos right next door, and had a great time. They took great care of us and we caught a bunch of fish including a big amberjack. We turned over some of it to the Asi restaurant while it was being cleaned and before the rest of the fish were cleaned they had an AMAZING lunch for us at a reasonable price. They really shine at the restaurant with fresh fish.

The kitchen in our unit had some issues-- the dishwasher didn't really seem to work, kitchen could use some trim on the caulk and such, but for the most part it was great. We had two adults and three kids in a 3-bedroom unit and we were quite comfortable for the week.

Sometimes there is a lot of noise from the restaurant and the street next to the hotel, but it generally dies down by evening. It does start pretty early in the morning. We also had some noise from the room above, sounded like maybe kids thumping around loudly.

The staff were generally very helpful. There is no gym on site but the hotel has an arrangement with a place called The Gym a very short distance away. As someone that takes my workouts seriously I was quite happy with this gym. It's a private gym that people have memberships with and they have great facilities. Most people in the area, including staff and patrons at this gym, speak English, which was nice because my Spanish is very sparse.

This review would not be complete without mentioning Pedro, who has a stand on Calle 14 Nte just around the corner from the hotel entrance. Pedro busts his ass every day to get people out on adventures in the area. I get the feeling that if you want it, he knows someone that can do it for you. His pricing is very reasonable and everyone we worked with that he arranged was great to work with. If you are new to the area (as we were), he can help you get where you want to go...