Paradisus Playa del Carmen - Riviera Maya — Hotel in Playa del Carmen

Firstly to the hotel, please do not give this review one of your generic comments thanking me for my review and explaining how you will sort the issues. You had plenty of opportunity to sort issues in real time when we were actually there. I do not need to be contacted or promised anything. If anyone reading this wants to know what I mean by this just look at all the hotel comments from any other critical review and you will get the idea.||||||This should really be 2 separate reviews, one review for the management/reception and a second for the hotel. ||||I’ll start with reception, This hotel is around 10 years old so you would expect the reception team to be a well oiled outfit by now, this is far from the case. We had 2 rooms for 2 nights then a master suite with adjoining junior suite that we booked. This was due to a flight cancellation by BA, these things happen. We should have had our main room for the whole holiday however reception said it wasn’t available. Again this is fine. What happened when we checked in was the receptionist said the master suite with adjoining junior suite, that we booked, was available for the whole of the stay but it would cost us 500 USD extra. They also advised us to book a family concierge at an exorbitant price. I declined. I then pointed out why would they rather have us occupy 3 rooms with all the admin and swapping around required than give us the room that they professed not to have available. It is available or it isn’t. We said ok we will just have what we have now and swap after 2 nights. In these 2 nights we realised that the pool facing rooms are VERY noisy, we dropped by reception for when we change to our master room to be assured that they only have these master rooms jungle facing so that wouldn’t be a problem.||We lived out of suitcases for a couple of nights ( no problem with that) and moved rooms. It is a pool facing room despite being told they categorically don’t exist, straight back to reception to be told they can change us the jungle view room in 3 days. To appease us they then told us that our room was by the quiet part of the pool. We couldn’t be bothered living out of suitcases any more so took the pool room. By the afternoon we realised again reception were just plain lying. It is like an Ibiza club. Even in the room with the doors shut the music is relentless. I was in the apartment and it set the excessive noise alert on my watch.||||We were then told by another family that the wristband my nearly adult son was wearing can be changed at reception for different band that would allow him to access the adult part of the resort with a restriction on alcohol. Perfect. Went down to reception to be told they don’t exist despite seeing one, then told by the manager that it is Mexican law he can’t have one and he can’t be in the adult side. I pointed out that it is hotel policy not Mexican law ( quick search on AI proved that) The manager insisted we would be breaking the law and wanted to know who told us about them. So they either exist or they don’t, he said they don’t despite us seeing them and asked again who told about them. This is nonsense, reception just plain lie.||||Note later in the holiday, we were booked in a restaurant which they had somehow booked another family in our place as well and they moved us to the adult side so it seems you can go in the adult side when it suits them. Sigh.||||My wife was bitten by mosquitos and reception gave her a small container of insect repellent, upon asking for another 4 days later reception said they don’t have any, never had any and they would not give them out if they did. Despite us insisting they gave one out to her earlier they were adamant that would never happen. ||||This is just some of the examples of interaction with reception, individually they don’t really matter however collectively they do, they indicate a wider problem and the surprising thing is the default position seems to be to lie. It’s really weird and this collective attitude stops the hotel from ever being a 5 star resort.||||In holiday chats with other families it was apparent our experience wasn’t unique, especially room types not be available that they had booked.||||My wife an I then made a conscious choice to avoid interacting with reception and concentrate on having a good holiday. Which made it much more enjoyable.||||||The Hotel.||||The hotel itself is great, the staff are awesome from the cleaners to the bar staff. Super nice polite people who are very competent at what they do. Really enjoyable to be in their company and chat. A credit to the hotel.||||Some comments say the hotel had aspects that were run down or tired, we didn’t really see any general examples of that and we did see workers painting and renovating occasionally but never intruding on the guest experience. Maybe a couple of small tiles around the pool that need a bit of attention but nothing that would indicate a run down hotel.||||I have also seen some comments where people have said the food wasn’t great, all I can say is they must live with Gordon Ramsey as everything we ate was excellent, every restaurant, every buffet was great and again great service. We both worked in restaurants, these are very well run and catered.||We also saw some guests turned away from the buffet for not wearing tops which was nice to see.||We had no problem booking restaurants from the food desk. We didn’t need the expensive family concierge.||||One thing that needs to be mentioned is the Coates, these are racoon sized mammals that spend most of the time drinking peoples pool drinks and getting drunk or stealing food for their Coate family. Pretty funny for a day or so but then a bit of a pain. In the 2 main outside bookable restaurants Blue Agarve and Flora. We visited Flora twice and both times saw Coates walking on the tables and fighting with the house cat. This is very unhygienic yet no-one seems bothered. These animals are in bins stealing food all the time so how is it ok to let them walk on tables that people will be eating on. Other hotels in the area control this. We also saw people in the restaurant feeding the cats who then move to the next table and harass the guests there. The customers should be discouraged for that it is poor in a restaurant. Having said that all the food was excellent and the staff great.||||Entertainment isn’t the best and in one case so loud in the lobby the waiters and guests can’t talk or hear in the restaurants next to the lobby. I am all for some loud music but it was ridiculous.||There is not so much for young adults 14 - 18 to do, although younger kids are catered for superbly, from talking to other guests they said child care was the best in the area so even though I didn’t experience it it looks a very well executed consideration for a family stay.||||Gym was pretty well equipped, the only downside was every 3 of 4 days a man would go in, turn the tv’s off and set himself up a big speaker on full belt so he and everyone else could listen to HIS music. Staff don’t do anything about it. However don’t wear the correct shoes you get turned away, turn up with a massive 2 ft high speaker to ruin everyone else’s visit thats fine. Just weird. Rest of the gym visits were well worth it.||||Beach is unsurprisingly prone to seaweed which was a prob for about half our 2 week stay. Smells a lot some days. Genuinely not sure how you could have a wedding there, pick the wrong day and all you will remember is a smell or rotten egg from the decomposing seaweed. Cancun seems to control this aspect of nature better so it can be done.||||And lastly selling, even though the staff are great it is some staffs job to hard sell some sort of Melia circle timeshare thing, we were told it wasn’t timeshare but what you end up doing is sitting round table in the lobby with other bored ‘victims’ who have fallen for it. I told them repeatedly I haven’t saved up, flown half way round the world to waste my holiday attending presentations. That doesn’t help. Want a coconut at breakfast? Attend a sales pitch, want discount on a tour? Attend a sales pitch. One day a concierge person stopped and asked how my day was, all pleasant until he started about attending a sales pitch. It is tiresome.||||Top tip - you an buy insect bite cream in the lobby shop, 48 USD or wander a couple of blocks into the surrounding area directed by Google Maos and by a bigger tube of the exact same cream for 8 USD. Local laundrettes are very accessible and great value as well.|| ||We left a couple of days early only due to a flight opportunity, they were more bothered at reception that I understood I wouldn’t be getting a refund for checking out early. We did briefly talk about my experiences at reception with them however they didn’t do anything during the stay so I wouldn’t expect anything to change.||||Still a great holiday, great hotel and to be fair it could be 5 star if reception stopped being so combative with guests, make their experience better. Pay over 10k plus for a family holiday? and it is a problem for them to give you a small spray of insect repellent? Wow just small minded. its the little things that matter, you need to understand that.||||All that being said there are many more positives than negatives and I would definitely stay again but would need to know the negatives have been addressed otherwise I would stay somewhere else, I would also research other Melia hotels to make sure the selling and reception attitude were a company thing before I booked another as after all there is lots of competition for your holiday business and spends so...

On our way home after 4 nights at a Paradisus Playa del Carmen on the family side. We are a family of 4 (kids are 3, and almost 5) and we travel often.

-room - nature view 1 bedroom suite with concierge - the room was AMAZING. The kids slept on pull out sofa. We had the hot tub on the balcony which the kids used every morning to play in after breakfast. Mom and dad had a separate room with access to patio so we could enjoy some wine out on the patio once kiddos were asleep. We had a nice dining room table for when we ordered room service. I have absolutely nothing but great things to say about the room. 10/10

-concierge - I would not have done the trip without it. We had a gentleman named Jorge and he was amazing. Left the girls little backpacks that were locally made with hats and coloring stuff in them along with cute little sponges for bathing and kid soap. Another day he left them food to feed the fish with little balloons they could wear on their wrist. He also brought us sand toys for the girls! He also brought us sparkling wine 3x, booked our dinner reservations, and booked us a spa appointment. He was readily available via WhatsApp. We lost my daughter’s babydoll the last night and he showed up at 930pm with it after searching for us.

-kids club - 10/10 - my almost 5 year old said her fav part of the trip was the kids club. Probably because they did face paint but hey that’s a win in my book. We used it 2x for an hour and 45 mins both times. Girls loved it. They did facepaint, nails, fed the fish and turtles, a jungle walk, and a show. The women working there were so kind and we felt very comfortable with it all (this was our first time using a kids club on vaca)

-food - I was so nervous about food reading everyone’s posts. The food wasn’t top notch but it wasn’t awful. The only thing I’d say was awful was dinner at the buffet. We had Italian (did cheese plate, shrimp pasta, pizza; and braised rib platter) all of them were delicious! At the Mexican place we had chicken enchiladas, chicken mole, and another dish (can’t remember) but they were all great. Our service at these two restaurants was great as well. The Asian restaurant we couldn’t get hibachi but did table side the meal wasn’t amazing but was decent. We had lunch via room service 2x and it was so good (room service was consistently good) and did lunchbox once and Celsius once (both were good). The nespresso bar and ice cream shop were huge hits with our family

-activities- they had plenty to do for the kids. They had balloons in the lobby (clowns doing animals), they had a kids pool party where they danced, we searched for treasure, had a balloon fight. They did an inflatable party where there were bounce houses for the kids to play on and they had face painting and hair braiding, and they had a carnival the one night which was so fun! People complained that they didn’t know when stuff was going on but if you use the app everything is in there on the schedule.

-spa - you get free ‘hydro spa’ with concierge level. I’ve done a few of these and this was the woest one I’ve done. We had done 25 min massages while kids were at kids club and thought the massages were great.

-pool- pirate pool was where we spent 80% of our time the kids loved it and I thought it was great for the kids. There’s also a very shallow small pool next to it the kids liked. Pools with swim up bars the girls thought the loungers were awesome with the built in tables (so awesome that mom got to lounge while they sipped their strawberry daiquiris). The aquazone pool was awesome but the water was freezing so my girls didn’t wanna hang here.

-beach - I’ve seen better. They did have smoothies on the family concierge side and they were soooo good. Chairs were super beat up and service didn’t seem to be readily available. They did a great job of trying to keep up with the seaweed but Mother Nature had other plans.

Overall I loved the resort for a...

We planned a vacation from Sunday to Friday with kids and a friend couple with their kids. I had booked two rooms since we are a family of 6, my friend booked one room. We had a 7 hour delay on our first Sunday flight to make a connection in Miami and this caused us to miss all available connecting flights to Cancun on Sunday. We asked the travel agency to notify the hotel that we were delayed and would arrive on Monday, but not cancel our reservation, so our rooms would be available when we arrived at 9am Monday instead of having to wait for check in time in the afternoon. We got our rooms and when we arrived, apart from both looking run down, one of the rooms had a very strong chemical smell. A maintenance person knocked on our door to make sure it was empty because he had to come in and fix something in the room and he said it was supposed to be empty. We asked about the smell and he informed us that the room behind us was being fixed and that the smell was paint thinner. We moved all our things to the second room and asked the front desk to assign us another room, which they said they would work on. While we were in the second room getting ready to go to the pool, we noticed noises in the adjoinjng room. We opened the adjoinjng door and found two women sanding wood and they informed us that they would start painting soon. We asked them to please not paint yet until we talked to front desk, and I went down to ask them to please not paint. They said they would look into it. By the time I went back up to the room, I noticed the paint smell in the room from painting in the adjoining room. During this time, my friend also asked for a room change since hers was visibly dirty and had mold with water dripping over doors. I went back down to front desk and asked them to please give us rooms in another building since it looked like this block of rooms was scheduled for a remodel, and a few rooms were being worked on. My kids are asthmatic, and we could not stay near this area if we didn’t want an exacerbation. We were told we would have to wait to see what would be available, and the front desk person told us about their more expensive rooms, but that we would have to pay $160 extra per night for the upgrade. We said we were not interested, they told us to come back in 2-3 hours. We went to the pool, came back 3 hours later, rooms were still not ready. They told us they would place us on the Family concierge building, but that we would not be able to use their amenities because we had not paid for them ($120 extra per day). By this time I think the upgrade should have been “on the house”. Around 8pm we went back to front desk and we were told we would have to wait one more hour. We were out of patience by then and asked politely that we needed our rooms immediately. After a few calls we were given keys to our new rooms, these were finally acceptable. I have to say that personnel were very nice, but this did not translate to good service. We were also never able to talk to the supervisor to voice our concerns because “he was busy”. On the brighter side food was very good, and location relative to area attractions is very convenient. The beach is also very beautiful, even though we were not able to get in it due to heavy sargassum. However we consider the service mishaps and maintenance issues to be unacceptable and would not recommend this hotel to others. First impression was definitely not good. If it is their fault that rooms in the category that I paid for are not ready to receive guests, and other rooms were available that would meet our needs, it is disrespectful to ask me...