Wyndham Alltra Playa Del Carmen, Adults Only – All-Inclusive Resort — Hotel in Playa del Carmen

Tl;Dr I've stayed at better and I've stayed at worse All-incs. It's a little smaller and probably not the best place for a quiet vacation, but the space and staff are great.

The good: rooms are gorgeous. View of the ocean is incredible. Place is incredibly clean. Staff is awesome; maybe the best I've seen at a place like that. Everyone is very attentive and polite.

Noise: this hotel is loud. Starting at about 6am, there's a lot of noise from staff or events. They love club music, and it starts thumping in the lobby by about 7am. There's a "show" every night at 8pm, and it's usually in the lobby by the one bar open at night. One night, the show was on the beach directly outside our room, which effectively made the room uninhabitable until about 11 (something someone might have mentioned to us upon upgrading for several hundred dollars). The pool has either loud music going or some activity on the loudspeaker almost all the time. If that's what you're looking for, then none of this is a problem, but we would have appreciated some place that wasn't bombarded by sound.

Food: the food is good, but inconsistent. There's the main buffet (which is the only place for breakfast or lunch) and three other places for dinner. Our best meal was at the Mexican place, but everyone we talked to seemed to have different experiences with which one was the best. The main thing is that they require reservations, and we were unable any day to make a reservation between 530 and 830. So, if you're going here, make all your reservations the first day.

That's doubly so because, when this place gets overwhelmed, it gets really in the weeds. Multiple nights we tried calling the front desk, room service, the restaurants, pretty much anyone I could try to call, and no one picked up at all over the course of hours.

The people who are the service staff are largely incredible. Everyone is beyond polite, their English is often quite good, and there was none of the "island time" stereotype as far as urgency or attitude. It's just that clearly there were systems set up that didn't have enough people to manage them. Given that basically every place in pdc has a "se solicita" (we're hiring) sign out front, this might not be unique to the Alltra.

Upsell pressure: it was on the high side of normal for these. They try and get you with Vacation Club sales pitch, which we bit on and it would have been fine if it had been 90 minutes like they said, but it was 3 hours of our day. Still, if you're pinching pennies, you can get free stuff by agreeing to it. Similarly, they're usually quite willing to throw in a cabana for the day or a surf and turf upgrade to get you to buy a bottle of good wine. But, yes, it is fairly constant and can be a bit annoying (for example, we were greeted about 6 steps out of the door after our massage with a "promotion" to rebook again for the next day, somewhat defeating the relaxation achieved).

It's a great location if you like seeing the town. Go right on fifth and you get to the more chill area, left and you're into the intensely busy section maybe 8 blocks from the ferry dock.

Spa was nice, if small. The gym is tiny.

Rooms: they're beautiful and clean and comfortable, but you don't have climate control. Every room is set to 23 Celsius, which is about 74 fahrenheit, so if you like it cool, that's going to be a potential issue. It mostly cooled off enough at night for us that I didn't have trouble sleeping, but during the day I wouldn't want to hang out in the room. The tvs have cable but no way to stream or cast anything, which is probably for the best, as the wifi is about what you expect.

Overall, it certainly wasn't bad, but it also wasn't quite what we hoped. Maybe some of that is on us. It could really benefit from one more large bar that isn't in the lobby, especially if that bar could house some of the louder entertainment away from the rooms and main space. Thankfully, we had the means to just leave and walk to stuff, but of course that sort of defeats the point of it being...

We recently vacationed in Playa Del Carmen MX and stayed at the Wyndham Alltra PDC. Overall we had a great vacation. The hotel was exactly what we expected with some major pros and a few cons.

This is a solid 4 star property with some great luxury additions. On arrival we were pleasantly surprised with the hotel lobby, it is well designed, stylish and well decorated. They have somehow taken an old colonial style hotel and made it feel modern and high end without being pretentious. We were greeted with a welcome drink and brought into a concierge office where we were offered spa and room upgrades (for a cost). The gentleman was gathering information from us to see if we pre-qualified for a timeshare presentation so we were prepared for that conversation which came later in the week. When we declined he did not press which we appreciated.

What did we LOVE: •The included coffee bar that was open 6am-10pm. The cappuccinos were perfection and the pastries were a touch above what was offered at the buffet.

•The service. Seriously the staff here are incredible.

•The lobby bar. Beautifully decorated, lots of seating we enjoyed boozy late afternoons in here playing cards and drinking coffee.

•The spacious rooms! We choose a junior suite with a garden/street view on the second floor. We had a good size balcony and even though it faced the street we had a nice view of the Hilton and never found it loud. The room was big with plenty of room for our things (I am an unpacker). The only thing missing was a luggage rack and a dresser would have been a good addition. I ended up moving the coffee maker which was in a cupboard and used that as a makeshift dresser.

•The 24 hour gym. We like to work out while on holidays, the gym was clean and spacious and well stocked with equipment.

•The water circuit in the spa. We visited the European spa circuit three times, it was a nice addition after working out and before a spa treatment. (Our massage was fantastic btw).

•While I admit that we didn't visit it, the 2nd rooftop pool with sushi bar was a really nice touch. We tend to keep a busy schedule while on holidays and every time we went to go up there in the afternoon it was busy (but that is a good thing). •24 hour room service. Little touches like this make a 4 star hotel feel a bit more luxurious. •Nightly Entertainment. This isn't really our thing so we can take it or leave it BUT other people seemed to love the entertainment and we saw lots of people participating in the variety of shows and DJs that they had throughout the week. Again, this is a detail that makes a smaller boutique 4 star hotel feel competitive with the larger resorts that have more offerings. It's a nice detail whether you participate or not.

WHAT W LIKED:

•The buffet was not memorable BUT it was good! There was always plenty of selection and bonus points for things like the fresh juice bar at breakfast. Things felt repetitive by the end of the week and some things like the watery soup oatmeal were a pretty big fail.

• A la carte restaurants. There are 3-a steakhouse, mexican and italian. The Italian was by far our favorite. The steakhouse was good and the Mexican while I had high hopes disappointed and I'm pretty sure that is where I got sick. Mild touch of food poisoning. It happens in Mexico and luckily passed quickly.

•The snack room was a great addition. We grabbed cold sparkling water from there all week and took snacks for an excursion.

•The pizza bar at the pool was good. Always fresh and available.

WHAT DISAPPOINTED:

• The drinks. Honestly, everything on the menu tasted the same. We resorted to classic Gin & Tonics all week with the odd tequila shots and bourbon night caps. It would have been nice to have enjoyed some boozy pool drinks but it all tasted terrible. NOTE: the bar rail is standard Mexican brand but you can ask for mid-range alcohol which are included in your all-inclusive (this didn't seem to make a difference in how the cocktails tasted).

•The pillows. They were so awful. Beds were...

To be clear, this was our second honeymoon, so a special holiday.||||On check in we were pushily offered a room upgrade which we declined after already paying 1750usd, the first room we were given had nowhere to sit outside, even though it stated on the website there was a "communal sitting area" when we asked at reception we were told this is the pool area! Other rooms of this rate had chairs and a table outside their door (400's rooms), the room we were given (room 500 something, can't remember exact number) didn't have this, after entering the room and seeing there was no seating in the room we could even take outside we returned to reception and paid the $200usd for the upgrade. We first asked if we could have a room with the seats outside on the communal terrace we were told this wasn't an option and the only way to get seating was to upgrade to a suite. Seeing as the hotel is not at capacity I don't see why we couldn't have been given one of the other rooms with the communal seats, instead of paying for an upgraded room.||||The website also states that bathrobes would be provided in the upgraded room but at no point during our 10 days were they available.||||Food! How can an all inclusive resort close a restaurant 3 nights a week?! Also the sushi bar is closed one day a week, the other restaurants only open on certain nights too. No prior warning during booking, check-in or even on the day was given that out of season this will happen, when we spoke to reception and informed them that it states on the website everything is open 7 days a week they said "yes the website is wrong" oh great, you're getting people booking here under false pretences and delivering half of the service at full prices. As we hadn't booked the other restaurants on the night the buffet was closed we had to go outside to eat and again, pay extra money. This is certainly not how an all inclusive hotel should be. If prior notice was given, especially at the time of booking we would have been prepared for this unexpected expense, after spending almost 2000usd on the hotel (including the room "upgrade" this is not what we were expecting to do. The service advertised was certainly not the service received.||||The choice of food was very repetitive too, no theme nights, undercooked raw beef served to my husband from the buffet (we do have pictures of this available) desserts were a choice of maybe 6 different cakes, with around 10 available of each. No ice cream, no pastries. Just cake. Not good for people with gluten intolerance.||||Drink, the quality and choice of the drinks was good, but having to wait until 11am for a bar to open is ridiculous, and closing the bar at 11pm is the worst "all inclusive" drinks I've encountered in my entire life. Having stayed in all inclusive hotels in Mexico before there's always been a late bar open until around 3/4am even in the off season. There's not even an option to pay for drinks after 11pm.||||The website also states that all taxes are included when booking direct (which is what we did) only to be told we needed to pay an environmental tax on arrival, again we have no issue paying this but maybe make the website clearer that this tax is NOT included in the price.||||The beach, we visited and found broken glass, plastic and so many cigarette ends. We're in the carribean and we didn't visit the beach due to how disgusting it was.||||The upgraded room was good, but due to the above corridor being directly above the room you'd be woken up by carts rolling early in the morning, or people walking in heels late at night.||||Only saving grace for this hotel is the staff, especially Jose from the sushi bar who really goes above and beyond. ||||I feel this has been a complete letdown of a hotel and holiday (our second honeymoon), and believe compensation should be given for the missing services, having to eat out, and for having to pay for an upgrade due to the misleading wording on the website stating we had a communal...