Bahia Principe Luxury Akumal — Hotel in Quintana Roo

My wife sister & I just returned from a 1-week trip, from August 30, 2025 to September 6, 2025, to the Bahia Principe Luxury Akumal Resort. We have been to several all-inclusive resorts in Riviera Maya, MX (Iberostar, Grand Palladium & Barcelo Maya), Jamaica (Sandals) & Punta Cana (Iberostar & Bahia Principe) & this one did not disappoint! Overall, we all had an excellent experience from start to finish! We were very lucky with weather with it being sunny and hot everyday with no rain! We were a little concerned with weather since it is in their rainy season. Now for the pros in cons. ||PROS: The entire facility & sister resorts were very well maintained & super clean. We stayed in the adults only section by the infinity pool in building 83. We were able to pre-check-in using their app prior to arriving at the resort so it made the check-in process very streamlined & seamless. We arrived around 2:30pm & our rooms were ready by 3pm! Rooms were well appointed & modern. Beds & couch were very comfortable. Air conditioning & hot water worked the best of anywhere I have stayed. Room service was prompt & available 24/7. Minifridge was stocked with 2-3 beers, soft drinks, water & 4-small bottles of liquor. Room came with a complimentary small bottle of tequila as well. Maid service was very good & responded well to special requests. The resorts internal transportation was great! You never had to wait long to catch a tram to the lobby or to another resort. The trams ran from around 7am - 2am so no issues with staying out late. The staff was constantly cleaning common areas, bathrooms & the pool areas. Definitely one of the cleanest resorts we have stayed at. Buffet food was good & had a good variety. The food was fresh, the eating areas well maintained & no issues with insects. Our favorite a la carte restaurant, out of the four we were able to book, was the Japanese restaurant at the Akumal. The Italian restaurant was very good as well. The Ku'uk was probably my least favorite. We tipped our pool service waitress $5 USD each morning & received excellent service everyday with drinks & cups of ice to refill our Yeti's delivered regularly without having to ask. Pool & beach bars were plentiful & provided good service. We really liked the beach bars with the swings! Concierges were very helpful & friendly. We were asked several times to do a 90-minute presentation for the Bahia Principe Privilege Club, but they were not too pushy.||CONS/COMMENTS: Some of the cons were there was a lot of seaweed on the beach, in particular by the infinity pool when we first arrived. When you go to the end to look over edge to the beach & ocean it was very smelly. In their defense I know this is Mother Nature's fault & their staff worked hard to clean up sections so you could use the beach & go in the ocean by the main pool. Probably one of our biggest issues was with the availability to get reservations at the a la carte restaurants. We found out that you are able to book your reservations up to 10 days prior to checking into your hotel using their app. We had a little difficulty linking my sister's room with ours to book reservations for three, so we did not book until 2-3 days before arriving. Most of the restaurants were 100% booked the entire week like the Katok Steakhouse & Brazilian restaurant. The restaurants we were able to book we had to settle for earlier times like 5:30pm or late times at 9pm+. I would highly recommend that you book the first day it is open on the app. We talked to another couple that was able to book 14 days prior. We did have a little bit of bad swim up bar service at the Grand Principe Tulum that I had to wait over 25 minutes to be served even though I was standing right in front of the bartender with my Yeti cup with it's lid off & made eye contact several times! He kept serving new people around me so not sure what the issue was. Seemed a little anti-American. Other than that experience the bar service was pretty good. The Tulum did not have pool service & was not as nice as the main pool at the Akumal so we stayed at the main pool at our resort the rest of our trip. The main pool at the Akumal was very nice & extensive but was divided into several sections even though there were several bridges but under the bridge was cement, so you had to exit the pool to get to different sections which was odd & a little inconvenient since they appeared to be connected. Adult Infinity Pool was very low key, no music, very small bar & older clientele so we only went to it our first short day. We like the pools that are more upbeat with activities & music. Most of the swim-up & beach bars close at 5pm sharp which we thought was a little early. The only other thing we felt the resorts lacked in was the overall quality of their activities & shows. They had daily water fitness class, water polo, water volleyball, beach volleyball & a few other games for guests during the day but the evening activities choices were very limited. It was difficult to find out what was going on at the other resorts short of going to the resort & taking a picture of their activity's boards. We found out later from another guest that you can go to the front desk & they would print out a list of activities at each resort the week. They had two shows/events that you had to pay an extra 500 pesos per person to attend which we thought should be included like most of the other resorts we stayed at. They had an 80s show that was pretty good, a silent disco which was a first but fun, karaoke night & a trivia night but overall quality was pretty low. There was supposed to be a disco, but it ended up just being a DJ playing some music at the la Hacienda shopping area courtyard & one small open-door bar for drinks. They had a nice sport's bar, but it did not serve any appetizers or food which was odd? Most other resorts I have been to with sports bar usually has a small buffet with pizza, sliders, chicken, nachos, etc. so you could get a snack while watching your favorite sport with a drink.||FINAL NOTES:|Top notch cleanliness, good quality food at the buffets & a la carte restaurants. Overall great service by their staff, nice beaches, ample pool/beach seating, especially at the Akumal. Their activities & shows could use improvement. We would definitely recommend & will probably eventually return but probably will try a few other...

Let me start by saying not my first time here. Been twice to tulum and three times to Akumal. This time they left us at the airport without a ride to the hotel. Seems on the day of travel the hotel canceled my transfer but didn’t bother to tell me about it. No email no call nothing. Transfer company Coming 2 refused to help and even sent the bus on without us. But not before showing us the canceled transfer stamped in red. So there we are 4 adults and my 8 yr old autistic grandson, it’s 9 pm and he’s crying. So left with no choice we got in a cab ($290 usd) and went to the hotel. Happy just to be there I decided to wait until morning to talk to guest services. Well until I found the a/c and fan not working in my room. I asked for maintenance to come and fix. I was told it would be about an hour, they showed up the next day and fix the problem. I spoke with guest services ( he said he was the manager ) the following morning. I was told I needed to write an email that this email would be answered and the issue would be dealt with within 5 days. Five days later, I was told that it wasn’t their problem I needed to speak to the people with coming 2. Coming 2 insisted that it wasn’t their problem that it was the hotels. I then spent the next several days with fingers pointing back-and-forth between coming 2 and the hotel. Now I’m aware that coming 2 just does what they’re told to do by the hotel. So I am not blaming them. The one lady with coming 2 was even nice enough to call hotel reservations on my behalf. She found out that they had no record of informing me of the cancellation. They also had no record of my booking the transfer in the first place, even though I had screenshots of transfer information and confirmation email for transfer. I spoke to one man at the hotel guest services that informed me that they had just experienced what he called a major issue with their website. I don’t know if that was to blame for this or not. Now after being there for 14 days I’m still no closer to a resolution then I was when I first arrived. This is when Eduardo the regional manager appears. He seems interested in fixing the problem, but once again starts pointing fingers at coming 2. He asks if he can have a couple of hours to get to the bottom of this, and he’d get back to me later that day. When he called that night, it was to inform me that he had yet another email address for me to email and he assured me this would be the end of it. Needless to say, I was a bit discouraged and skeptical. The following morning, I went to the front desk to get email address that was supposed to be dropped to my room, but wasn’t. Eduardo needed to be contacted via text because no one at the front desk knew what was going on. A few hours later. We left the hotel for the airport with no resolution and what seem to be no hope of one.||Two weeks later finally found a phone number that would put me in contact with a living breathing person only to get another email address. I sent an email today with receipts and copies of the cancellation and transfer confirmation and Screenshots transfer information from their website. Hopefully someone gets back to me in a timely fashion.||Now a few years back, when we were there, there was an incident at the Tulum and of the beach a local came onto the beach, trying to sell his wears. Part of the appeal of these resorts is that it’s gated and secured. You can feel safe and relax When he was asked to leave a gun was pulled, and one of the lifeguards was shot not fatally, but certainly bad enough. We’ve always enjoyed the beach as that’s where the turtles were always being hatched. So of course, this time I was surprised to find locals selling their goods openly at the Akumal end of the beach. After approaching us to sell to I suggested that I wasn’t sure he should be there at all and he moved off as quickly as possible.||It wasn’t all bad. The service staff of course always do their best to make everyone happy and comfortable. The buffet is less than they have been in past years but you can still always find something to eat. À la cart restaurants aren’t anything like they used to be. To start changes in chefs and the lack of new menu items makes à la cart less desirable. This is assuming you can get a reservation. With bookings being full two weeks before you even get there.||I try to temper my expectations. Five star hotel means different things around the world. And when we first started going to Mexico, the string of resorts was still fairly new. Hurricane Burrell had just swept through on the fifth and repairs were still being done when we got there. So you need to overlook missing doors on utility rooms. There’s more to worry about.||There seems to be a real lack of any meaningful maintenance being done. Water from ceilings bathroom. Constantly leek of water from under tub. Patio doors that don’t fully work correctly. My grandson cut his hands and feet 5 time in the pool on broken tiles. It seems like a coat of paint and some silicone is the remedy of choice.||With all that said it seems the biggest changes that have occurred there are the changes to the staff and management. They are left without direction or the ability to make decisions on their own. This seemed like a fairly easy situation to resolve and yet no one was able to do so.||So would I go there again? I don’t know. I’m not sure I feel safe there anymore not if I can’t get...

My husband and I were recently married at this resort at the end of August 2025. All of the Bahia resorts in Mexico use the same wedding department.||||Our overall stay at the resort (Akumal) was fine, however, our experience with the wedding coordinator, Noemi, was not! She was extremely unprofessional- lied about things, was inflexible, resistant to any changes, and had zero empathy throughout our whole experience with her.||||The day before the wedding she informed us that she would take me (the bride) to the spa the day of the wedding to get my hair and makeup done at a different resort (Coba). When it came time to do so, she claimed it was “not in the contract” for her to take me there (although we have written confirmation through text of her saying she would). Instead of trying to help fix the situation and find another way for me to get to the spa she just spend her time arguing with us. After everything was said and done I ended up taking the public trolley (which I would have originally done if I knew that was what was happening) and I ended up being 40 min late to my appointment- this ended up making everything rushed and I was extremely unhappy with my hair/makeup but had no time to fix it as Noemi rushed me out of the spa to go to my moms room to get my dress on. ||||When I got to my mom’s room I realized I had forgotten something important in my room so we decided to just get ready there instead (a 3 min walk from each other’s rooms). When I informed Noemi of this slight change of room pickup, she informed me she would now no longer be getting me becase I moved, and I would have to take the public trolley to get to my wedding (this ride was one that was in the contract- funny how easily she forgot that). She instructed me to wait outside my room for an x amount of time for a random trolley to pick me up to take me to the lobby. Then I would have to wait at the lobby for x amount of time for the public trolley to take me to another resort (Tulum), then I would have to wait for an x amount of time for a trolley to take me to a different area of Tulum and then walk over to the ceremony location (all while wearing my wedding dress and veil and sweating in 35+ degree heat!) Instead the groom called her and told her absolutely not, and he instead had to do the long trip (his ride was also supposed to be a guaranteed part of the contract). At this point I was so stressed and anxious about how the day had unfolded, I ended up forgetting putting on some important details- such as the bracelet my husband had given me the night before that had belonged to his now deceased grandmother. ||||During the cocktail hour, one of the guests- our 9 year old nephew who was the ring bearer, spilled juice on his shirt and needed to quickly change. Instead of being helpful, Noemi was rude and unhelpful and refused to give our nephew and his dad a ride anywhere, or to arrange any sort of ride. The bare minimum would have to been to at leas give them instructions on how to reach the lobby to take the trolley back to Akumal- but of course she didn't.||||During the dinner reception, we had asked for our guest book (which was an old phone converted into an answering machine). When we arrived at the reception the phone was not there. The groom went up to Noemi and asked her nicely where the phone was and she started arguing with the groom, saying we said reception and this was not the reception. She even went so far as to pull out her phone and start showing the groom “proof” that she was right and he was wrong. During the wedding dinner! So unprofessional. Luckily there was another wedding coordinator there helping as well as she encouraged Noemi to go get it. At the end of the dinner reception, two guests who the phone belonged to, went up to Noemi and told her they would take the phone over to the party as there was a specific way to unplug the phone- if done wrong, it would erase any messages that had already been recorded. Instead of listening to them, she instead walked over to the phone and unplugged it. Well guess what happened?! When retrieving the audio files from the phone after the wedding- all the messages that were recorded during dinner were erased! (These were from mostly the children that had attended- it was heartbreaking to learn and we felt disgusted that someone would take those memories away from us like that!)||||Luckily during the party we didn’t have to deal with Noemi anymore. It even ended up raining for about 5 minutes and our new wedding coordinator was so patient and lets us wait out the rain and didn't cancel the party- Noemi had told me while I was getting ready at the spa that if there was ANY rain the party would be immediately cancelled. ||||My husband and I are very understanding people and overall super chill. All we had hoped for our wedding day was to have fun and be happy. Unfortunately that was not the case. If you are considering getting married here, I would rethink your decision. And if you have already signed your contract and have Noemi as your wedding coordinator, I would email the wedding department and ask them to change your coordinator to someone else. We don’t want what happened to us to happen to...