Palmar Beach Resort & Spa Riviera Maya — Hotel in Quintana Roo

TLDR: no direct access to beach. Not actually all inclusive. Bad customer service. Bad partnership between hotel staff and Tafer timeshare. A lot of pools and a lot of space and quiet due to the lack of people here.||Let’s start with the cons (there are a lot): This being an all inclusive resort, everything here is actually not all inclusive, despite the prices you pay for it to be all inclusive. Each restaurant has a “premium” portion of a menu that you have to pay out of pocket for. As I was extremely excited about the lobster, this was a huge disappointment because the lobster was on all the premium sections and for just the tail it was $75 USD, which is insane because in my landlocked state back in the US, a lobster tail is half that easily. ||Coming to this resort, we expected easy access to a Mexican beach. We found out they do not clean their beach and not only is it unable to be used, it also makes the whole resort smell bad because there are piles of seaweed (screenshots included from a video I took). It’s weird because the Hyatt resort right next to us had a spotless beach..but we couldn’t reach it because there is a wall restricting mingling between beaches. The other resort on the other side of us also had a spotless beach but there was another wall. |Alas, we had to catch a uber to go to a public beach (Puerto Morelos - beautifully kept) and essentially spent a day outside of the resort to be at the beach.||In addition to having to pay to go to the beach, we also booked an excursion on our own. The hotel excursion prices are a rip off. ||A lot of the employees do not know what they are talking about. We lost our shuttle email arriving and spend an hour at the airport trying to get the information to leave. The guy on the phone was giving us incorrect information but after about 40 minutes of going back and forth inside and outside the airport, a nice gentleman (from a different company) helped us and found our guy (Aventour) who was nowhere to be seen prior. ||In another instance of the employees not knowing anything; We called the hotel to confirm when the gift shop closed and the lady on the phone said 6pm. We got back to the hotel before 6 and the doors were locked. We asked and they went to see what was up. A guy came around and opened the door and let us get what we wanted. We asked him when he closed and he said 7pm. The door says 8pm. ||No fruit. No coconut bar. No real juice (all juice offered is Jumex which is high fructose corn syrup). ||There was a major problem with tafer (the people who bought out the hotel from Azul). We have a tafer membership and booked with a pre arrival concierge Jose Rodriguez. We requested two beds as we are opposite gender family not wanting to sleep in the same bed. The concierge said the request was not put in the system so we got a one bed room. To have the problem alleviated she took us to the front desk… Alfonzo, the front desk guy, was adamant that he and the hotel are not to blame for the mess up and there was nothing that could be done because a missed American Airlines flight took a bunch of rooms. This looks to me that they are 1. Just trying to fill up rooms and 2. Do not care about their members or customers who booked with them ahead of time (prioritizing over members). Alfonzo then went on to say Tafer is to blame. Pointing the finger was wild and unprofessional and does not look good from a customer standpoint. Probably will not come back here. ||Another problem I personally had was buffet staff laughing at me… Yamirel, a waitress at the breakfast buffet and another waiter was talking and he pointed to us and she looked back at me and started laughing. I can understand elementary Spanish but it was so loud in the buffet that I wasn’t able to hear all of what they were saying. It’s actually messed that they are just laughing at people though. ||Have not experienced the best customer service, especially compared to Jamaica. ||Pros: good quality and affordable merch at one of the gift shops. While a handful of the staff are rude, a lot of the staff are nice...

I want to start by saying I’m not one to ever go out of my way to leave a negative review. My husband and I have both worked in Hospitality for many years in the last. I will leave positive reviews when I have a great experience, and let the negative ones go because life is too short to hold onto that frustration. But I just can’t do that in this case, and need to post this very negative review.

I’m here right now with my husband on our honeymoon, and will be leaving in a few more days. Our first 2 days went well, but the customer service has gone down hill by a LONG way in the last 2 days.

They advertise “24/7 room service” but that’s not true because they may just not have staff working that department and won’t inform the guests. You order something on their app (their preferred method of ordering), wait in your room for 2 hours (which could have been spent in the pool or enjoying Mexico), nothing comes, and so you call the front desk and they say room service is not available today. Not sure how you can call that 24/7, or so casually waste peoples time by failing to close your app or inform guests.

They promise you free massages etc etc to do a sales presentation for a Karisma membership, which they will give to you, but they will also use shady sales tactics during that presentation. They failed to tell us that THIS resort will not be part of Karisma in about 1 month, despite us only being interested in the membership in the first place because we can see ourselves wanting to come back to our honeymoon location in future (which we clearly communicated to multiple sales agents, multiple times). They tried to sell us a $26,000 membership on a false pretence, which is a LARGE sum of money that could actually ruin someone’s life if they mismanaged it.

They advertise “rainy day activities” but if it rains, they won’t be available and will actually close basically everything on the resort (been stuck in my room the last 2 days due to storm, no room service available and every restaurant except the buffet is closed. A fraction of staff working. We came here for the food because the a la carte restaurants are meant to be great, but how should I even know because everything is closed and they have no back up plan. But also, you have to walk through the hurricane to even find out things are closed because they don’t communicate with their guests at all. We showed up in the pouring rain along with a group of about 10 other guests at one of the restaurants to find it closed. Everyone was irritated, and more people continued to show up there during their advertised “open hours” for the day.

We were promised a call from a manager within 30 min to discuss the issues we were facing, and we never received the call, period. We called back over an hour later and were promised a call back once again, which once again never came. We had to walk through the storm to the front desk to complain to manager Enrique who did absolutely nothing to help us except repeating that there was a storm happening (which I can see with my eyes, thank you for pointing it out though…). He also refused to pass along his supervisors name or contact.

The beach is pretty bad. Rocky, seaweed, smelly, mucky water, small.

Edit: Just now before posting this I slipped in water all over the floor in my room leaking in through the balcony door (very questionable quality sealing for a place that experiences tropical storms regularly) and I now have a big bloody gash in my hand and a potentially fractured toe.

I am going to reiterate that I’m not one to leave a negative review and I think this is honestly the first one I have ever left… I felt I had to because it’s really been that bad. DO NOT come here for your honeymoon, or any kind of trip that means something to you or is meant to be special. Their level of hospitality cannot keep up.

I’m glad my husband and I can make a good time out of any situation, so we are finding ways to have fun and enjoy the honeymoon regardless, but it’s really no thanks to this...

Not a prestige member ..good luck!!!! I will start by saying the property itself is beautiful! Close to the airport, feels am safe & secure Winding pools (cold) but we didn't have great weather and no one can control that. The beach isn't terrible they do a nice job of upkeep on the seaweed! If you're looking for crystal clear blue water, not the place. But that's just nature here The daybeds are great but lots reserved for "members" an entire area roped off for prestige actaully Overall the resort is a bit dated, tiles missing from bridges & walkways, lobby is very 1999, smells delicious though! The gym is big lots of equipment. Not sure about the spa bc there were no available reservations for any spa service for 5 days!!!! We got to our room a premium swim out. A big room, king bed with a pull out couch Not what I was expecting for a teenager and 7 year old to sleep on...okay, pull it out the mattress is literally one inch think (picture yoga mat) so old and uncomfortable I wouldn't even accept or let my dog to sleep on that for 5 nights Attempt number one to call front desk Busy signal, call concierge ringing and then hung up on, this continues for over 45 minuses...continuous busy to hanging up to no answer at all! "Personal concierge" not helpful I then walk to front desk and am told there are no other available rooms for 2 nights! They will come and fix the bed. They brought another mattress to put on top of the pullout mattress or should I say yoga mat.. this was over four hours for them to come and rectify the situation, multiply trips to the front desk and we had been traveling since 4:30 in the morning! My kids (and we) were exhausted And it was not settled until 10:30 PM Night one already a bad taste in our mouths Speaking of taste in your mouth, good luck getting anything to eat, unless you want to eat at Spoons the buffet! Apparently, no reservations are taken unless you are a prestige member, because there was an entire list of reservations but only if you were prestige! The one restaraunt you are allowed to reserve (Italian) we were given a slip of paper and a time of 9pm for our last night on property! Remember, I have two young kids, a little late to be eating dinner, 9pm, but that was the only reservation available for days prior to making it! Well, it was a bit of relief to actually have a reservation until we arrived there and were told we didn't have one, although we actually had the slip of paper (our reservation) in our hand. There were many times we went to get in the long lines for seating to eat to be told the waiting list was already closed for the night this was as 530 pm. When there were plenty of empty tables available (I'm sure reserved for members) Just unacceptable the way the restaraunt/reservation system is done!! I literally thought okay maybe we can door dash some food (this is supposed to be an all inclusive resort) just ridiculous My room was not cleaned for 3 days full garbages, beds not made, no clean towels, I would put in a request for housekeeping on the app, and the request was closed out before it was completed! This happened multiple times. It was frustrating We were told personal concierge service he is for the entire building so best of luck with that! He won't even answer the phone Sadly, I had to see the head concierge Eduardo multiple times throughout the trip. To basically get an "I'm so sorry" and nothing else! I feel like I was sold one thing and when we arrived it was completely different! Went shopping at Saks 5th ave and got Walmart! Save your hard earned money, save your frustration, your anger, and disappointment what a bust this trip turned out to be Sad because it has potential it's run terribly Just go somewhere else! We have traveled the world and I have never been treated so terribly and given the runaround by so many different people. I will never go back there or use another karisma resort and I will tell everyone I know the same run as far as you can away from this place, you literally feel like you are in the...