Playa Mambo - Cabanas in Tulum — Hotel in Tulum

WARNING – don’t let instagram influencers and daytime pictures trick you. We trashed 650USD and left after the first night.||Yes, at daytime and on instragram, this hotel looks very charming. And indeed, the beach and the beachfront of this hotel look very nice – but so does it for all the other hotels on this beach and there are plenty of them directly to the left or right to this hotel (which are a lot cheaper by the way). However, plan that all the sunbeds are already reserved by other guests, starting 7AM throughout the day whilst using them for 1 hour maybe. But that’s another story. The sunbeds looks extremely nice on pictures, however they are not really comfortable (and most of the time “reserved”). ||The cabanas look “okay” during daytime, though they are hot as hell because the AC is only working from 9PM-9AM, but they say that’s because it’s an ECO hotel, we knew that before. However, spending 650USD for 3 nights, you do not get what you will expect. The toilet flush does not work properly. There is no modern sewerage, so you can flush the toilet 100 times, but your excretions will re-appear after 30mins and you will continuously ask yourself if you already have dementia and forgot to flush the toilet again. No, you did not, it simply re-appears no matter how often you flush. Next, the bathroom is not really a bathroom, it’s a dark concrete block featuring no windows or curtains, so if you are into privacy that’s nothing for you. The fittings look old and rusty and you wash you hands and shower yourself with cold salt water. There is no warm water. As there are many sinks on the ground in the bathroom and you can’t help but wet the whole bathroom during a shower, the water stand on the ground and stays there for your whole stay. During nighttime, we were visited by cockroaches and other insects. My girlfriend was not able to find sleep and was exhausted the next morning. I did not get any sleep either – but for me, the reason was that the whole cabana was smelling as if you are sleeping on a public train station directly next to the toilets: The whole room was stinking extremely, I have not experienced such urine/excretion smells in my whole life and got nausea. The AC was trying its best to de-humidify the air, but was unsuccessful. So you sleep in extremely moist air surrounded by cockroaches and an impressive and pervasive smell of urine. One small annotation when it comes to security: The whole area is not secured. Every front door can easily be opened by shaking the front door (hotel staff tried to show us a possibility how to fix this, but it did not fix the problem, you could still easily enter a locked front door from outside). Yes, you get a small safe for your belongings, it is shrewdly attached to a plank of the cupboard which has the size of a sheet of paper, so you could easily just take the safe with the plank under your arm and leave. ||We told the hotel staff these unacceptable issues. The hotel staff tried its best and said he would try that we pay for the one night we stayed and get compensated for the other 2 nights. However, management did not agree. They offered us another cabana (which we did not accept, because the problems remain the same), after a horrific night we just wanted to get out of this place as these were planned as the last days of our trip in mexico, we thought we keep the best until the end. We were hardly disappointed. So the management decided to keep our whole money (650USD for 3 nights). No compensation at all. So in summary, the staff is indeed very friendly and tries its best, but the management not. They sell these dirty and medieval rooms for a lot of money, but what you get for that? Only a nice beach, a thing that all the other hotels around offer the same. So be warned: Do not stay in this place and spend your hardly earned money somewhere else.||Oh, as an addition, all the bed sheets and towels are stained. Not sure what happened with them, on mine it looks as if someone had several small bleedings which were not removed properly by laundry. Also, you have to pay in CASH, and not only the stay. Also if you decide to get a drink at the bar or eat at the “restaurant” (which is only an open grill at the back, offering grilled meat, that’s not a restaurant but a small barbecue), you have to pay that in cash immediately. It is not possible to write that to your room number or name and pay at leave. The ATM next to the hotel is not working as of February 2018, the next ones are some minutes away but only dispende USD, which you can use, but due to conversion factor to Mexican pesos, you pay at least +10% more. The next pesos dispending ATM can only be reached by TAXI.||We are deeply disappointed not only by the hotel itself but also regarding the management, although we understand that due to our booking we blocked the cabana for 3 days and most likely stood empty after our early leave. However, taking in account 650USD and what the hotel offers you for that .. it is not an ECO hotel, it’s a nightmare (at nights). No standards, unconvenient procedures (everything cash, instantly), no warm water, abnormal and pervasive urine smells at night, dirty beddings, a moist and hardly working bathroom, no security, no real AC, cockroaches (yes mr. management, you are near the forest, but we haven’t experienced that the 2 weeks before and stays at jungle hotels, too, you won’t believe they also got warm water and did not smell like a public train station toilet). ||||So be warned – it looks cozy at daytime and on the pictures, but you will not get what you expect, especially considering the amount of money this place costs. The same beach is offered by cheaper, cleaner and better hotels next to this one. We will never come back to this hotel and you can bet we will warn everyone we can within our reach. Which can be unexpectedly high these days with social media. Thanks to the nice hotel staff who tried to arrange everything for us on our leave and tried to make us only pay for the night we stayed. We are sorry that you had to face these problems which you cannot be accounted for. The problem is not with the hotel staff, it is with...

WARNING – don’t let instagram influencers and daytime pictures trick you. We trashed 650USD and left after the first night.||Yes, at daytime and on instragram, this hotel looks very charming. And indeed, the beach and the beachfront of this hotel look very nice – but so does it for all the other hotels on this beach and there are plenty of them directly to the left or right to this hotel (which are a lot cheaper by the way). However, plan that all the sunbeds are already reserved by other guests, starting 7AM throughout the day whilst using them for 1 hour maybe. But that’s another story. The sunbeds looks extremely nice on pictures, however they are not really comfortable (and most of the time “reserved”). ||The cabanas look “okay” during daytime, though they are hot as hell because the AC is only working from 9PM-9AM, but they say that’s because it’s an ECO hotel, we knew that before. However, spending 650USD for 3 nights, you do not get what you will expect. The toilet flush does not work properly. There is no modern sewerage, so you can flush the toilet 100 times, but your excretions will re-appear after 30mins and you will continuously ask yourself if you already have dementia and forgot to flush the toilet again. No, you did not, it simply re-appears no matter how often you flush. Next, the bathroom is not really a bathroom, it’s a dark concrete block featuring no windows or curtains, so if you are into privacy that’s nothing for you. The fittings look old and rusty and you wash you hands and shower yourself with cold salt water. There is no warm water. As there are many sinks on the ground in the bathroom and you can’t help but wet the whole bathroom during a shower, the water stand on the ground and stays there for your whole stay. During nighttime, we were visited by cockroaches and other insects. My girlfriend was not able to find sleep and was exhausted the next morning. I did not get any sleep either – but for me, the reason was that the whole cabana was smelling as if you are sleeping on a public train station directly next to the toilets: The whole room was stinking extremely, I have not experienced such urine/excretion smells in my whole life and got nausea. The AC was trying its best to de-humidify the air, but was unsuccessful. So you sleep in extremely moist air surrounded by cockroaches and an impressive and pervasive smell of urine. One small annotation when it comes to security: The whole area is not secured. Every front door can easily be opened by shaking the front door (hotel staff tried to show us a possibility how to fix this, but it did not fix the problem, you could still easily enter a locked front door from outside). Yes, you get a small safe for your belongings, it is shrewdly attached to a plank of the cupboard which has the size of a sheet of paper, so you could easily just take the safe with the plank under your arm and leave. ||We told the hotel staff these unacceptable issues. The hotel staff tried its best and said he would try that we pay for the one night we stayed and get compensated for the other 2 nights. However, management did not agree. They offered us another cabana (which we did not accept, because the problems remain the same), after a horrific night we just wanted to get out of this place as these were planned as the last days of our trip in mexico, we thought we keep the best until the end. We were hardly disappointed. So the management decided to keep our whole money (650USD for 3 nights). No compensation at all. So in summary, the staff is indeed very friendly and tries its best, but the management not. They sell these dirty and medieval rooms for a lot of money, but what you get for that? Only a nice beach, a thing that all the other hotels around offer the same. So be warned: Do not stay in this place and spend your hardly earned money somewhere else.||Oh, as an addition, all the bed sheets and towels are stained. Not sure what happened with them, on mine it looks as if someone had several small bleedings which were not removed properly by laundry. Also, you have to pay in CASH, and not only the stay. Also if you decide to get a drink at the bar or eat at the “restaurant” (which is only an open grill at the back, offering grilled meat, that’s not a restaurant but a small barbecue), you have to pay that in cash immediately. It is not possible to write that to your room number or name and pay at leave. The ATM next to the hotel is not working as of February 2018, the next ones are some minutes away but only dispende USD, which you can use, but due to conversion factor to Mexican pesos, you pay at least +10% more. The next pesos dispending ATM can only be reached by TAXI.||We are deeply disappointed not only by the hotel itself but also regarding the management, although we understand that due to our booking we blocked the cabana for 3 days and most likely stood empty after our early leave. However, taking in account 650USD and what the hotel offers you for that .. it is not an ECO hotel, it’s a nightmare (at nights). No standards, unconvenient procedures (everything cash, instantly), no warm water, abnormal and pervasive urine smells at night, dirty beddings, a moist and hardly working bathroom, no security, no real AC, cockroaches (yes mr. management, you are near the forest, but we haven’t experienced that the 2 weeks before and stays at jungle hotels, too, you won’t believe they also got warm water and did not smell like a public train station toilet). ||||So be warned – it looks cozy at daytime and on the pictures, but you will not get what you expect, especially considering the amount of money this place costs. The same beach is offered by cheaper, cleaner and better hotels next to this one. We will never come back to this hotel and you can bet we will warn everyone we can within our reach. Which can be unexpectedly high these days with social media. Thanks to the nice hotel staff who tried to arrange everything for us on our leave and tried to make us only pay for the night we stayed. We are sorry that you had to face these problems which you cannot be accounted for. The problem is not with the hotel staff, it is with...

Don't let influencers from Instagram etc. trick you to spend your money on this .. let's name it "location".

We booked and payed for 3 days this February, which is about 650USD. What do you get? A nice beach front indeed, but that's all and all the other hotels around offer the exact same beach. The hotel itself is simply awful. It may look nice on the pictures, but let me tell you the reality behind all that and some interesting facts you can't deny.

The hotel itself says its an "ECO" hotel - What is meant by ECO at the Playa Mambo? Well, it means: Only cold water (salt water!), flushing the toilet does not properly work and your excrements will re-appear in the toilet water after 30mins so you ask yourself if you have dementia and forgot to flush the last time. This leads to an extreme smell of urine in the room that was so strong it caused nausea for me and my girlfriend. The AC does only work from 9pm-9am, however this must be one of the cheapest models because it was cold, yes, but not able to de-humidify the air which results, in combination with the destinct urine smell, to an experience you would get on every public train station toilet (if you choose to try to sleep there). Oh, not to forget about totally stained sheets and towels and the nice littel creatures such as cockroaches and others that appear once the night arrived. Also, the water in the whole bathroom stays on the ground, no window covers in the whole bathroom so if you like peepshows you're welcome.

We were not able to stay another night in this awful .. "hotel". We expected a nice stay, not a 5 star experience, but this just was too much. We were offered another room (well, that does not change anything because the other rooms were exactly the same, we had a look with other guests before ..). and the problems (urine smell, cockroaches, dirty towels/sheets were the same for all). ALSO, they only accept Cash. And you are not able to write drinks at the bar or anything on your room and pay after checkout. Only cash, everywhere and for everything, immediately. Very uncomfortable when all the ATM do not dispens Mexican Pesos and 3 out of 4 ATMs nearby are not working.

So, we had to cancel our visit and have a look for another hotel because the first night almost ruined all the relaxation and good feelings we collected the 2 weeks before. No refund of course, but I understand as we blocked the room for 3 days, however, I would've exepected some compensation for this horrific experience. The management KNOWS about these problems. Answer is always: Its an ECO hotel. And by ECO, it seems they mean public trainstation toilet.

Oh, and don't forget about the doors to the cabanas. You can simply open locked front doors by simply shaking them. The whole area is not secured by the way. Yes, you have a small safe that is attached to a cabinet ground the size of a mousepad so .. yeah, that's really safe.

So, we throw away 650USD and left because this hotel is AWFUL at nights. Totally overpriced. The beachfront with these swinging beds look nice but are not comfortable and reserved by hotel guests which are not using it the whole day starting 7AM to our one-day experience. Looks nice on pictures, but that's all. Dodge to another hotel (there are a lot) which offer much better service and cost half the price. Don't let instagram influencers and pictures trick you. You have been warned. This place does only looks nice at daytime and from...