Playa Selva — Hotel in Tulum

Playa Selva was the perfect place for our Tulum vacation! The property is incredibly beautiful and even though it's right on the beach they've left the jungle in tack so you get the best of both. We stayed in Casa Playa which is a two-story house with it's own kitchen. It has an awesome porch with a nice view of the ocean and having our own kitchen was great, though the shared kitchen looked great too. This is a great area of the beach because there aren't any big hotels close by so the beach is quieter than other areas. They also have beach toys and bikes available to use which was awesome! The staff was so kind and hard working. I didn't know in advance but they clean your room everyday, which was so nice because they cleaned up the sand from the floor and provided fresh towels. Playa Selva is also in a perfect location because it's easily walkable to all of the best restaurants in the hotel zone but it's not surrounded by the clubs and crowds. Even the Wifi was fast and pretty reliable! The only negatives were things that would apply to any hotel in this price range in Tulum: distant club music at night (not too loud), no A/C (which I was worried about but didn't bother us at all), seaweed (seasonal issue but if you don't know what I'm talking about look it up), and a few bugs. We hardly had any mosquitos though! I spent hours trying to find the best place to stay in Tulum on a budget and this is it! If we return we will absolutely stay at Playa...

To attest to how wonderful and helpful the owners and staff are - we originally came to Playa Selva because we were directed here incorrectly by a site where we’d booked a different place. Pepe, the owner, let us park our rental there and did everything he could to help us find the place we’d booked, but after futile hours of searching we gave up and asked if he had any rooms there… thank God he did! He and the staff were responsive, helpful, and kind. The location is perfect - right on the beach on the south end of the main hotel zone, within walking distance of everything you’d want but away from the hubbub, and right on a great stretch of relatively quiet beach - and for that, the value is FANTASTIC relative to other hotels in this area. The cabanas were nice, clean, and comfortable. The drawbacks are things that are ubiquitous in the area and that the hotel has no control over - sometimes unreliable WiFi, and construction in the area. The only thing was that our thatch roof did leak when a storm came through, so be aware of the weather, but - overall a fantastic treasure of a find on Tulum Beach with excellent value. We’ll stay here next time...

Owner told us we couldn’t book on Air B&B site where we found it and that we had to book direct and we found out why to our cost. I therefore doubt that all these reviews are authentic. I will say that it is wonderfully rustic and as close to the beautiful white sandy beach as shown and has been kept really low key and natural which we loved. However there was no warning when we booked of the loud house music coming from the bar nextdoor from lunchtime until late into the night. The furniture in our apartment reverberated with it. Assured by the manager it would be finished by 7pm we walked several bars away before we could escape the noise. When we got back at 9pm it was still playing. None of us could sleep so sat up and booked straight into another apartment where we could actually sleep. Topped off with cold dribble of water in the shower in the morning - could not wait to leave. A whole day of our holiday wasted plus much much more wrangling with owner about their miss-selling and trying to get some of our money back. If you don’t have kids and are looking for Ibiza vibes then great but do not go for peace and...