La Playa Xpu-ha Beach Club — Restaurant in Quintana Roo

The beach is excellent but I would say tailor your expectations for the beach club.

Entrance. There are about 3-4 entrances, each to a different beach club. Be mindful that if you enter Serenity as La Playa will try to nickel and dime/up charge you to use their space. Likewise for the others. Research to know which beach club you want to patron. It’s a minimum 50 pesos to enter either entrance.

Entrance Fee. We opted for La Playa as we read negative reviews on Serenity’s Beach Club food and loud music. It’s more adult. We needed child friendly. Question - why is the music so loud at beach clubs? It was $200 pesos for adults and $100 pesos for kids. As other reviewers mentioned it goes towards your food.

Parking. We arrived about 11:30 at on a Sunday. Parked on the side and walked about 5 minutes to the beach.

Beach Club. Be prepared to be with a thousand and one other beach goers, families, etc. Outside of Playa Blanca north of Cancun, or Akumal where the beaches get crowded but there is a distribution of space, this place turned me off. I gave it a try because the beach was simply beautiful, Tulum would be a mess at this hour, I needed a break from Akumal, Playacar would be no better at this hour, I don’t like the seaweed in Puerto Morelos, and let’s face the biggest fact of all - there were no refunds.

For the most part social distancing was adhered but every table except one was taken and it was a direct sun hit and no umbrellas. The loungers $120 pesos extra were all in use. We did end up securing one around 2:00 pm which was worth it to finally escape the sun. The loungers were comfy but they are mixed matched and aren’t anything great. Add your towel and it works. The place isn’t fancy but the ambiance is chill and beach-y. It does the job.

Beach. Once I got over all the people and embraced the sun, I hit the beach. The actual ocean wasn’t crowded. The water is clear. There was plenty of space to be in a little area with your family to swim, let the light waves crash you (nothing like Tulum waves), or float. The sand is fine to walk on without shoes. The area is pretty flat and perfect for kids like Akumal. You can swim (advanced) out to snorkel. The water does come up close to the beach club where kids often sit and it crashes hopes of budding hopes of sand castle engineers, so be mindful where the kids set up shop of you’ll be building sand castles all day.

Other activities. Jet Ski. I’ve only seen jet skis in Playacar ($75 USD) and here where it was $50 USD. Both for 30 minutes. I wish I took them up on their offer here. Nonetheless negotiate. Paddle boarding - not sure the cost.

Food. I let my husband and son use the food credit, opting for one drink and my own personal water. I don’t like being disappointed with food and I already read the reviews to know it wasn’t worth it for me. So, I enjoyed the huge free breakfast at our hotel that morning and I’m glad I did because I was able to secure a reservation via Whats’s App and have a lovely dinner at Rockas Jamaican Restaurant in Playa del Carmen that evening.

My son didn’t enjoy his hamburger but ate the fries. My partner wasn’t crazy about the shrimp tacos but enjoyed his drinks. Our bill came to $250 extra pesos after the wrist band discount. To apply it, the server cuts your band off. We were also told that if we didn’t reach the minimum, we could have gotten a reimbursement on the unused credit. Not sure the accuracy but it’s worth a shot if you don’t want/need the food. Service was pretty decent.

All in all, once I understood some basics, thank you reviewers, and got over my initial shock of the crowd, my family enjoyed themselves and would rate (according to our scale of child friendly) this beach number 2. Akumal is number 1. Playacar is number 3. Tulum is number 4. I would absolutely return and enjoy a light shareable lunch and some drinks, then head to dinner after our beach day. I hope you found this review helpful. If so, give me...

Very very poor.

Run, run far away!

I don't write many bad reviews and always prefer to give praise and recognition as you can see by my past reviews.

So if I write a poor review, you can get that it was really bad. First of all you have to pay 50 pesos to access the beach. That's just to walk down the road. The beach was very nice and the highlight of the journey, but not worth paying an entrance fee to with so many other playas around.

This is one of the first restaurants you will see with tables, chairs and beach loungers. Very basic setup with older worn furniture that is white and blue. We asked the host "Isabella" if we ordered food and drink that we could us the beach lounge chairs. She told us we could. We decided then to stay and have lunch. We ordered some fish tacos, very bland. The tortillas we not warmed and grilled. The flavour was very lacklustre. We also ordered Mahi Mahi seared that tasted old, over cooked and dripping in oil. Did I mention is was also cold and had no garnish on the plate. I asked to have a side fries with it. I got 12 fries with my piece of fish. They charged me 85 pesos for the side of fries. The solo piece of fish was 225 pesos. I wish I took a picture to show you. White plate, white fish… that’s it. :/

After our poor meal, we moved to the beach chairs, thus freeing up our table for others to come have a bad meal at. The manager came over and told us we now had to pay 200 pesos per person to use the chairs. We told him the hostess "Isabella" said we were allowed to. He dismissed this.

This would be a good opportunity for the owners to setup a communication plan and provided some coaching to their staff and management. I would avoid this place.

We will never go back and tell others to simply...

We have been coming to Xpu Ha Beach Club for a couple of years. It's seemed to remain very consistent.

If you drive, coming early (they open at 10am) will yield you the best parking. You will need to pay $50 pesos per person for entry and parking. You'll pay this at a gate. Drive until you cannot drive any further. There will be parking up at the beach club if you're there early. If not, you will have to walk from parking on the side of the road leading up to the beach club.

To get chairs and waiter service, just select any beach chair. A man in a white polo will come and tell you it's $200 pesos for adults and $100 for children. You can select chairs in the shade or not. If it's too windy, they won't use the umbrellas.

The food--the shrimp ceviche and tuna tostadas are amazing. The price is fantastic and the service is good. Get a michelda and Sol beer and you'll love it, trust me!

This is such a beautiful place. The beach is white sand, zero rocks, so great for adults and kids. The sargassum isn't as bad on that side of the beach so no worries there. They do close at 6:30 so again, it's a great place to spend the entire day.

We will continue to visit this amazing place! Totally recommend when you're near...