Gran Bahia Principe Riviera Maya

Simple: avoid this hotel at the moment. I am currently staying here and it is chaos. The hotel itself is beautiful, and all the staff in the bars, restaurants, entertainment areas and housekeeping are amazing. They are friendly, attentive and doing a great job. However, the hotel group is currently operating a new system where guests have access to all three hotels: Akumal, Tulum and Coba. You used to be able to book à la carte restaurants 10 days in advance, but this has now been scrapped and they only operate on a rotation, meaning they are not open every day. This has made dining extremely difficult, especially for families with children. Last night I arrived at La Gran Tortuga for 6pm and waited 1 hour 45 minutes for a table, as only three restaurants were open that we could realistically use with children. We are now in our second week at Tulum. Half of the buffet restaurant is still closed off, and there is only one bar open in the evening. Despite the number of guests increasing significantly during the week, the facilities have not been increased to match demand. The result is long queues and a very poor guest experience. The situation is made worse by the fact that guests from all three hotels are now mixing freely, and many are choosing to eat at Tulum because the buffet here is better than Coba and Akumal for kids, which I can confirm is the case with Akumal having eaten there. While the staff are doing their best, the system is clearly not working. At the moment, I would strongly advise avoiding this hotel until these issues are resolved.

Magnificent complex. We were in room 1214 with a magnificent view of the pool and sea. The food truck not too far from the room was great if we got hungry at night. At the kids' club, you can see that the activity leaders love their job; even with the language barrier, my daughter was not bored, she loved the team and the activities, we couldn't go every night, but the ones we did go to were great. The buffet is great, a theme every night. The servers, nothing to complain about, very attentive. We had a wonderful stay. Oh, also there are animals, it was magical. Thanks to all the employees who were super nice and do a great job. We will be back.

Another great holiday with Bahía Príncipe, back to Tulum this time, if I’m honest I prefer Coba as a base but being able to go back and forth is fine. Firstly on arrival we were checked in by Miriam who we felt went above and beyond with her service, also during our holiday when we were passing through the main lobby she would ask how things were going and if we needed anything, she was really lovely. Food was good but the lack of available restaurant bookings was an issue(I believe this system of pre booking has changed) there was none available for our first week though the ones we went to in the second week which according to people trying to book were full were actually barely half full. Nightly entertainment was very good, some really good shows. Kids also loved all the friendly wildlife running around.