Andaz Mayakoba Review: Great Inside but Rough Around the Edges

I wasn’t really sure how to title this because rarely have I (actually we – me, my wife, and our 2 year old) enjoyed a resort so much yet been so constantly frustrated by staff indifference – while at the same time so many other staff were some of the best we’ve ever encountered at a resort. 

You see, the Andaz Mayakoba, with just over 200 rooms spread out over a very expansive property is 100% the kind of place you go to escape the hustle and bustle of both city resorts and “resort factories” – the kind with so many rooms that regardless of the high-end brand attached to it, you never feel like more than a number.

Enough of the staff lives the “guest first” mantra here (and I’ll go into the beauty of the property as well, of course) to make it a place we will definitely return. And we know that even if it’s in 2 years, some of the staff will remember us and we’ll remember them – because it’s that kind of place.

But I’ll equally mention a few shortcomings of the resort that you should be aware of (some of which they could fix with more eyes on staff identifying those that need some retraining).

How We Booked the Andaz Mayakoba

Because we were booking for absolute peak season – our dates were Dec 21 – 28, right over the Christmas holidays, I booked it a full 13 months in advance, the day rooms went on sale – also applying a Suite Upgrade Award. The room was 29,000 points a night – peak Category 6 which has a range of 21,000 – 29,000 points a night. The cash price for a Standard Room was over $800 (and the Suite well over $1,000) making this a sweet deal with points though I will note that off season this hotel can be in the $300-$500 a night range, so there are times you might prefer to pay cash. 

Suite Upgrade Awards (which you can earn one of after 40 elite nights in a calendar year, despite being thought of as a benefit only for top tier Globalists) book into one of 3 categories: A one bedroom ADA suite, a 1 bedroom lagoon suite, or a 1 bedroom beach area suite. At no point in the year since booking did we ever see any beach area suites for sale (again, peak time!) but my wonderful “My Hyatt Concierge” was able to get us relocated from an ADA Suite into a Beach Area suite. 

I didn’t realize at the time just how important that was and I’ll explain later why I would only stay again with a confirmed Beach Area Suite – it made that much of a difference!!

I’ll note that I rack up my World of Hyatt points mostly not via Hyatt stays (though some are from stays!) but via cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred®, Chase Sapphire Reserve® and the Chase Ink Business Preferred®. I do this because of the bonus multipliers on these cards meaning that I’m usually earning 3 points per dollar spent (I,e. from my business’ ad spend on the Ink Preferred at 3X).

Check-In

I’d arranged a transfer to the hotel via SUV from the Hilton Cancun where we started our trip for a few days. The Mayakoba excels at providing transportation, utilizing their own cars and drivers. The driver arrived promptly, with the requested car seat, and with a clean car. While the price was higher than you could otherwise find, we didn’t regret paying a bit more to have the hotel guaranteeing it.

We’d made the bold move to arrive to the hotel about 2 hours before checkin time. We had to check out of the Hilton anyway and we hoped for the best with an early checkin (which is of course never guaranteed unless perhaps you pay to guarantee it). Unfortunately, the room was not ready and they did not know when it would be. We took our son to the Kid’s Club and waited…. and waited. As we were approaching 3pm, we had the person in the Kid’s Club call housekeeping and they were told the room was actually just completed and ready. She even asked they specifically release the room (in other words, mark it as ready for us to check in). We asked that they send a golf cart for us and that they give the driver the keys. This was relayed to reception.

A golf cart came to pick us up but had no keys. OK, off to reception… where they stated our room was not yet ready. I insisted they check again and – magically – it was ready. 

All that to say, check in was far from flawless. On top of that the check in agent doing our paperwork was obviously very sick. Large sniffles and coughs and I was definitely afraid I’d catch whatever she had. Thankfully I didn’t – although she still had some illness lingering when she apathetically checked us out 7 days later.

Another golf cart collected our luggage and we were whisked off to our room. All in all, checkin was just annoying, but certainly not a huge deal. I do think hotels should make an effort to “set the tone of the stay” at upscale properties so I think my decision to type all of that out is to make a point that the initial tone had us trepidatious of our decision to choose Mayakoba.

Happily that was unfounded as we ultimately LOVED our stay.

But I do want to stress that we talked to many other families that complained they had a scattered check-in experience and all of us were sharing tips that weren’t disclosed to us at check-in. I’ll go into detail on those in a later section.

The Property Layout

This is a good time to mention how the resort is essentially split into two distinct parts, with a distance of around a mile between them (which you can navigate by golf cart or freely provided bicycles).

On the top part, you have reception, the breakfast restaurant Cocina Milagro, which also has nightly themed buffet dinners, the most upscale restaurant in Casa Amate, the Kid’s Club the dock where you pick up the free lagoon boat tours (book at the concierge), and the Lagoon pool.

This is also, of course, where the lagoon area rooms are. Before you visit, you can’t anticipate just what it means to be a 10 minute golf cart ride from the beach (plus time to get a golf cart) as well as 10 minutes from your room should you need to return for anything.

On the other side of the golf cart / bike ride, you have the beach area. This is where you have the beach (of course 😉 ) which does have full F&B service, the Beach pool, Tinta Del Pulpo (the one restaurant that is walk in only – no reservations and there was never a wait), a Vegan restaurant that also became the nightlife spot (If you can call one or two people hanging out listening to music nightlife! It’s not that kind of resort…) and Sotavento, an upscale restaurant focused on the grill and fresh caught fish (and chicken and steak). 

The resort is truly divided – however golf carts do make it fairly easy to get from one side to the other. Since the resort was at 100% capacity when we were there, we did sometimes have to wait a frustratingly long time for a ride, but I suspect that is not the case during any time that the resort isn’t at capacity like Christmas week.

Bonus: our son LOVES golf cart rides so these were a pro, not a con for us.

Our Room – Beach Area Suite

A few quirks aside (like a large one bedroom suite without a half bath and the impossibility of opening the shower door onto a bathmat – nearly ensuring a 50/50 chance of a head plant on exit), the room was awesome.

Spacious for sure, with a patio outside both the bedroom and the living room.

The absolute best part of the room was the HEATED plunge pool. Yes, let me say it again, the plunge pool was HEATED. Not scalding hot, but noticeably heated.

🙂

I’ve had plenty of hot suites with plunge pools before, but even in warm climates like Mexico, a plunge pool in the shade that isn’t heated may be less than lukewarm … it can actually be cold. And while that is a nice cool off in scalding hot weather, it’s the opposite when it’s not. 

Needless to say, this was easily my favorite part of the room.

There were unlimited bottles of water provided on request. They actually stocked the minibar with glass bottles of water but kindly gave us plastic ones when we explained how many of the glass ones would get broken by our 2 year old 😉 The minibar includes both soft drinks and liquor/beer, but note that only the soft drinks and water are complimentary.

Housekeeping was generally quite good, though on a couple of the days they did some off things like not replace the only towels we asked for (taking ild ones, just not replenishing) and that sort of thing, but pretty minor stuff.

The Pools and the Beach

Let’s start at the main attraction – the pool and the beach. Both have food and drink service (I can’t understand why some resorts make it so hard to just relax at the pool and order things, but that is not an issue here at all.)

The Beach:

Despite the hotel being at capacity, we never struggled to get beach loungers which were well cushioned and comfortable. None of those raggedy plastic chairs you find at lower end resorts. The food menu was solid, though a bit short.

Tip: If they have the ingredients for something (simple!) they will make it even if not on the menu. I got flank steak quesadillas a few times despite not being on the menu and they also graciously brought fresh chips and salsa roja/verde on request.

While the water wasn’t bathtub warm (this was a late December visit, so highs were only around 80), it was still quite nice and tame. We kayaked a few times in the complimentary (one or two person) kayaks.

I will note that though the workers at the beach always got the job done, they were uniformly never as friendly as the pool staff. Perhaps they were just busier? They weren’t rude per se – just noticeably not as jovial as the pool staff. 

The Beach Pool:

This pool was large and in kind of a Y shape. The whole areas was just the one big pool – no jacuzzi or anything – but it did the job just fine. Service at the pool was STELLAR. Buckets of ice with cold water bottles came within minutes of selecting seats and being brought towels.

Jair looked after us most days and his manager (who manages food and beverage for the entire beach area) Daniel was just amazing.

The Lagoon Pool:

If you are staying up on the other side of the lagoon (a golf cart ride away from the beach) you have your own pool. It’s actually a FAR better pool area than the beach pool, with a true kiddie pool (very shallow) and multiple pools. 

However, this pool seemed to be the forgotten stepchild. Despite being a better “pool,” we never saw any service in two different visits. One of the two times there weren’t even any towels. The other time, there were towels (then there weren’t for a while, then they brought some more) but still no server. Cocina Milagra was right next to it, so I don’t quite understand the lack of food and drink service. 

If you are on the lagoon side, I totally get using this pool since a golf cart ride to the beach is a pain and you aren’t remotely near your room for anything you might need during the day – yet I do wish it was better staffed.

If that situation drastically changed, I’d probably be less adamant about being in a beach area room.

Andaz Mayakoba Dining

The dining options at the Andaz are admittedly a *bit* limited, but not untenably so.

The options are:

Beach Area

• Sotavento (fine dining on the beach – grill focused, fresh fish, right by the waves): We enjoyed our meal here. Everything came out on hot plates, so your meal kept cooking and staying very hot throughout the meal.

  

  

• Tinta Pulpo (casual Mexican): the only restaurant casual enough to walk in without needing a reservation, we dined there for dinner twice (plus they supplied the food for the pool) and thoroughly enjoyed both the food and service each time. Aside from their pico de gallo and housemade chips and housemate salsa roja and verde, they had a sampling of bottles of various salsas on the table. Nice touch. Great drinks as well – and don’t be afraid to ask for a Carajillio here or anywhere else, even when not on the menu.

  

  Theirs was perfect (though no lit cigar in it like the first time I had one in Mexico City ;-)). You can take breakfast here (including as Globalist) which is menu only – no buffet. See Cocina Milagro below for the breakfast buffet.

  

• Vegan Bar: Sorry folks, I have no idea what food they served, but I’m guessing it was Vegan!

  

Lagoon Area

• Casa Amate – fine dining: This was the most upscale dining on property (and fairly expensive). While the menu was a bit small and we didn’t have the easiest time selecting our dishes, what we ordered was all fantastic. Those are my Venezuelan Arepas as well as a cauliflower dish that’s hard to explain.

  

• Casa Milagro – casual: This was one of the two available breakfast locations and Globalist breakfast could be had here. However, whereas the beach area Tinta Pulpo only had a menu, this restaurant has both a menu (the same one) and a large buffet with an omelet station, a breakfast quesadilla station (with both a couple of meat and vegetarian options each day), a variety of rotating hot dishes, a make-your-own Chilaquiles station, cheese, meats, and breads, and fantastic pastries. I’m obsessed with “Concha” breads, which have a light dusting vanilla or chocolate frosting adhered to a sort of sweet bread and theirs was great. You could also take lunch here as well as dinner which was a rotating buffet theme.

Handling of Food Allergies

A constant concern of us when traveling is how a hotel or resort handles severe food allergies with our son (who isn’t old enough to know he has them). We are happy to report that the Andaz Mayakoba excelled at this on all fronts, always double and triple checking, suggesting alternatives, and making food to order for him at the morning buffet. They knew from Day 1 (of 7 nights!) what he liked and made it fresh daily. When one day I picked up a doughnut and he wanted some and they said it wasn’t 100% safe, they promised to bake a few just for him the next morning and sure enough, they did 🙂 

Dining Options in Mayakoba at Other Resorts

With only a handful of dining options at the Mayakoba, many people take advantage of the free golf cart rides to neighboring resorts for dinners.

From everything I’ve read this is normally a fairly easy affair, however over the Christmas holidays, the Rosewood would not let any guests dine from other resorts, the Banyan Tree was exceptionally difficult, and the Fairmont was attainable only via OpenTable and only at the start of our stay.

We managed to dine once at the Fairmont at La Laguna, one of the worst Mexican meals we have had in a long, long time.

We also got a 5:30 reservation (the latest possible!) at Cello at Banyan Tree. We arrived nearly an hour late due to an absolute crazy downpour that started just as we were supposed to get picked up and no golf cart came with the people on the phone basically just telling us the golf cart wasn’t coming for a while and they didn’t know when one would come. Cello was going to make us wait an indeterminate length of time while our 2 year old started to cry from hunger but eventually let us sit in an area of the restaurant with no other tables – which was actually wonderful under the circumstances. Once seated, our waiter was absolutely wonderful and the meal was spectacular (try the lamb chops over lamb risotto!!) making up for the hiccup.

And yes, I get it wasn’t the restaurant’s fault we were so late due to the downpour, but we did ask the Andaz to call them 3 times and they apparently never did and after traveling for an hour to get there in the rain, we really couldn’t bare a U-Turn….We’d reserved a golf cart the day before! it really felt like since we were from the Andaz, we were simply second class.

Now you’re wondering how we “reserved a golf cart” the day before, so let me share some secrets…

The Secrets

One thing that was uniformly shared among other guests we ran into was that nobody was told anything at check-in. Very much a “figure out how things work on your own” situation.

So here are two things you need to know.

1. If you scan the QR code in your room, there is an option for messaging them via WhatsApp. We didn’t know this until our 6th day out of 7!!!!! We hear that was a great way to communicate with the front desk / concierge people.
2. More importantly – you need to know about the Red Cart!! Seriously, this was the best thing nobody told us about and it was only our terrible meal at the Fairmont La Laguna that caused their manager to call a Red Cart home for us.You have to understand how we got to La Laguna the “normal” way. We called for a golf cart by the beach. One arrived 10 or so minutes later and took us to reception. There we crossed over and waited for a larger cart which took us to the Fairmont entrance. There, we boarded a third golf cart which took us to La Laguna. Total travel time was ONE HOUR!

   So this Red Cart….. it picked us up at La Laguna, went on some small trails by the beach, and had us at our room (and I timed it!) in 5 minutes. FIVE!

   That bad meal changed everything since we got to learn of the Red Cart. And that is how we were able to book the Red Cart for our 5:30 reservation at Cello. However, when the rain (monsoon) began around 5:20, we were unaware that the Red Carts might simply just not pick up a reserved ride.

   So – I guess you need to know that, too 😉 The Red Cart is not an Andaz provided service. It’s provided by the Mayakoba complex and reports to no-one, so that’s equally worth knowing about. But under normal circumstances, any manager at a restaurant (or a concierge) can order you a Red Cart. 

   Now you know 🙂

The Kimbo Kid’s Club

For such a family friendly resort, the Kimbo Kid’s Club was a surprise miss. It was incredibly small, with one room for under-4’s (with a parent only) and another room for 4 and up – but just not a ton of toys or things to do. Our son was happy here for an hour or so a few times, but that was about it. Contrast that with the Grand Hyatt Playa Del Carmen – a completely different type of hotel – but one with a Kid’s Club that he kept asking to go to, even multiple times a day, with several rooms and a shaded outdoor area for soccer and other things.

The Andaz also advertised a service where you could pay to have someone watch your under-4 at the Kid’s Club by the hour, but you could only book on arrival and they were full for the day when we arrived which was odd since no kids were there at the time. Though once we had a full lay of the land in there, we wouldn’t have considered it as he’d have been miserably bored.

The bright spot was that we hired a babysitter through the hotel that comes from an external agency but was reasonably at $20+tax an hour (double on holidays) and ours was just amazing with our son. That’s always luck of the draw, I know, but it was a great experience. We never leave our son alone with a sitter at these resorts but love to have an extra set of hands so we can have at least a handful of relaxing minutes…

The Spa

Globalists were allowed to use the spa facilities without charge any time, though this was simply a jacuzzi, steam and sauna. 

Massages were traditional and on point and priced at around $300 for 90 minutes.

The ambiance was nice and it wasn’t at all bad, though also not super memorable.

The Lagoon Tour

Schedule your free boat ride on the lagoon with the concierge. It’s free and interesting, with the chance to see various birds and (maybe!) a croc. It takes you around the rest of the Mayakoba property which includes a Fairmont, Bayan Tree and Rosewood.

We didn’t leave the resort for anything besides a quick trip to the hospital, as one does!, so I can’t comment on excursions. 

Upcoming 2025 Renovations

While I can’t say I had any overwhelming feeling of the property needing too much work (and you know I speak up in a review when I do!), I just learned (while writing this review) that the Andaz Mayakoba will be shutting down for around 10 months starting around February 2025. Hopefully they only improve on what is already a great experience.

Overall Impressions of the Andaz Mayakoba

We loved it! I can’t write a hotel review without addressing the negatives, like some of the staff’s indifference as mentioned in the intro, but we also felt enough of the staff (more than half, easily) was so spectacularly committed to excellence that net-net, we loved the staff. 

In fact, a week later I’m still wearing the room key on my wrist because it invokes a memory of serenity.

The property itself was an ultimate escape from the hustle bustle of both life and Cancun, as it’s pretty isolated while still not too far from town if you need it. That said, this is a place to unwind, spend your days at the pool or beach, perhaps bike around, maybe have some meals at the other resorts for a change of pace, and generally relax. 

While I rarely would visit the same place twice without quite a long time in between, I can definitely seeing staying again within the next couple of years for our winter retreat from the cold of the Northeast.

The hotel is also not obscenely expensive, giving you another reason to choose it over the many, many options around the greater Cancun / Playa Del Carmen area.

Disclosure: None! We paid our own way, via points for the room, and were in no way guests of the property –  nor did they have any idea that I write this blog.

(The Ink Preferred‘s welcome bonus would cover 3 nights at the Andaz Mayakoba based on the rates as of January 2025)

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