Fairmont Mayakoba

I'm a little surprised by all of the glowing reviews. The pool, beach, and transportation staff were all amazing, but the hotel has some huge issues that are completely overlooked in most of the reviews I've read. 1. The beach is a mile from most of the hotel rooms and even further from the lobby. The hotels website is not transparent about how far the walk actually is. There are plenty of bikes available, but as we were traveling with a child who can't bike, that wasn't an option for us. They have stops set up around the property to catch golf carts to the beach, but we found ourselves waiting as multiple full carts went by, sometimes for 15-20 minutes. This wasn't a huge deal, but I felt like the fact that transportation was required to get to the beach isn't really disclosed prior to arriving at the resort, and it was disappointing. 2. Nearly every beach chair was claimed by 9am. This wasn't a problem for my family as my husband is an early riser, but it's not relaxing for most families to rush out in the morning to put down items to claim chairs. It was the same issue at the pool. The worst part is many people didn't arrive until noon, meaning their chairs were sitting unused but reserved all morning. 3. The property itself is beautiful but the hotel is not maintained to the level that it should be. The ceiling in the atrium outside our bathroom was in disrepair and falling down. Many of the paths are not lit at night, including the ones from the golf cart stop to our room, which made getting home after dinner difficult, especially since the property has a racoon problem. On two different evenings I was startled by racoons crossing our path, which would have been avoided if the paths had even small lights. 4. The check out process left a lot to be desired. We arranged transport to the airport through the hotel and checked in with the concierge and bell staff the night before to make sure that our bags would be picked up from our room prior to our departure from the hotel. Our room was a 15 minute walk from the lobby, and we had been taken to our room via golf cart, so I had assumed when they picked up our bags, they would also be picking us up with a golf cart to take to the lobby where the hotel's car was to take us to the airport. When the bellman arrived to take our bags, he had a flatbed cart and wasn't able to take us to the lobby, just our bags. He told us we had to wait at the golf cart stop, with everyone else shuttling between the pool and the beach, to get to the lobby. We were in our airport clothes, and didn't want to sit on the wet seats of the golf cart, so we ended up walking back to the lobby with our carryon bags. It was not the best way to end our trip. 5. Erroneous kids club charge on our receipt. The most concerning issue came at check out when I asked to review our bill. I was presented with a bill that included multiple charges for the kids club, which my family did not use. When I asked about it, the desk clerk went into the back and returned with a receipt, showing my room number and last name, as well as three children's name and dates that they used the club. None of these children were mine. When I explained to the woman that there must have been a mistake because I don't have three children and I didn't use the club, she seemed inconvenienced and asked me multiple times if I was sure I didn't use the club. At that point I asked for the manager, who was very friendly and removed the charges from our bill, but I never got a straight answer about what happened. I'd like to think it was a simple mistake of a misheard room number, but that means the staff either don't confirm last names with room numbers, or someone was fraudulently using our name and room number, and the hotel didn't seem to care either way. For all of these reasons I would not recommend or return to the Fairmont Mayakoba. My family enjoyed our vacation but it didn't feel like the experience that we were expecting based on all of the reviews we read and everything we've heard about the brand in general. This was my first Fairmont experience and I'm hesitant to have another.

In general the entire staff was incredible especially the pool staff at the beach and at the adult pool. I remember Angel and Bonifacio, specifically. Breakfast at La Laguna was an entirely personal experience extended by Roman, the chef and Alejandra the general manager. SPA masseuses, Kenya, Margarita and Lala and Luis the valet who attended my husband were soo professional and kind. Ivan the golf cart driver as well, highly attentive. All in all our Fairmont Mayacoba visit was memorable and I am thinking of bringing my entire family next time.

Alberto and Hugo at the beach are so wonderful and helpful! I needed an umbrella for my young baby and they brought it immediately!! Yay beach team! Really appreciated you guys and the level of care and concern you had for my family. I will be using the beach everyday for sure !