Hotel Riu Palace Riviera Maya, Playa del Carmen

This was our 3rd time @ this resort, Beach is great,service is good but last time was a little better,Graet location,walking distance to Playa Del Carmen,We enjoy going to this place because it is very nice,clean and safe for families with kids,will go back again because my family loves it...

Wife and I just returned from RIU Palace Riviera Maya, and had one of the best time ever. We are retired and travel about three times a year. This is the first time to an all Inclusive, and plan to return to the Riu in December this year. We were at ground level and found no security issues. Security in the room included deadbolt door lock, security lock on balcony door, and in room safe where U program personal combination. At our arrival at the desk, we received a friendly welcome and given a tropical drink. The hotel was beautiful as were are room and public areas. The buffet was good and had something for everyone. We especially enjoyed the specialty restaurants ( try the noodle side dish at the Asian restaurant J and all the side dishes at Mexican restaurant also J Breakfast Buffet always a plus. Room service is very quick. The beach is beautiful at the hotel and throughout the adjacent hotels ( no private beaches in Mexico, all beaches are federal property so explore). The pool area is great, plenty of lounge chairs, swim up bar with in water stools, music and excellent service. The bar serves quality liquor just ask, ( Beefeater, Johnny Red, Absolute, Don Pedro, etc). Nightly entertainment exceeded our expectations. We cruise a lot, and we feel the entertainment at the hotel is as good if not better. Aside from the entertainment at the Palace you can use the facilities at all the RIU in the area that includes the disco at Riu.Tequila all inclusive. Transportation : Taxi to the town of Play Car is about $4-$5 each way and less from Palace to Tequila hotel price includes tip. Now for the best , the Service, I only wish I could mention every employee at the hotel but believe me, they will go out of the way to make your stay enjoyable, from the bell boy to the omelet girl at breakfast, the pool, lobby , and sports bar bartenders etc. If you don't enjoy your self, try collect stamps.

Wow, where do I even begin, I guess at the beginning. My husband and I fell in love with the Riu hotels about 10 years ago, with our first visit. We spent most of our time in the Cancun area and decided this year we would try some where else. So like you I began reading all the reviews and choose the Riu Palace Riviera Maya. We bought our tickets last March and then began the dreaded Swine Flu. We choose to go any way and BOY were we glad that we did. We began by using Apple vacations, (which we have done 9/10 years) we learned the first year. We took the USA 3000 charter flight with no problems, arrived in Cancun and then took the ride to Playa Del Carmen. Now here is our ONE AND ONLY hick up. We read so many times by other readers how you should take private transportation to your hotel, but we elected to ignore. We were wrong, I know it is already paid for, but get off your wallet and take a private ride. It took us 2 hours to get to our hotel, we were the last to drop off and we had to make every little stop and they were not exactly on the way. With all that being said we learned our lesson next time we too will get off our wallet. Remember this is our first time to this hotel, so upon our finally getting there we were thrilled. We have always tried to stay at Palaces, but this one was the icing on the cake. Check in was no problem. We joined Riu class upon our first visit years ago, so we are now Riu Class Gold members. We were given an upgrade automatically, and shown to our room, I have to be honest, I was not pleased. So I went back to the front desk and asked them if we could have something on the 3rd floor and they moved us with in 15 minutes. This room was great, we had room 2114, We could see the ocean, pools and garden. The room did have the musty smell, but I was prepared, I brought to airwick plugins and within no time things were smelling fresh. (I always do this, I have learned) Our air worked fine, we had plenty of water pressure things were going great. Here are some things that also might help you, bring some fabric softner sheets in a baggie with you, then when you are ready to leave put them on top of your cloths, this will help with the mill dew smell. I also pack my cloths in the vaccume seal bags and roll the air out, making sure I have a couple of fabric softner sheets in each one. They don't have that smell when I get home. I will agree with the sign up for the nightly restaurants, that is a pain. We ate at the steakhouse and the Fusion and enjoyed both of those. The main restaurant has theme nights so we enjoyed eating during those nights. Oh they are also closing one of the other restaurants at night, because of the swine flu, to do extra cleaning. I can also tell you that the main restaurant does not have much at lunch, the only one serving a full menu is Chilli's. But there is a lot to choose from, and this is the one that is close to the pool area, which is where we found our selves any way. Theme nights at the main restaurant are as follows: Monday/Caribean, ***Wednesday/Mexican, Thursday/Gala and Saturday/Asian. The other nights are International and just so so. We really enjoyed the band that played in the courtyard, the breeze was just right. All in all the vacation was just FANTASTIC, the staff was wonderful. We were there from June 18th -25th and the occupancy was just at 65%, so please GOOOOOOOO and enjoy. They are so happy that we as tourist are there and can not do more for us. We are planning on going back at Christmas and I am counting the days. I hope I have helped you, and if you need to ask questions please do. Oh by the way the manager's name is Teodoro Reyna Chale.

This is a nice resort, but there exist serious security issues that may, as in our case, result in room burglary and loss of expensive personal items. While you spend the day relaxing on the beach, or lounging by the pool, rooms are mostly unsupervised. Most troubling, the cleaning staff leaves your room door, as well as other adjacent room doors, wide open at all times they are being serviced, allowing unchecked entry by anyone sufficiently opportunistic to come in and steal your stuff. Safes in rooms are provided, but these are extremely small, insufficiently commodious to fit your laptop, etc. The safes are not electronically keycoded, so you have to keep a key with you at all times, and hope that you don't misplace it. In our case, the burglary that took place in one of our rooms and resulted in the loss of expensive electronics was allegedly witnessed by the individual responsible for cleaning those rooms, or so she claimed. She might have played a role in our loss, or she might have made an honest mistake, assuming that the man she said she witnessed committing this act belonged in the room. What's important is that the hotel refuses any responsibility for any part of our loss even though, by the admission of its own staff, it took place while my room was wide open and unprotected. In an effort, I suspect, to just make us go away, they made a big show of promising to report our situation to their "customer care" department, who, they suggested, would then be contacting us......nope. If you want to bring your nice things with you to this resort, you must be prepared to lug them around with you, to the beach, the pool, lunch, etc. It's not worth it. You can find a better place in Playa del Carmen than this one.

3 couples of us went together in 5/08, and was absolutely awesome!!!..rooms, food, drinks, service, beach were all excellent...if anyone didn't like this place, they can't be satisfied.....we are planning to go back next year