Barceló Maya Beach reviews
15438 TripAdvisor reviews
This hotel just gets an ok from me
Jennifer D on Mar 23, 2024
Just returned from a week at the Barcelo Maya Beach. Overall the beach and pools were beautiful. Not many complaints there. We enjoyed the colonial side the most as it had more water slides for our kids who are 7 and 10. Negatives we would’ve preferred more shaded areas. Everyone puts towels on the chairs by atleast 6 am so you need to be up first thing if u want a good spot. Also our kids went to the Barcy kids club on the beach/ caribe side for 3 hrs and when we picked them up they were both crying. They were doing an activity of making pirate hats and my youngest didn’t want to participate in getting her face painted like a pirate. She told them politely several times no thank u and instead of respecting her wishes. She was pinned down to the ground and they painted her face. She was very upset and cried and then they told her to sit down because she was bad and locked her in the club unattended while they all went on a pirate hunt. Apparently there was also another child that didn’t want to participate and was so upset that he threw up. My kids went to the other Barcy club on the colonial side and it was much better. Staff were very friendly no complaints. Rooms were very outdated. The rooms weren’t a huge deal to me as we were just sleeping there. Our toilet ran non stop and the flap inside was just being held together with a piece of tape. Beds were comfy but small. Food was ok nothing special. They could do better with their kids area. A lot of the same things and the chicken nuggets were always overcooked. We found the tropical/ colonial buffet was better and the food fresh and not as dried out. Breakfast was a disappointment for me. The pancakes were especially always dried out and cold. Overall I wouldn’t return to this resort for the amount of money we spent.
Muy bueno experiencia
Cristal R on Mar 20, 2024
Araceli was very helpful and gave us some good recommendations for gifts. She was friendly and gave us a good experience. We bought some chocolate, magenta and other souvenirs to bring home to our family and friends. Will happily come back to this shop for any of our other gift needs.
Bait and switch
catman2024 (Dallas, Texas) on Mar 19, 2024
Everything about the experience is ok. You get what you pay for, except don’t count on being placed in the building or part of the property where you think you are booking. I booked specifically in the caribe section to be centrally located in the property having two young kids that wanted to be close to the kids pool and flow rider. Upon arrival we were told our room was at beach, in the Tulum building which is as far away from anything as you can be. No explanation. No apology. No attempt to fix it. Just that’s your room, we have nothing else available, enjoy your stay. I book the room directly thru Barceló so it’s not an issue of using a discount travel agent.
Some common themes
caicoe (Mississauga, Canada) on Mar 18, 2024
This is my 3rd time to BARCELÓ, not by choice, family member paid. I stayed at Tropical twice and once here at Maya beach. The complex is massive and made up of 4 sections. Beach/Caribe and Colonial/Tropical. Beach/Caribe is more expensive because it’s nicer. The restaurants, buffet, grounds, sand is soft-beach is hard at Tropical, rooms, etc…This is not a 5 star hotel, it’s nice, but not that nice. Firstly, BARCELÓ has a consistent habit of downgrading guests from Caribe/beach to Tropical/Colonial. They say it’s all 5 star and not a downgrade but this is FALSE. There are numerous reviews of people complaining about how they oversell the better section and then have to dump you into Colonial/Tropical, even though you paid more. They tried this with us. It took me a week of phone calls and emails to all the providers involved and the hotel itself. In the end we got rooms at Maya beach and my room backed out on to a wall. I changed rooms the next day and ended up with something nicer. Our rooms were never next to each other but a small compromise to make to have access to a soft beach. On 2 different occasions while in the lobby I noticed a family checking in and having a meltdown because they were expected to downgrade to Tropical/Colonial. Yes, booking the restaurants is difficult and no they were never full and we ate at 5:30/6:00pm. Same as other people’s experience. We ate at the Mexican/Japanese/Italian. Note that there are the same restaurants in both sections and they are not as good at Tropical/Colonial. Like all the other reviews, food in general is ok. Everything you’ve read about the key cards is true. ALL 3 visits, spanning over 8 years, I’ve never not had a problem with the key cards. No I don’t keep them in the same pocket as my iPhone. Problems with keycards is just a thing here. Having to make the long hike back to the lobby for multiple key card replacements is easier to swallow on account of the beautiful grounds you have to hike through. Don’t stay here if you have mobility issues. Please note: there are NO oceanfront or beachfront rooms here. All the premium rooms face towards the ocean but are pool front. That’s your view. Maybe you’d catch a glimpse of the water from the third floor but that’s about it. Premium rooms have hammocks. All rooms get 24 hour room service so I don’t know what the extra cost is for. We rented a car and were able to check in ahead of the crowds so it’s not like we missed out on premium check in. Do NOT pay for a snorkel excursion. All the snorkeling you could want is right here. They are mostly located in all the buoy corners of both sections. The buoys are tied to some coral reefs. The best snorkelling is around the little rock island just at the end of the dock. I would swim out there from the left corner buoy of Caribe. You’re cutting across the parasailing boat path but they are easy to hear coming. I did so much snorkelling on the right side of the island I never actually made it to the left side. The coral there is colourful and vibrant. Lots of species of fish, weird creatures big and small. Was the highlight of the trip. Note: is a bad time to see the pyramids at Tulum. It’s under construction and lots of places are taped off. You can’t swim at the beach there anymore either. They make you walk 10 mins to another area to swim. It was a stunning beach though. If you do go to Tulum, you can’t have anything to drink. No cans. No bottles. Nothing. And there was one dude selling bottled water near the beach for $5. Maybe you’re permitted a refillable container? Here’s a list of the buildings from left to right and the 6 closest rooms to the beach because I had to have some kind of cut off point for listing the room numbers. I think there’s about 12 that are in the first building closest to the beach. All these rooms are ground floor TROPICAL Veracruz 7411,7421,7412,7422,7413,7423 Yucatan 7121,7111,7122,7112,7113,7123 COLONIAL Guanajuato 6421,6411,6422,6412,6413,6423 Jalisco 6111,6121,6112,6122,6113,6123 CARIBE Sayil 5114, 5115, 5117, 5116, 5119,5118 Labna 4115,4114,4117,4116,4119, 4118 MAYA BEACH Uxmal 3118,3119,3116,3117,3114,3115 Coba 2115, 2114, 2117, 2116, 2118, 2119, Tulum 1115, 1114, 1117, 1116, 1119, 1118, Veracruz is the longest walk to anything, great for privacy if that’s your priority. Will be publishing map with buildings labeled as well.
Sadly this will be our last visit
Carrie101 (Tulsa, OK) on Mar 18, 2024
This is our sixth time to come to Barcelo Maya Beach. We always stay in the premium ocean front king suite, and have loved every visit until this one. First the good stuff: Barcelo Maya has a massive beach that is almost always beautiful, white sand, some snorkeling on the palace, side, and room for families. The non-buffet food at the à la cart. Restaurants is pretty decent, for an all-inclusive that’s moderately priced. Our youngest (who is now 16) loves to do the Flo rider, and usually spends most of his vacation at the waterpark, taking lessons or just enjoying the surfing. There’s a nice fitness facility, and minor emergency, and (from what I’ve heard) a decent spa on property. Now, for the cons: it literally took us two hours to check in and we are in a premium suite so we get to use the premium facilities and processes which are supposed to shorten Check In time. There was literally one couple in front of us trying to make a dinner reservation. That two hours was most of us trying to get things squared away with a girl who must have been relatively new. She kept having to call and ask how to do things, and she was the only one available so we couldn’t even turn to someone else for help. At this point the 4 teenage boys that were with us, we’re starving as we thought we should be checked in in time to run over and grab some food at the buffet before it closed. Alas, that didn’t happen. Next, apparently, the resort now makes your dinner reservations for you, even though they don’t have any idea what your preferences are for restaurants or times. We literally paid for a premier room so that we could get upgraded restaurants without paying the additional fee, and, of course we were never booked into one of those. In order to get the restaurants of your choice, you usually have to accept sub optimal times. My niece and her husband ended up with a 945 dinner reservation just to get into Mexico Lindo on the night they wanted. As I mentioned earlier, the food at the restaurant is pretty good, but we know which ones we want to eat at, and my husband can’t eat very late in the day due to digestive issues. So that was one more thing that was detrimental and different to all our previous trips. Also, we’re not big fans of buffets and deal with them for lunch. The breakfast buffet is actually pretty good, but lunch is marginal at best. However, they didn’t book us reservations for every night we were here, only three of the five nights. So the first night we were just out of luck.. Another negative was, even though I booked the boys, a premium junior suite, they were not allowed to eat at the nicer restaurants without paying the $20 pp up charge. I have never used that room, so this could be on me, but I assumed when paying for the premium level, you were always allowed to eat at the palace restaurants. My bad, but still, it’s just being nickel and dimed one more time.. Room service has pricing, so I think if you’re not staying in a premium room now, you have to pay for that. Fortunately, at least the two of us in the ocean suites did not have to pay for room service. The waterpark: Harriet Island has always had charges and lessons always cost money and we have always been OK with that so that was nothing new. However, this time they forced our 16-year-olds to wear life jackets when inside the park premises. This is a waterpark that caters to children probably 10 and under with the exception of the surf simulator. My son been doing this for eight years, and has never had to wear a lifejacket while surfing at any of the places he’s done it. The water is literally 2 inches off the floor, and there is no pool or anything. All that did was create chafing and misery. Like I said, he typically spends his whole vacation here so I doubt he’ll care if we come back to this particular location again.. :/ It really makes me sad because we have always looked to Barcelo Maya as our go to family trip when we just want to get away and have a nice relaxing time for a few days. With all the new rules in the last year and a half, it just doesn’t seem like as great of an option anymore. Location