El Cozumeleno Beach Resort reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

4.0 Very Good

  • Cleanliness 4.5
  • Location 4.5
  • Rooms 4.0
  • Service 4.5
  • Value 4.0

7466 TripAdvisor reviews

TripAdvisor users rated this property 1 out of 5

Go Elsewhere

MacyP_13 (Jefferson City, Missouri, United States) on Jan 31, 2025

Please book elsewhere to save your vacation. This property was very disappointing and not typical of an all inclusive resort in Cozumel. The photos and social media marketing are very inaccurate. We recently arrived for a weeks stay with our young child for a mid winter getaway. Check in was 1+ hours. The resort is falling apart. There are broken things everywhere. The food appeared unsanitary. The pool was very dirty and murky green like lake water. We were not comfortable letting our child swim or eat here. The rooms are musty and run down. AC was not working. The bed was hard as a rock. We went down the road to another resort to save our vacation. This resort was probably once great but needs a complete renovation.

TripAdvisor users rated this property 1 out of 5

Just a warning before you book...

Sheri M (Knoxville, Tennessee) on Jan 28, 2025

I'm not sure where to start with this one. I have never had such a disappointing experience as I had at this place. Although the staff was very kind & attententive, I don't really have much more positive to report. The food is terrible, the rooms are outdated & the whole resort is falling apart. The liquor is of very low quality & probably watered down. The sliding doors from the hotel to the pool areas outside don't work, so you have to push the panels open & squeeze through. There's 2 hot tubs (lol) - one is ice cold & the tiles are falling off. The other is an old fiberglass model that looks like something you find at an abandoned house (disgustingly dirty & looks like it's not been used in years. The water was green). The pools were fairly clean but have not been taken care of & are in major need of repair. The "indoor pool" is actually outside, but it's kind of in a covered patio. It's just as cold as the other pools. Which, in hot weather, might be inviting, but at 70 degrees, it is unusable. During my whole stay, I saw one couple brave the pool (they looked miserable) & a dad with his kid (kids are resilient & dads can be saints). There is one tiny elevator that seems to be barely working & very slow. The stairs are, well, an eyesore & were dirty, with an old ugly carpet full of stains & picked fabric. The shop in the lobby is small & extremely overpriced. I had to buy a waterproof phone pouch that is normally 2 for $10 & in this store one was $35. A small bag of chips was $10. If you want a decent dinner, you have to get up early in the morning & be in a line by 7:15 am to wait till 8 am to schedule a reservation for a seat in the dining room. The reservations run out quickly, so you can wait for an hour & still be denied a table. Then, when you go to dinner, there are many empty tables. The dinner in the dining room is actually pretty good, if you can get a table. The other restaurant is outside & pretty unsanitary. There are birds flying around & pecking at the food left on tables (noisy black birds, not cute ones). The buffet is pretty small & the choices are pretty sad. You can stand in line for 15 minutes to get whatever main dish they are making fresh, but you do have a long wait, just standing there in the way of other people trying to use the buffet. The food containers on the buffet are old & broken & there's no good way to access the food inside. You can't get drinks at the buffet, you have to wait till someone comes to wait on you, which can take a while. Then, by the time you actually get your drink, you're done with your meal & ready to go already. There's no music or entertainment to speak of. They have an activities desk, but there's not much going on & the only thing we decided to do was mini golf (4/10). MOST IMPORTANTLY & WHAT REALLY TOPPED OFF A CRUMMY VACATION - the TV in the room was old (2017 Samsung) & we didn't even watch it. It wasn't secured in any way to the table it was on & was sitting near the edge. I was packing on the last day & when I walked past it, my sweater caught the corner & knocked it off. It busted. We went to the front desk to let them know. They sent us back to the room with a guy who worked there who checked it & said "don't worry about it." Then, when we went to check out, they had an additional charge of $250 for the 8 year old piece of crap tv I knocked off. WHAT!?!? I said I wasn't paying that much & asked for a manager. They sent someone who simply said I had to pay to be able to check out & when I found a tv at a local store online for half of that & offered to buy, they threatened to get the police involved. So, to check out, my boyfriend (whose birthday was the reason we were here, paid the $250). Never in my life have I had such a horrible travel experience, not at old, hole in the wall dives just off the interstate or in fancy 5-star hotels. This place just left me very disappointed & sad that my boyfriend's birthday trip wasn't in any way as we hoped. I just feel like I needed to post my opinion so other people can know what to expect - I didn't & could have stayed at a nicer place for all the money this trip cost me in the end. We expected all-inclusive to mean you didn't need to leave the resort to have a good time. That is the only time we had fun - when we left the resort. The rest of Cozumel is lovely.

TripAdvisor users rated this property 1 out of 5

Don’t waste your money

Tonya F on Jan 28, 2025

This resort needs a complete renovation. There is peeling paint on the outside and inside, there was a wet towel that we saw by the pool and it was there 7 days later when we left as was a chicken bone. The food in the buffet is tasteless and the same thing every day. The alcohol is the cheapest they can get and tastes like it. The pool was a green color all week and the hot tub wasn’t hot. The tiles are breaking around the pool edge and there was a wire visible in the pool. This was our first experience with an all inclusive and probably our last. Most of the staff was nice but there was a few that acted like they didn’t want to be there.

TripAdvisor users rated this property 1 out of 5

Very disappointing. Would not recommend.

GaelP73 on Jan 27, 2025

This is an older resort, and it shows. There seems to be a general lack of care in all aspects of the resort. We were first met with rude and unfriendly desk clerks and guest services staff. Not enough key cards so couples had to share. If you didn't want to leave a credit card for "incidentals" you were required to pay a $150 cash deposit. No information about the resort or its amenities was given at check-in. We just had to figure it out. There was a leak in our bathroom sink which was repaired but our television remote did not work, and they never tried to fix it. The elevators were out of service on multiple occasions with no alternative but to climb multiple sets of stairs to go to rooms. Cleanliness is severely lacking. There were spills on tile floors and sat for days. A wet bath towel was dropped beside the pool and was still there 3 days later. Green mold was in the bottom of one of our drinking glasses. Used bath towels were removed from our room but never replaced. There were no washcloths. Our key cards did not work on several occassions. The food at the buffet is standard to most resorts in Mexico but the number of dishes at the buffet was about 1/4 of what most resorts offer. The inside dining room was better food, but reservations were required and the line to make reservations started each morning at 7:30. By 8:00am, there were no tables available. We went one night out of seven for a birthday dinner and they allow us to make reservations a day earlier than normal. I paid $40 extra for a birthday cake, that was surprisingly good. There is no evening entertainment at El Cozumeleno so after dinner there is nothing to do. Besides the front desk and guest services staff, the other employees were friendly and accommodating. There were 10 in our group. None of us were happy with the service or the amenities at El Cozumeleno and none of us will return. We heard the same opinion from almost every other guest we met.

TripAdvisor users rated this property 4 out of 5

El Cozumeleno January 2025

Randy B (Missouri) on Jan 24, 2025

The hotel is older and as mentioned in other reviews needs updating and maintenance but we enjoyed our stay mainly because of the staff. Victor at the buffet and Carlos in main restaurant provided great service. Food was good and location is good. Very happy for the price we paid.

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