TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Family with two adults and two teens, we stayed in a superior family villa with the kids using the sofa beds in the living room and the adults in the bedroom, which had 2 double beds. We would have preferred a king bed but apparently there are no king bed rooms with beds for the kids in the living room. It was nice to have 2 bathrooms, which may be the main difference between a superior family villa and a regular family villa. Our room had a beautiful ocean view and 2 flights of stairs to get to the pool. The beach waves were so big that we could hardly ever swim in the ocean but the pool was great, although you have to put your stuff on a chair by around 8 am each day to get a chair, which is something we recommend the hotel work on so there are not reserved but unused chairs all over the place. Great mexican food at the buffets.

The resort is clean, the food is good, Luis at the bar was the star of our trip, excellent friendly customer service. The beach was exceptional and the surf was perfect for bobing or body surfing. Pristine sandy beaches (no water shoes required) several very nice pools and the snack bar lunch was the best fajitas. Highly recommend, I'm already planning our next trip there with our teenagers/young adult children.

We stayed here a whole week of a longer stay in Ixtapa. By the end of the week we were kind of bored of the food at the buffet. While they have a lot of food choices compared to the other all inclusives we stayed at in Ixtapa, they don't vary much daily. Some evenings they did have a theme for the buffet so there would be a few other different choices. A couple things to note is that at breakfast the indoor buffet has made to order crepes, which we thoroughly enjoyed and both the indoor and outdoor buffets have made to order omelets. One of my favorites at the snack bar was the Tuna Tostada and my son rally liked the cheesesteak and the seafood burrito. We really appreciated that the bracelets they gave us also served as our room keys, so we didn't have to remember a key card. We did have several maintenance issues with the lights that they had to fix during our stay, but by the last day we also noticed there was water leaking out of the light over the sink, which also may be why we had other light issues they had to fix, they must have a plumbing issue somewhere that is leaking. Staff did make us cute towel animals for our oceanside room, ironically the teens were in a "garden" room and not once did they make them any towel animals. The drinks were decent, but wish they had a sign with drink ideas like the Holiday Inn down the road does. We don't drink often so we struggled to figured out different things to try. I also wish they had a big sign that said the daily activities rather than having to stand in front of a screen and wait for all the activities to scroll across. The grounds are beautiful and well maintained. We did go on the morning bike tour and that was well worth the 11 miles. You don't stop to see much anything on the way to the nature preserve and national park. There is a much short afternoon bike trip to the marina but we were always too hot by 4pm to go. It would be helpful if you can speak some Spanish, as many of the staff do not, although they did seem to have more people who could than some of the other places. We arranged our airport transfer in advance through Ixtapa Transfers and that went smoothly. The resort is 15-20 minutes from the airport. FYI - you only get 1 dinner reservation for every 3 days and sign up starts at 9am that day, but people start getting lined up at 8:30am. And the places for reservations are not the same as it shows on the screen, both days I lined up they were different. We ended up doing Italian both days and really enjoyed it. We would have liked to try something else, but we couldn't plan for it since the screen didn't match. We did participate in archery and bingo and you can win Barcelo branded merchandise at them. We went to several shows and even though I have older teens they liked the kids ones best because of the non-official (similar, but not quite) costumes they had. The kids show is a half hour before the adult show, which is an hour. Both shows are dance based shows and they will sing in the adult one as well. The adult shows were nice, they made a lot of costume changes and kept it interesting. I read about people having trouble getting chairs and was worried since we were there during spring break, but every day we were able to find 2-3 chairs together at 8:30am. We were flexible about where we were willing to sit, so I suppose if you only want to be around a specific pool it might be tough. The rooms have mini fridges in them and they did a good job of keeping it stocked daily. Since we don't like beer or peanuts we would ask them for more soda and chips instead and they were accomodating. We got massages at beach huts and they ranges between 400-500 pesos for an hour depending upon which one you go to. There are lots of shops and restaurants across the street.

location, weather in February / March are perfect. Like going to our second home, as the staff continually tell us

Very disappointing experience with Barceló Ixtapa. I called the hotel simply to extend my stay by one additional night and even agreed to pay more for a Premium upgrade. Instead of modifying my original reservation (7342SF148841), the call center agent created a new reservation (7342SG208246) and left the previous one active. Because of this internal mistake, the hotel is now trying to charge me a 50% cancellation penalty for a reservation I never asked to cancel. This situation was caused by the hotel’s own operational error, yet they are attempting to penalize the customer. I hope management reviews this case seriously and improves both their reservation process and customer service.