Overview
Opened in 2008, the luxurious All Inclusive Luxury Resort Grand Velas Riviera Maya is one of the newest resorts to distinguish Riviera Maya as a premier vacation destination. The uniquely Mexican world-class hospitality we provide is "Beyond All Inclusive, Beyond All Compare", and we are proud to be the only family-friendly All Inclusive resort in the Mexican Caribbean to have been rated Five Diamonds by the AAA.
Check in
3 p.m.
Check out
12 p.m.
Inclusions
- Daily activities
- Round-trip airport transfers
- Nightly entertainment
- 24 hour room service
- All taxes
Rooms
Amenities
Location
Reviews
Poor value for a generally average (but not awful) experience
Caitlin K on Mar 23, 2024
Man this makes me so sad to write, but I will share what I wrote in the facebook travel group. I was very excited about this trip, and probably set the expectations too high. There are definitely pros and cons to this place, and I think the "value" really depends on when you go and how much you pay. This is not an experience I would pay more than $800 per night for, for sure. It is possible that this is the best all-inclusive for families, but its worth saying that the quality of this place just doesn't rival 5 star non-AI hotels, which would outperform it in every category. THE GOOD: --- Drinks: Consistently excellent, unlike other AI hotels they seem to be using generally better quality alcohol and are not watering down drinks. At restaurants they use proper glassware and have proper cocktail menus. This aspect of the experience was a 10/10. --- The grounds: Beautiful and unique. This isn't luxe by any means, but in the zen area in particular the forested paths, abundant animals (even a crocodile that regularly visited our room!), and the pools were really nice and relaxing. We preferred zen by far as it was smaller and had much easier access to service. -- The Farm: There was an animal farm with goats, sheep, horses, bunnies, and piglets when we visited. We were told it is only there for the easter season, and so we got lucky with this. But it was a really nice addition that was great for younger kids. THE AVERAGE/ MEDIOCRE -- Food: Certainly some of the food was good (can't say any dish we had was great), and a lot of the food still had a "mass production" quality to it. The menus at the pool are short and don't change, so plan on your lunches looking pretty darn similar for a week. At the price thats being paid, more variety for the pool/lunch menus is deserved. If you're a vegetarian, you're extra stuck. The meals at the restaurants were variable. Frida was totally average and we ended up cancelling our second reservation there. Lucca was good but not great. Sen Lin was probably the best, but had really no viable kids menu. In many instances it felt like food was being "dressed up" to look fancy, but if youre a foodie, you can see the lipstick on the pig pretty darn quick. -- Room: We stayed in the Zen section. Overall I liked zen more. The rooms were totally fine but definitely dated. There were no electricity outlets by the bed, for example, and we we could not charge our phones overnight with a normal charger. We are a family of 4 (with a 2yo and 4yo). When I read reviews I saw that they were very child friendly and set up a tent in the room and brought stuffed animals --- nope! I waited every day, and then finally two nights before we left I walked past a room and looked inside and saw a kid's tent! Confused I messaged our concierge who said that we didn't get a tent because we didn't book a "family suite" (we booked a room with 2 queen beds and a plunge pool). I didn't know this was required, and for what we were asking it seemed like an odd requirement. They knew we had a two young kids, we needed a crib. He offered to put up the tent for our last full day there. It was just strange. Without me advocating for this we never would've received it, and that just sort of feels gross at a place like this where you have an assigned concierge that you assume is there to oversee your needs and make it special. THE BAD: -- Housekeeping: Didn't come 2 of the 5 days we were there. This happened to others in our party too, so this seems to be a consistent thing and not a random fluke with us. We had to hound them to come, calling multiple times in a day to get them to show up before our dinner reservations. When they did come, it was honestly probably the sloppiest housekeeping we have had ever. Holiday Inn has better housekeeping. They left dirty bowls and cups on the counter. We had two cups of milk left on a counter for two days(!!). Again if this is a cheaper stay, you can forgive bad service. But this is not a cheap hotel so for them to not clean rooms or to clean the rooms so sloppily, it was shocking. We asked them numerous times not to come between 3pm-5pm when our kids were sleeping and we were always reassured that they would not. Every single day they came (if they came) they arrived between 3pm-5pm haha. Nobody was listening or paying attention to our asks, they were just saying yes to please us and didn't care about the actual outcome. -- Pool Service: Towels were nowhere to be found. Even when asking multiple times for towels, we ended up leaving dripping wet. I dont understand why they dont have towels more readily available, but this was bad. Getting drinks was often difficult, and one day they even ran out of straws for drinks! They started cutting straws in half and serving them that way. Service was somewhat better at the Zen pool vs the Ambassador, though in both places it felt like we were staying at an all-inclusive and we were part of a factory. At Ambassador, it took nearly an hour to get popsicles delivered for the kids and over 30 minutes to get drinks served. -- Concierge Service: We have stayed at other AI hotels that offer this and actually found it useful. So I don't think the idea of the concierge is bad, our concierge here just did nothing, despite having fairly basic asks. For example, our second day we realized we would want coffee and milk brought to the room every morning. We called room service the first morning, but it took 30 min. We thought the concierge might be able to arrange a standing order of coffee and milk at the same time every day. When we asked him, he said no we need to call room service and he sent us their phone number (which of course we already had). Our young daughters left their life vests at the pool the first day and I notified our concierge to see if he could get us in touch with lost and found. He said they had nothing, and never followed up with us on this. We went back ourselves two days later and the life jackets were just laying by the chairs by the pool, as if nobody ever cleaned that area. Even when we said exactly what we lost and where, nobody walked over there to check for us and just said there was no sign of them. We stayed at a different AI last year that was notably cheaper, and when we needed milk for our baby, our concierge ran to get it himself and hand delivered it to us, still panting! It was a level of service that really was shocking and impressive. Here they pretend to offer this service, but the only thing our concierge did was text us the schedule each day. We notified him about our housekeeping issues and he offered to come and make sure that housekeeping arrived, but honestly I had already called them myself so he wasn't really adding any service or value. THE AWFUL: -- Reservation Policy: This is crazy to me. I'm a good trip researcher and having been to AI hotels in Mexico before I knew that restaurants at the hotel are often "booked up" in advance. Knowing this, and reading reviews about GV in advance, I made reservations for our group three weeks prior to our stay. They were generally able to accommodate. 2.5 weeks prior to the trip I needed to modify the reservation for one of the nights (it was adults only I learned and we had no childcare) so I asked for a reservation at a different restaurant. They advised that they only had one reservation available that night. Over weeks away and that night was already booked!! Unfortunately the reservation was at Frida, which we didn't like, and so when that day came we asked to see if any availability popped up elsewhere. Our concierge told us no, so we ended up eating some pretty awful buffet food that night. Fortunately I had made reservations for all the other nights, but the fact that I needed to do this weeks before our trip is insane! Word to the wise, book your dinner reservations as soon as you book your hotel!!! I would have exploded had we paid the price we did and then been forced to eat buffet food for all of our meals. Truly crazy. OVERALL: The hotel was totally fine, but not luxe and service was well below expectation. If you're looking for luxury, this ain't it. If you're insistent on going to an all-inclusive, its totally possible that this is the best in that category. Outside of the all-inclusive category, this is not a grand hotel. There were no fatal flaws or major issues, it was a just a luke-warm stay with a high pricetag. I wouldn't pay more than $700 per night for this. If you get it for $700 or less, book it for sure. We went the week before spring breaks start ramping up, so the hotel was not overrun yet. I can't even imagine what the service must be like during actual busy travel times. Maybe they are having staffing issues right now or something, I hope this gets better. This was a first and last for Grand Velas for us unfortunately.
A low-class experience
Michael D on Mar 22, 2024
Unfortunately, the experience on our second visit was starkly different than our first. Let me start off by saying the food and service is excellent and that was somewhat of a saving grace - somewhat. Because of that, we found ourselves enjoying the nights far more than the days, which is not something you want on a beach vacation. The problem, this visit, was with the fact that the place was slammed to the gills with extremely loud, very drunk “spring-break” types from some low-level do-nothing (fill in the blank)com company. In sum, it was the furthest thing from the high-class experience the price point commands. The class of people completely obliterated any sense of a romantic getaway. Our last visit was an excellent, 5-star experience on par with the price point. During that visit, occupation levels were managed such that you could get a pool/beach chair or a drink whenever you wanted. Good luck getting either this time. I suppose we made the critical mistake of visiting during this time of year. While we rightfully expected it to be more crowded, we did not expect it to transform into a 3/4 star chain hotel experience at this price point. It was a decidedly low-class vibe, featuring a very large group of extremely loud SCREAMING drunk people taking over the entire “exclusive” grand class pool, throwing a football around the entire space, hitting several other guests. There were constant, four-day-long obnoxious slurred debates over who is “QB1 YEEHAW!!!” and who got a “reach around.”. It was like a holiday inn, but more gross. Also, you won’t be able to escape the noise as it is so loud it extends throughout the beach, so there is no quiet to be found unless you have a balcony (which we were forced to retreat to). You’d think/hope that kind of crowd would be priced out of here, but no luck. Probably due to having way too many guests, the personal butler they gave us responded to maybe one out of 3 or 4 requests and even then, only after a half hour+. The “adults-only” section seemed to have more 10-14 year olds than adults. If you are a couple looking for a quiet romantic time away, you DEFINITELY need to look elsewhere during any time surrounding this period (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt assuming it was a spring break issue and not an overall decline in quality issue, which be forewarned it very well could be). Overall, you can get the same experience for much, much less at cheap hotel. We will not be back a third time.
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