TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

We didn’t know food could be this bad. The buffet was absolutely disgusting and the snack bar was shockingly worse. I don’t even know what else to say…. Snack Bar: Pizza? Horrendous Burritos? Umm is the meat even cooked? Taquitos? Where is the filling….? Drinks? Watered down to nothing Buffet: Burger - inedible “Fajita” bar - a joke Salad bar - awful Rice - dry Lentils - legitimately haven’t tasted something worse in my life On top of the nasty food, the staff seems miserable. We are beyond disappointed and cannot express how much of a waste of money this experience has been

We stayed at 2 Occidental resorts, precisely because Occidental Costa is smaller in scale, so we looked for other activities/excursions and had the pleasure of meeting Juan Jose (JJ) - AquaWorld in person. 1. Very fluent in English - a rarity skill amongst locals. Evidence of his many practice from studying and customer interactions. It's human nature that people only listen to the voice with the most clarity and resonates. 2. Sales skills - Most cancun salesman are usually pushy in soliciting customers along with brain dump information, don't care what you're looking for and just looking to make a sale. JJ Juan Jose was the complete opposite providing crystal clear (+ humorous) explanations on the water activities, the pricing model of Aquaworld packages, and helping us craft a plan according to our interests and budget. Very structured and patient in answering our questions, asking his own questions to see what our needs are, and not rushing to make a sale (extremely rare in Cancun). 3. Trip arrangement skills - notably most travellers to Cancun are short on time to do as much excursions as possible, and JJ went above and beyond in taking our personal plans into account in re-arranging the schedule to fit in a scuba dive. Very honest about whats doable vs. not, once again a rarity in Cancun. 4. Diving Knowledge - despite JJ was not the instructor who gave us the lesson, but his tips and insights made it much better and easier to anticipate the lesson & actual dive. Miguel the lessom instructor was very helpful too. 5. Passion in his job - turning his passion into a career is a luxury in life that not many can do, and sounded like JJ overcame many obstacles to get to his current stage, and I truly hope others can also recognize his euthansim, passion, and effort to his job and his attitude in life. To us it wasn't just a sale, we made a friend! 6. Final advice - if you have no idea about scuba diving or any of the water activities in Cancun, and doing online research is a lot of work, finding JJ at Occidental Costa / Aquaworld can ease up the entire process, not to mention the chat with him was fun. The 2 tank dive we did was a life changing experience, all thanks to JJ recommending it!

My wife and I along with 6 friends stayed at the Occidental Costa Cancun from Dec 4 - 11, 2025 and had a very good time overall. The title of this review is a complaint directed at the owners (Barcelo people) as it would be only them who have decided that this resort would have ZERO palapas installed to provide needed shade on the beach or throughout the resort. The only place that you can get a full measure of shade is by sitting in a small section around the pool close to the building and the Gazebo. Sure, you can get "some shade" for maybe 15 minutes and then you have to pull your chair around or move to another area. If you do not care about shade and only wish to lay out in the sun to get a good tan or an even better burn, then this issue won't concern you. This issue is what would prevent us from returning to an otherwise very good little resort. I would have to mention again "little resort" as the beach and the bit of ocean that guests can go out in is very tiny. The beach is well looked after and the staff involved with the upkeep do a good job. But it is very small. Some other reviews mentions a smell of diesel and we noticed that from time to time. A ferry dock is right next to the resort and so boats "party barges" and others were frequently going by and so the diesel is not due to Barcelo but because of location. it wasn't the greatest and some of our friends did mention that they would prevent them probably from returning to the resort in the future. Good things: ROOMS: All of us found the rooms to be totally comfortable and no complaints whatsoever. FOOD: We found the food to be very good, both in the buffet for breakfast and lunch and the specialty restaurants as well tried very hard and did a good job. One odd thing though about the buffet was that there was no bacon to be found. I think most Canadians and Americans enjoy having eggs or omelets with bacon but you would only get bacon if you requested it from the server. The other buffet restaurant did not have an egg station but you could order and omelet along with bacon from them. it just seemed a bit strange that the bacon was "hidden" away but made available upon request. COOKS/SERVERS/BARTENDERS AND DRINK SERVERS Except for a few staff (who I think English communication was a problem for them) the overwhelming majority of the staff in the restaurants were very, very good. We did not get names of the staff but for those that were great, we often left them tips. One fellow named Ruben was very good to us on our first day. He along with the male host and female host at the Italian/Seafood specialty restaurants were stars! Very friendly, funny and honestly nice people! The woman who made omelets in The Albatross was so good and often had a smile on her face (a little nervous with English, but very good). We have to mention the drink servers around the pool area. We had three different female servers who were all great. We only got the name of one, Linda Montanos (also known as "That Linda"). What a hard worker and always ready to get an order for us with a great sense of humor! The other two female servers knew we appreciated them and all three were tipped for their work even though none expected to receive any tips! ENTERTAINMENT We have been to many Mexican resorts and a lot of things presented have been seen before. This is to be expected (how many Michael Jackson shows have we seen??) but this resort had beautiful piano players and singers along with some interesting cultural shows. The Magic Show as a huge miss and we walked away from it after about 20 minutes. Perhaps it was better for those sitting very close but we found it boring and quite forgettable. Axel himself was fantastic, a great contribution to the Occidental. Very talented, great DJ. GYM/SPA Although the gym was relatively small (eg: small resort, small gym) it had the equipment needed and i thought it was perfect. The changing room / shower area contained a Dry Sauna and a Wet Sauna and also a hot tub and was well maintained. I wanted to make a comment of something unusual. The changing room and showers were open but when I entered the men's only changing room I was super surprised to soon see a female staff member walking around. She was doing cleaning of the hot tub and yet there was no sign on the door saying "closed for servicing" and she did not acknowledge that a male guest was changing. Maybe due to short staffing but it would only make sense that a male staff member would be entering and doing servicing where other males were changing or showering. I'm certain that my spouse and other females would be shocked to have a male enter their changing room and begin cleaning as they were changing. it was very odd and hopefully is looked at by the management. Two other observations for management to look at: (1) smoking and vaping on the property. The hotel maintains "no smoking" on property but I noticed on 3 occasions that persons were smoking in full sight of staff who didn't say anything to the smokers. (2) parents with small infants/babies (in diapers) were taking the small children out of the kids only area and bringing them into the main pool. Babies wear diapers for "a reason" and what an awful situation should a diaper open and the pool is polluted. Staff members took no note of this and again, management needs to ensure that this is not happening and that the little kids / babies enjoy themselves in the kid area only. RECEPTION STAFF: We had heard in a review (a video on youtube) someone complaining about the staff in general at the resort as being very unfriendly, and that included the reception staff. We thought "we are going to save a lot of money on tips" if the staff are rude and we were shocked at how good, professional and funny the staff at reception were. We might not have all the names Alima (Alley) was super good in moving our room due to some anticipated construction. So professional and yet fun and very engaging, great communication skills. Likewise "AB" also known by "some gorditos" as Abimad Cifuentes who taught we a few clean Spanish phrases and who was a great sport. Axel Guerrero and Laura Mendez too were very good staff. And how can I forget Gustavo. He checked us in and proved to be a very fun and humourous guy, the type of guy you'd like to grab a beer with and shoot the breeze with. We wanted to let Barcelo know they have a very nice resort stocked with a lot of very good staff members. it is you though that need to reconsider the decision to have no shade, no palapas around and also to ensure that basic rules about smoking and "babies in diapers" in the regular pool does not happen as well as having male staff clean the male changing room where males are undressing and showering. Thank you for a great week.

Very little hot food choices for vegetarian, there was some construction right next to our room through the day, so we’re unable to rest during afternoon!

Didn’t get the room we first booked but made a complaint and finally did! Abimeal Cifuentos and Esmalda Ruiz at the front desk were very professional at their jobs,easy to relate too etc