TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Where to start. We arrived to spend Christmas here at the Fairmont. 1. Airport transfer which was prebooked with the Hotel dogs not turn up for almost 2 hours. Just not acceptable at all. Especially for Families. 2. The resort had made zero effort in the restaurants for Christmas. Nothing on tables. No crackers. No Decorations. Nothing. Really pretty sad. 3. Buildings are old and worn. And In a state of disrepair all over the resort. 4. Pool areas are grimy and staff leave empty plates and dishes around well after food is finished. Most days I've had to actually ask staff clear stuff away. To avoid being dive bombed by birds. And flies. 5. Food in the restaurants awful. Bad tasteless Mexican food. Such a disappointment. I mean it's in Mexico! Terrible Italian food too. Fuego was a restaurant built on 'gimmick'. Trying hard to be 'kooky'. But a tough cut of steak with half a griddled onion is just that. Bad steak with an onion. No sides. Just an onion. What madness! Tauro was however - delicious. A great environment. But again. Dinner on Christmas day. And nothing to differentiate from any other day. Very poor. 6. Staff were friendly. But too few. So service levels were pretty bad. 1.5 hours for fries on the beach..... 7. Limiting and badly put together menus. La laguna was terrible. We flew from the UK. And travel globally.. And often. And to be brutally honest this is a 3 to 4 star at best. The redeeming feature is the lagoon and mangroves. Which you can see by boat..... Definitely book that. As it's peaceful and informative. Definitely the highlight of the stay.. Long and short. I'll never return. And I wish I'd stayed home. Sorry Fairmont. You need to raise your game. Substantially.

This was our second year in a row and it was SPECTACULAR! It’s so difficult to repeat an incredible experience, but we did. We spent a couple months planning our trip, starting with Zulemy in reservations, who did an exceptional job from start to finish! She was super responsiveness, professional and a delight to work with! Irene was our “go to” person and she was AMAZING!!! She was our person last year and took care of everything: reservations, offsite trip planning, superb recommendations for restaurants, available on literally a moments notice for anything on property, coordination with the other staff for our extensive and sometimes changing needs! Irene is wonderful, she truly made our trip as special as it was. The overall property is magical. Waterways everywhere, incredible landscaping, beautifully decorated for Christmas, stunning pools, 5 star spa and workout facility, first class rooms, nice beach and much more. Our favorite restaurants were Tauro Steakhouse, La Laguna for dinner and brunch, Saffron and Cielo at the Banyon Tree hotel, Zapote at the Rosewood(best Churros by far)and Cielo roof top bar for drinks before or after dinner. We played golf twice and it’s equal to any place I’ve ever played(wish I was a better golfer)(recommend a caddy as he saved me multiple times). Eduardo the waterway boat captain was the greatest, housekeeping perfect and the pool was the best! What a wonderful time and we can’t wait to return

I'm a little surprised by all of the glowing reviews. The pool, beach, and transportation staff were all amazing, but the hotel has some huge issues that are completely overlooked in most of the reviews I've read. 1. The beach is a mile from most of the hotel rooms and even further from the lobby. The hotels website is not transparent about how far the walk actually is. There are plenty of bikes available, but as we were traveling with a child who can't bike, that wasn't an option for us. They have stops set up around the property to catch golf carts to the beach, but we found ourselves waiting as multiple full carts went by, sometimes for 15-20 minutes. This wasn't a huge deal, but I felt like the fact that transportation was required to get to the beach isn't really disclosed prior to arriving at the resort, and it was disappointing. 2. Nearly every beach chair was claimed by 9am. This wasn't a problem for my family as my husband is an early riser, but it's not relaxing for most families to rush out in the morning to put down items to claim chairs. It was the same issue at the pool. The worst part is many people didn't arrive until noon, meaning their chairs were sitting unused but reserved all morning. 3. The property itself is beautiful but the hotel is not maintained to the level that it should be. The ceiling in the atrium outside our bathroom was in disrepair and falling down. Many of the paths are not lit at night, including the ones from the golf cart stop to our room, which made getting home after dinner difficult, especially since the property has a racoon problem. On two different evenings I was startled by racoons crossing our path, which would have been avoided if the paths had even small lights. 4. The check out process left a lot to be desired. We arranged transport to the airport through the hotel and checked in with the concierge and bell staff the night before to make sure that our bags would be picked up from our room prior to our departure from the hotel. Our room was a 15 minute walk from the lobby, and we had been taken to our room via golf cart, so I had assumed when they picked up our bags, they would also be picking us up with a golf cart to take to the lobby where the hotel's car was to take us to the airport. When the bellman arrived to take our bags, he had a flatbed cart and wasn't able to take us to the lobby, just our bags. He told us we had to wait at the golf cart stop, with everyone else shuttling between the pool and the beach, to get to the lobby. We were in our airport clothes, and didn't want to sit on the wet seats of the golf cart, so we ended up walking back to the lobby with our carryon bags. It was not the best way to end our trip. 5. Erroneous kids club charge on our receipt. The most concerning issue came at check out when I asked to review our bill. I was presented with a bill that included multiple charges for the kids club, which my family did not use. When I asked about it, the desk clerk went into the back and returned with a receipt, showing my room number and last name, as well as three children's name and dates that they used the club. None of these children were mine. When I explained to the woman that there must have been a mistake because I don't have three children and I didn't use the club, she seemed inconvenienced and asked me multiple times if I was sure I didn't use the club. At that point I asked for the manager, who was very friendly and removed the charges from our bill, but I never got a straight answer about what happened. I'd like to think it was a simple mistake of a misheard room number, but that means the staff either don't confirm last names with room numbers, or someone was fraudulently using our name and room number, and the hotel didn't seem to care either way. For all of these reasons I would not recommend or return to the Fairmont Mayakoba. My family enjoyed our vacation but it didn't feel like the experience that we were expecting based on all of the reviews we read and everything we've heard about the brand in general. This was my first Fairmont experience and I'm hesitant to have another.

In general the entire staff was incredible especially the pool staff at the beach and at the adult pool. I remember Angel and Bonifacio, specifically. Breakfast at La Laguna was an entirely personal experience extended by Roman, the chef and Alejandra the general manager. SPA masseuses, Kenya, Margarita and Lala and Luis the valet who attended my husband were soo professional and kind. Ivan the golf cart driver as well, highly attentive. All in all our Fairmont Mayacoba visit was memorable and I am thinking of bringing my entire family next time.

Alberto and Hugo at the beach are so wonderful and helpful! I needed an umbrella for my young baby and they brought it immediately!! Yay beach team! Really appreciated you guys and the level of care and concern you had for my family. I will be using the beach everyday for sure !