Andaz Mayakoba Hotel Review
Quick Link: Andaz Mayakoba hotel review Part 2
Overview
The Andaz Mayakoba is the newest luxury resort in a complex that also houses the Banyan Tree, Fairmont and Rosewood five star properties. The Andaz opened in late 2016 and contains 214 guestrooms spread across two distinct areas.
My Cost: 20,000 World of Hyatt points per night. (80,000 total)
Alternate Cost: Cash rates of $750+ for the first two nights and $500+ for the third and fourth night for a standard room.
I used Hyatt points to pay for my stay which turned out to be a great value. Since our stay began during the week after New Year’s when occupancy was near 100%, rates were really high, but they dropped off a bit towards the end of our stay.
Location
The Andaz Mayakoba is located on the Riviera Maya about 45 minutes South of Cancun International Airport and about 10 minutes North of Playa Del Carmen. Mayakoba itself is quite cutoff from surrounding areas, although it is fairly easy to travel between the four resorts either by boat or by golf cart.
Prior to our stay at the Andaz, we spent a few days at the Hyatt Ziva in Cancun and thus decided to travel between the two via taxi. The cost from the Cancun Hotel Zone was about 700 MXP or roughly $35 USD. This was cheaper than what shuttle companies were quoting and seemed like the most convenient option. The cost for a taxi from the Andaz back to the airport was $50 USD.
Check-In
I was very much looking forward to my stay at the Andaz Mayakoba having heard about the gorgeous property from others. While the beauty did live up to the hype, the service at this hotel did not.
Our check-in experience started as we entered the stunning lobby area known as the “Sanctuary”. This area is modeled to look like a cenote and it delivers. Like all other Andaz properties, there is no traditional front desk and check-in is done on an iPad as you sit in the lobby. We were also brought refreshing welcome drinks which had a hint of alcohol.
After checking in the agent looked a bit nervous as he had to tell us that our suite wasn’t ready. I am not sure if he was new but he didn’t seem to know how to break this news to us. After I pushed, he said our room would be ready in about an hour and that they had already arranged a standard room for us to wait in.
Andaz Mayakoba Lagoon View King Room Review
Since the baby needed to nap, we decided to take the regular King room on the Lagoon side of the property to wait. It is a decent sized room with a very nice bathroom and views of the Lagoon that dominates the upper half of this property. For a standard room I thought it was quite nice.
Buildings on the Lagoon side have 3 stories of rooms with the second story being at resort level. These buildings are fairly modern and attractive and are built in a circular pattern around the central lagoon. The room we were given had a very nice view, although based on our observations, some rooms are definitely closer to the water.
After waiting over an hour in the room and failing to get the baby back to sleep, my wife called the front desk and was informed they had no ETA for when our suite would be ready. We were told we could go to explore the resort and they would find us when the room was ready. This was pretty upsetting and not the best way to start a stay at a resort like this.
Andaz Mayakoba Beach Suite Review
We arrived at the hotel at 3:15pm and around 6:30pm the Manager on Duty finally found us on the beach and brought us to our room. By that point I wasn’t happy with the delay or lack of communication and he offered to buy us dinner that night in the Mexican restaurant. (More on that later.)
The Andaz Mayakoba Beach Suite is one of two suites which Globalist members can use a suite upgrade to guarantee into. The other suite is a Lagoon View Suite which is located up on the Lagoon side of the property, but has an identical layout. Despite the name “Beach Suite”, you won’t see any beach or ocean from this room, however you will be very close to the beach which is nice.
As for the room, it is quite large, although it feels smaller than the advertised 1,100 square feet. It features a fairly large living room and separate bedroom with a long skinny bathroom in between the two. The decor is quite modern and incredibly attractive in my opinion. I am a big fan of Andaz so that didn’t come as a surprise. As with other Andaz properties, all non-alcoholic drinks and snacks are included. Considering they charge 80 MXP (~$4 USD) for a coke by the pool, this is quite nice.
While some might think the bathroom location between the two rooms is nice, I thought it was a bit strange. The toilet area has its own sink and is located to the left of the hallway, while the shower and vanity area is to the right. It works alright, but it isn’t the best layout I have seen.
The Andaz Mayakoba Beach Suite’s bedroom is fairly standard, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our room had several windows including a balcony which brought in light during the day, however we were easily able to block out the light when it was nap time for the baby.
As a traveling family it is so nice to get a suite where adults can be awake in one room while not disturbing the sleeping toddler in the other. This room served that purpose almost perfectly. My only complaint (and it’s minor) is that the closet is located in the room. This meant I had to risk waking up the baby to get stuff I needed from there. Not a huge deal though.
In the end, the true highlight of this room was not inside, but outside. The Beach Suite features two patios. One small patio sits off of the bedroom, while a larger patio featuring a plunge pool sits off of the living room. We used our plunge pool quite often and my only complaint about it is the temperature. It was about 98 degrees when we arrived, but they adjusted that for us. Unfortunately it returned to that temperature each day and we had to keep calling them back to manually fix it.
The View
One other area of minor annoyance for me was the view. The Andaz website describes this room as, “The suite has lagoon and golf course view with a private terrace and plunge pool that overlooks the water canals and natural mangroves.” If you go to their site, they also have photos of the view from a second story suite which looks out over the golf course and the canal beyond it. Unfortunately our room was on the ground floor and only stared at trees. We couldn’t see anything. Here is our view looking to the left, straight out and to the right.
Could I tell there was a golf course there? Sure, but I couldn’t see it other than a small patch of green through a small spacing in the tree. The description on the website is incorrect for this particular suite, even though they do have rooms which do have that view. I did bring this up to the General Manager and he said he would look into it, however the description remains the same. I don’t think this sort of a thing is make or break, but had I known I would be staring at trees I might have chosen the Lagoon side suite.
Andaz Mayakoba Hotel Review Part 2
This review was a bit too big for one post, so I am split it into two parts. In part 2 I cover the resort areas, detail the major service issues we came across, talk about how the boat tour is awesome, show you a cenote you can visit while on property, talk about dining and most importantly answer the biggest question I had coming in. Should you stay on the Lagoon Side or the Beach side at the Andaz Mayakoba?
Click here for Part 2
Have you stayed at this property? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Wow just reading this.The worst check in experience I have ever had.Terrible service!
[…] part 1 of this Andaz Mayakoba review I covered an overview of the hotel, our flawed check-in […]
Suites are not worth the upgrade. The fans only have one speed – super high and loud which ruins the experience of an otherwise gorgeous room. Our kids stayed in a regular room and it was not an issue. We had maintenance and management stop by three times to ‘attempt a fix’ until they decided it was a design flaw.
I was there in Feb 2017. Absolutely horrible service and some other issues – actually wrote email to Hyatt to complain so bad. Executive Summary
1- would not not my parents check in without paying $50 or so dollars a night for a third person in a suite. They literally sat in lobby for 1-2 hours until I returned to sort things out (and pay). Would not let them into room even though my dad was listed as additional guest.
2 – Keycards would not work at times and long walk to lobby to get fixed (3 times in 4 days). They knew of issue from other units too.
3 – Bikes (which are more important this place as spread out) where sparse and very poor quality. I saw what the Fairmon and other hotel had, Andaz bought USED, crappy bikes for guests and not many for size.
4 – Two restraurant charges to room where not ours and took some while to sort out.
5- I used Hyatt gift cards to pay a portion of stay and they kept them in hotel safe to check balances before using and could not find the guy when checking out even though I called to make sure like 3 hours before hand. I asked for copy of bill at 11 AM before checking out at like 2PM so sort through various issues.
6 – They marked up exchange rate noticeably. The price was only listed in USD (what you pay), then converted to Pesos at inflated rate, then charged that to credit card so you pay more USD.
7 – Mandatory service charges and I know they are not paying the staff anywhere near that. I like to tip myself as desired.
Overall, beautiful property that needed to sort out a lot of service issues….it clearly was a money focused management team in place.
Crocs not issue, they told me when they get bigger, they move them. There were only a handful (like 5) I was told when we where there.
I’m shocked! We stayed there last August and it was amazing… Service was one of their priorities and we didn’t have any trouble.
A lot of details from the staff, like water stations and B-day gifts, made us wanna come back for another summer stay soon!
While I realize most employees are hired on a temporary seasonal basis, I’m honestly disappointed their service hit a low as I was really looking forward to another stay.
Surprisingly, when we went prices were a lot more reasonable, around $180 for the 4 people in the room, booked through Expedia which even secured a free car rental.
Interesting, I’d have a hard time with those rates for that area & then having to pay for meals and booze on top of it. I know that’s normally for an Andaz, but Riviera Maya is sort of the all-inclusive capital of the world there so it has to really stand out if everything is ala cart. Based on the foreshadowing I’d say it wasn’t.
I also experienced absolutely terrible service when I stayed last July. If the service ever improves I would only recommend the resort if you can secure a suite on the Lagoon side. Staying on the ocean side you are basically trapped and have to rely on the resort’s terribly unreliable golf cart transport or can bike/walk the excruciatingly long distance (not fun when in wedding attire and it’s 100 degrees out)…
Did they compensate you for the problems.
Please add if you had any concerns about crocodiles in your next post… those creatures scare me! I’m thinking about using our Fairmont free nights next door, but I don’t want to be walking around and looking for those creatures.
We saw some iguanas, crocs in the river (not too big). They could definitely walk out of the river and into the pathways. We were fortunate not too experience that but definitely were looking out!
Stayed there last February in a Lagoon Suite ( there was not an Ocean Option at that time). Breakfast buffet for Globalist was fine, and so were the three regular restaurants.Their premium dinner restaurant was really poor quality and equally bad service for what it cost. We went one night to the Rosewood Thai restaurant and it was good.The Hotels shuttled us around in Gulf Carts, boats and a nice SUV at night for dinner.The free classes they offer fun.
The Lagoon suite was large, well designed and also with a plunge pool that you have to ask to be heated every day.We liked it because it was very close to the spa which we used everyday for massages and ,hot and cold plunge. The AC in the suite pretty much ruined our experience as it was like living in a hurricane when you tried to sleep. There was too much forced air speed. We tried three time to have it fixed and they could never figure it out. Low speed would not work on the thermostat control.
Nothing so far seems like there are customer service issues; perhaps thats done intentionally but so far im highly skeptical of calling out the hotel and not elaborating.
The second part will have more. I originally wrote the review as one post but it was too long and I decided to split it up. Tomorrow I’ll finish and be my experience and thoughts will be complete.
Nice review so far! We staed next door at the Fairmont Mayakoba in November and loved the area. We used our Club1 Hotels membership which got us a rate of right around $450/night all-inclusive. Hopefully in the next installment you will talk about pricing. I’m interested to hear about the prices at the neighboring Mayakoba hotels, as most are not all inclusive.
Wow this is terrible. We stayed at the Fairmont and it was flawless. The Andaz looked nice, but could do without all the club music pumping at noon.