Good quality but has its drawbacks

Pros: Always good to open with what worked at this resort. Overall maintenance was good. Area is quite lush and full of vegetation, plenty of lizards )although far too many fed the Iguanas which have become quite brazen and the Hotel is trying to manage) and other wildlife which adds a good dynamic. Grounds are well kept and Villas are in good upkeep. Food quality is very good and there was never any issue with supply or access to food. Pasta, crepe and Omellet bar service was fantastic.  [... read more]Friday night is themed Canadian night at the buffet which my kids enjoyed. From a cosmetic and food quality perspective the resort fully met expectations and lived up to the Bahia brand on these levels Cons: for late July this resort was very busy and I understand likely at capacity and in my opinion understaffed for the inner of guests in hand!!! Why? We had to wait for a table to eat at Buffett (breakfast and dinner) and you had to ask for the table to be cleared, supplied with cutlery and good luck getting drink service (water, juice, soft drinks or alcohol) unless you booked a restaurant for dinner and it did not matter if it was peak dining time or not. In fact we caught on that if you wanted a table cleared you had to stand up at the table until you caught someone’s attention to clear and set the table. Even then is was 50/50 for drinks. For reserved restaurants we could only book 3/4 reserved restaurants as all the times had booked up literally within a 2 hours of our arrival so get in quick! To be fair we could have booked a fourth but they offered a 930 pm seating which I did not feel was practical. During buffet dining which you will have to partake in during your stay, If you left your table for food service it would be swiped so someone had to remain at table at all times. I found this to be very annoying. Staff in the buffet area were not friendly in this restaurant. This is likelh a symptom of being over worked. To their defence they could barely keep up to the number of diners present. A similar rule applies to pool chairs. Folks would place towels out at 730 am only to return at 1pm (no enforcement by he resort here) and in general getting a chair poolside or in shade was a no go on two of the 7 mornings. Some people were forced to lay out towels in the grass under a palm tree for a place to sit. Again - not enough resources to service a full property. The Coba resort is quite the inconvenient distance from the “Tulum” property where you can access the beach or various reserved restaurants. Large resorts will use a buggy or train service as does this however using the “train” service was frustrating. Be warned there are Significant wait times and a race to get on the train when it would arrive from the main lobbie or Hacienda! Even with small children, strollers etc. people would not hesitate to jump the line. At times common manners lacked from the guests - again likely a symptom of operating at capacity devoid of sufficient resource to manage guests. The walk to the beach from Coba was way too far so if you like being fairly close to he Beach or at least see Ocean in the distance even if a pool person you could find far better options. Essentially this resort was too big and set back to far from the Ocean for my liking. In comparison to the Bahia Principe Punta Cana the recommendation would be to visit Punta Cana if you had the choice. Uncontrollable: seaweed on the beach during June and July is evidently a natural phenomena. While we prefer the pool a traditional walk along the beach to look for sea shells etc or a pleasant stroll was impossible and not enjoyable in an area that is reknown for beautiful beaches due to the excessive amount of accumulated seaweed. And I mean excessive! While the resort employed full time people (gruelling work) shovelling and removing seaweed on bobcats stacks were remained up to 4 feet high in late afternoon. If you are looking for a beach experience be forewarned to steer clear at this time of year. I’ve been to Mayan Riviera many times and had never seen the beach like this. To be fair we were warned by the agent and having experienced seaweed around the same time in Punta Cana last year, I was not prepared for what I saw here at the end of July. The Hotel has installed barriers in an attempt to control the problem albeit the downside is they diminished the beauty of the ocean view. In fact it may have made things worse and they seemed to trap the seaweed in a designated swimming area. The children’s water park is suitable for kids up to about the age of 7. Overall the resort experience was fair and in hindsight compared to the high standard set with this chain in Runaway Bay and Punta Cana disappointing and not a preferred recommendation for the money.

Large Resort

Overall the resort was good. The food and restaurants were excellent. It was nice to be able to use the amenities at 2 of the 3 hotels. The room was also excellent. The travel was smooth and comfortable. We had a few things that we thought could be better. Although they are good at looking after the grounds and caring for the wildlife there, they used sewer water to water the grounds and it stunk very badly after they watered. Usually they would water in the mornings and so when you opened yo [... read more]ur balcony door, the stench hit you. One day they watered in the afternoon due to meetings in the morning and it was awful. We did kindly mention it and they changed watering to an earlier time. The second issue was the service. We used to live and work in hotels in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. The wonderful people working were working hard, but the hotel was at 100% occupancy and there simply were not enough servers in the main restaurants, so you would wait a long time to get service, and we always tipped. The entertainment was excellent as well. Unfortunately the pools felt like hot tubs. The last issue was the unfortunate state of the beaches. They have been washed away over the years from hurricanes, and pollution has caused tons of seaweed to wash up. The Beach of the Coba hotel was unusable for half of our days. It is a sad state. They told us that before they used to clear away 1-2 tons of seaweed a month and now it is up to 120 tons PER MONTH. They simply cannot keep up with it. It was seaweed soup. We were able to use the beach from the Akumal hotel, but not there amenities, so it made for a hot hot day. Luckily we had a beach umbrella. It is a wonderful hotel, and they did try and please us when we politely expressed our issues. They were kind and decorated our room door for our daughter's birthday and delivered a small cake. Next time I would book staying at the luxury Akumal resort instead.

Holiday of seeweed

This was our very first trip to Mexico and it completely left a bad impression with us. The resort is wayyyyy too big to be comfortable as they seem to be understaffed everywhere. Every meal at the main buffet, we seemed to constantly clear up our own dishes, fetch our own flatware, napkins, or on occasion, beverages. I hate to sound petty but we’ve been to plenty of all-inclusive and this was just below standard. Our room wasn’t cleaned regularly nor was the mini fridge ever restocked. On o [... read more]ur first day of arrival, our son was sleeping in the room (when we were finally given our room key-check-in took hours so our first day was basically a write-off) and there as a knock at the door. Since he was sleeping, it took him some time to get up to answer the door and as he was about to open the door, a man just walked into the room unannounced! My husband inquired at the lobby and was told that there was no reason for anyone to enter our room. Because my sister was with us (and she speaks fluent Spanish), she was able to translate for us as much of the hotel staff don’t use or understand proper English. We were told that we would receive a courtesy for our inconvenience but that never happened. We just wasted a lot of our time trying to get answers. To make the trip even worse, the beach is completely UNSWIMMABLE. I wish we had known about the seaweed epidemic taking over the Riviera Mayan, we probably would not have booked this trip at all. The swimming pools (in abundance) are so shallow that the water was STEAMING HOT. Since the beach was unswimmable, the pools were overcrowded and we overheard several people bluntly blurt out that they were “just going to pee in the pool”. What a classy place (not!!). So I’m completely disappointed with our trip and feel ripped off of our annual beach holiday. We went with family so at least we were all together for the experience but still, I would have expected some sort of warning from our travel agent in regards to the swampland like beach. Utterly disappointing! As the days progressed and we were at least able to admire the beautiful gardens around the resort, we smelled the most disgusting stench. When we inquired with someone on staff, we were told that the gardens are watered with recycled water (as in recycled waste water). That was the most unappealing thought especially as there is a garden en route to the buffet so the appetite level dissipates quite quickly with the stink. Note to self-don’t drink from the coconuts that are offered from the gardener? Lastly, we needed the assistance from the Public Relations representative and again were frustrated that her English was so below par that we again needed my sister to translate. For what should have been a stress-free holiday, we were not impressed.

Resort

Overall our family had an excellent time, the service was courteous and friendly. The resort is massive, thus the shuttle buses were pretty much on time and efficient. Beach was awesome and restaurants were good. I recommend the Brazilian restaurant as the food and service were fantastic. The hotels downfall was the rooms ait conditioning. It didn't cool off the room at night and there was no exhaust in the washoom, thus making the room even warmer. Overall I would recommend this hotel to anyone [... read more] and would definitly return for another vacation.

Great family vacation

Grounds well kept, room AC not very powerful and warm most of the time but lucky ceiling fan was full blast, food was dynamite at the buffet and the four Ala carts we went too the food and service were great. I didn’t like how most huts and prime pool lounge seats were taken and I’m a early riser at 6am. It would have been nice to have access to specialty coffees early AM instead of coffee machine that seemed to act up from time to time. Overall great for young families.

Grand Bahia Principe Coba Mexico An Excellent Hotel

Presentation & service were excellent!! The grounds and buildings were beautiful & the service was just wonderful. The meals were delicious. The only "problem" we had was that we did not receive our 4 a.m. wake up call to go home even though I made it very clear to the receptionist who spoke English. Fortunately we woke up anyway. The beache at Coba & Tulum were covered in seaweed ( not fault of hotels ) They made many efforts to remove it. By the time we discovered the beach at Akumel  [... read more] ( it was better ) it was time to come home. The staff all went that extra mile, especially Juan who cleaned our room, 32224 Coba !! Please give him our thanks. Gary & Monica Ewart

Fantastic Vacation

We had a great time, the rooms were lovely and well maintained, jacuzzi tub awesome The staff at the kids club were so great, my son kept wanting to go back. Jean particular was caring, firm and outstanding with them all. The waterpark OVER the top great. lifeguards were on point and always alert. Entertainment was fun, well put together and executed The spa way too overpriced, they need to come in line with the rest of the world. The beach was not a highlight as there was too much seaweed  [... read more]but they were continuously working on removal as best as they could. Buffet was great food, lots of variety and never empty of food they continuously were on top of replenishing it all. I would have liked to see poolside service, with children its hard to go and get a drink as the bar was at the far end. all staff were helpful and friendly. A nice touch that the hotel did was put on all the soccer games on the big screen in the theater, Served food and drinks during that time as well. We will be back, already planning.

Huge, friendly resort

Our room was quite spacious and clean. I like the idea of having small units scattered throughout the grounds. The grounds are kept scrupulously clean and are a pleasure to walk through - or take a cart caravan if one is too tired to do the walk. The specialty restaurants were okay in the Coba area, but our favourite was the Tortuga Rodizio Brazilian restaurant in the Tulum portion of the resort. The buffet restaurant in the Coba portion was outstanding. This was our second time here and on [... read more]e of the reasons that we returned was the buffet - the waiters work very hard to keep up with the crush of people. Even with a full resort, the food was fresh, plentiful, varied and very tasty. How they manage to keep up, I'll never know. All the bartenders that we dealt with were quite friendly with some speaking English better than others. It's an international resort with many languages from Europe heard along with the Spanish, English and French from our North American countries. The beach is a short cart ride away, but it wasn't very walkable at this time of year because of the seaweed that was being brought to shore by the waves. The workers had it cleaned up one day, then two days later, the shore was filled again. But that is just this time of year, during our last visit in October the beaches were pristine. I would stay here again in a heartbeat since we feel very at home here, although next time I would choose the adult portion of the resort.

Awesome

Beach was a disaster but this not depend of the hotel, even that the hotel was doing the best for fix that, pool and buffet awesome, Tequila a la carte restaurant not that good at all, Alberto the start server.

Beautiful

I thought the place was beautiful. The staff was very pleasant and helpful. There was a large variety of food for us to choose from. Loved the entertainment offered. The few things I didn’t like was our room didn’t get cleaned until 2pm on most days, at one of the restaurants you had to wear pants or you couldn’t go in, the pool closed at 8pm.

Nice resort

Hotel was nice. Under staffed . A bit dirty . Food was excellent at buffet but not worth waiting for restaurants to eat . My Kids loved the pool too . Very far from city and Tulum beach was covered with seewe.

Beautiful resort

I’ll try to be brief. Our overall stay 6;13-6;20/2018 was a wonderful experience. Just because a few issues we had, I will still leave a positive review. The one issue was: our room 32607 was in a great location, we had nice cool air conditioning the first night, it stopped cooling the 2nd day and for 3 days/night we had no a/c, it took until Saturday and 3 different reports until one rep. at Premier reception took action and the problem was fixed. No issues after that, should we ever go bac [... read more]k to any resort and the same problem would arise, I would be more aggressive right from the get-go and have them fix the problem. The other thing that really bothered me was the concierge, we were approached the first day and before our room was ready by a concierge, he said the resort wanted to give us a welcome presentation with a $70.00 gift certificate, he was so nice and polite, I accepted and made the appointment to be the 3th day during breakfast. On the invitation card was: time, 1hr for the duration of this welcome presentation. I realized soon this was not a welcome presentation but a timeshare presentation, I was very disappointed and wanted to leave, my wife convinced me to hear him out in order to be respectful, the presentation lasted 2 hrs, so finally just told him respectfully to rap it up, we’re not interested one bit in timeshare, we just came to have fun and not pressured to join in a long lasting commitment. He signed the release form and we were out the door. This will be a huge lesson for the future, I’ll tell them right from the beginning we’re not interested and to leave us in peace. If the resort wants to improve in bringing in tourist, this one thing they should do, completely get rid of all timeshare representatives and promotions. I talked to other people about this and every single one of them, absolutely hate to be approached by these timeshare reps. As far as food, the quality and the service, it was amazing. We were not able to visit all À la cart restaurants but the ones we had the privilege to eat and dine, were absolutely amazing. I would like to mention a few of them: Samuel at Mashua was so professional and polite, the food was the best. Antonio at La Tequila was another young individual who had pleasure in serving and making you feel welcome, the food also amazing. Ana at Cozumel Buffet was a very humble and sweet lady in serving. Overall, our stay was well worth it and I wouldn’t hesitate to go back, I highly recommend Grand Bahía Principe Coba.

Neat Room and Restaurants, OK Food and Service

The room is very clean and the room staff change bed every day. Room service is excellent. There are many restaurants, space is bright and neat. Food is various but the quality is just okay. Sushi rolls-rice are not well cooked. Brazil cuisine- bbq meat is too dry. There are not too many options for non-alcohol drinks. Only orange and pineapple juice. Can make some fresh watermelon, or mango juice.

Good and bad

My experience with Carol Weber at trip central was excellent. She was top notch and would definitely use her again for future travel arrangements. The resort : beautiful grounds , food was good , pools were nice and water park for kids was fantastic. It’s too big ! If you love the beach this resort is not for you. You have to travel by golf cart to the beach because of the distance and then once you get there the beach is just not nice. Seaweed is an issue anywhere and I don’t even mind  [... read more]it as it’s part of nature however at this resort they have so much seaweed you can’t get in the water because they have tractors shovelling it out. I’ve never seen so much seeweed. You couldn’t even see the water. We had to walk quite a distance just to get to an area where we could swim and it was extremely busy because 4 resorts use this one small area. We paid extra for the golden and it’s not worth it. We never even got a menu for room service , they don’t answer phones and when then they do no one ever comes ... overall I recommend this resort if you like to stay by a pool and could guarantee a room by the pool and buffet area otherwise you will be on an enormous resort with not much to do ... also they add fertilizer to the sprinklers so most days it smelled like a farm and in that heat it was extremely unpleasant. I love going away for the beach , food , things to do and to soack up the sun and will not be returning here and I recommend other resorts in the area far more.

Amazing Family Resort

It was our family's first all inclusive vacation so we didn't really know what to expect. As soon as we got there, we felt very welcomed by the staff with their friendly demeanor. The staff were very helpful. They brought us everything we needed even set up an extra bed in our room! The hotel itself was very nice. There were a lot of activities for all ages. My kids really enjoyed the shows at night. The activity and entertainment staff were very fun and entertaining. We did water exercise, play [... read more]ed volleyball and basketball. Food was also delicious. We loved the Mediterranean Restaurant. We will definitely use this hotel again when we go back to Mexico! I will definitely recommend this place to anyone ;) thank you for such a wonderful experience!!!

Very nice resort

We had a great time at Bahia Principe, the beach was amazing and so many beautiful pools. We also booked 3 tours to see the Piramids and Xcarett. We will defianately go back. Thank you for the amazing experience.

RESORT

The people were confused a lot at the front desk and also getting the transportation to our rooms took along time. The food was good and the restaurant and bar staff were brilliant. The Westjet agents at the hotel are very rude, don't want to deal with them again. The resort was kept in great condition and our rooms were nice.

Beautiful Resort But ...

My husband and I stayed at the Grand Bahia Principe Coba for 10 days, beginning May 3, 2018. We have travelled to other resorts in the Caribbean before, but this was our first trip to Mexico. The entire (extremely large) resort is beautiful. The rooms are lovely and housekeeping was awesome. All the staff at the resort were very kind and helpful. Food was great in all the restaurants, both buffets and a la cartes. Pools are beautiful and clean. Families with children will love the childre [... read more]n's pool/waterpark. The only complaint we would have is the beach. Mother Nature is giving this beautiful resort a really hard time. The seaweed had made the beach unusable during our time there. I am not exaggerating as I thought other previous reviewers had done. There are dump trucks and bobcats trying to keep up with clearing the seaweed away, but it is covering the majority of the entire beach, and the smell is really overwhelming. Staff from the resort told us it has been getting worse the last couple of years, and I feel really bad for the resort. Our vacation was amazing except for not being able to use the beach, and we really enjoy walking on the beach during our vacations and spending time there. Otherwise, if you don't mind a pool vacation, I would totally recommend this resort. I gave the resort a 4/5, and the pool/beach a 3/5 solely because of the beach.

Fantastic Resort & Service!

Recently spent 6 days at Coba and couldn't say enough good things about it. The staff is unreal, and really go the extra mile to make your stay amazing. Everything is kept meticulous and clean and the amenities are more than enough - from the drinks to the food. A++++

Great First Experience!

This was my first time in Mexico and I couldn't be happier. The resort was beautiful, the staff extremely friendly and the food - excellent! Being able to venture between the resorts was also a plus. I'd definitely come back so thank you!