Yucatan 5 stars, Holiday Inn 0

Worst Vacation in years. We had booked a reverse Park/Stay at the Holiday Inn Express, Toronto Airport. Parked the car, paid in full for our room , but on our return after a week in Pte Adventuras we found that the hotel was fully booked. It was 2.00 am in the morning, there were two full flights from Cancun at that time and there were about 20 of us in the lobby without rooms. My wife and I are in our late 70's, we had to drive 2hrs on snowy,icy roads to get home.A trip I will not do again, eve [... read more]r, nor stay at this hotel again, ever.

Lovely Resort!

The grounds of the Catalonia Yucatan and Catalonia Maya are beautiful, the staff are constantly working to keep everything looking nice. We had a Suite which was large, clean and totally enjoyable. The staff were beyond reproach, they were friendly and helpful and always trying to make sure we were ok and had everything we needed for a great time. I have no real negatives about my vacation here, just that it was a little far from the airport than we usually go on our trips to the Mayan, the loca [... read more]tion close to the Marina with the dolphins, sea lions and manatees sorta made up for it!

Good resort, great location

Catalonia Yucatan is at a great, clean, secure location in Puerto Aventuras close to Playa del Carmen and near lots of great excursions. Food was good (esp al la cart, 4 times in seven days), although the buffet will get a little boring if you eat there a lot I imagine. Bars were good with lots of selection. Beach was small and not great, but if you do a lot of excursions like us that is not really a problem. Staff were friendly and very helpful.

Beautiful Place

All the Restaurants were superb; the food was delicious The Restaurants and Resort itself was kept in immaculate condition.. The Service was great, the Staff were friendly and hard -working - We were treated like Kings and Queens, staff was always happy to help us in any way possible....

Great Stay at the Catalonia Yucatan!

We spent a week at the CY recently and thoroughly enjoyed our stay. I am a frequent traveller to the area (5x this year) and that was my first stay there, but will not be my last. the rooms are a bit dated, but clean. The food is fantastic, the pools are beautiful and the sunrises are wonderful. My only suggestion is more bartenders as service was quite slow at times, and stop having guests wait to be seated in the buffet. We should be able to simply walk in and find a table, is it really necess [... read more]ary to seat us?

Absolutly amazing resort!!!!

Amazing, nice and hard working staff, everybody was helpful and very professional. every trip was perfect organized and really interesting. Rooms very clean and spotless. My family and I would go there again with pleasure!

Amazing time

Very friendly staff..clean..beautiful view..great food..love the water..great activities..options on wat to eat were overwhelming..so much to do..worth the price..miss it already..would definitely go there again

Resort is wonderful.

The resort is great. We had a wonderful time. Ala carte food was great. Buffet.....not so much. The only other down side was that we had requested 4 ocean view rooms. I double checked a week before we left to be told that there was no over booking and that we would get our ocean view rooms. Upon arriving we were told there were no ocean view rooms and that we had been upgraded to suites. The rooms were nice but if I would have wanted the location of the suites I would have booked a suite. I pref [... read more]ered the location of the other rooms. Not sure if they really were over booked or just trying to be nice with an upgrade. It would have been nice to have the choice.

Beautiful Resort

We visited this resort July 22-29, 2014. We were a bit early to check in so we had lunch and came back to get the key to our room. The rooms were nice and clean and adequate for what we needed. The elevator for our area was not in use the entire time we were there. We did find a easier way to get to our room that was on the 3rd floor. We also loved the free wifi, and found that it worked best in the lobby. The tv worked great and we had no problems with the shower or air conditioning. The room a [... read more]ttendent Ofelia who was very nice cleaned our room daily and I appreciated the clean towels they were nice and big. We did not have a fridge in our room but we found we didn't really miss having one. We had a safe in our room and there was a charge of 3.00/day. The safe worked fine for us. We enjoyed the food all week at the buffet which was a very nice dining room and it was air conditioned. The hostess who greeted us was Tania and our family really enjoyed her greeting us each evening and seating us at our table each night. Tania is a great asset to this hotel she is just lovely. We enjoyed all our meals here every night and I must mention Lucas, Raul, and Allan, they were excellent servers who always greeted us with a smile and always looked after our drinks as well. We also visited one alacart which was the steak house and we enjoyed this restaurant, you could get steak but also a number of other variety of choices as well. Our service was perfect and the server I must mention is Abraham, very friendly and always looked after every detail of our meal there. My daughter and niece ages 18 and 22 loved the pool at the catalonia riviera side where the entertainment took place. My husband and I enjoyed the beach to the far left of the resort. The front of this resorts beach is quite rocky and I would suggest water shoes. However to the left it is nice and sandy and we were able to swim over there, and there are lots of fish to be found there too quite fun snorkling. There is not a long beach here, but my husband and I enjoyed a walk on the board walk each night, we really enjoyed the fact that this resort is very close to the ocean, it was just lovely. The beach towls were great you could exchange them whenever you needed and Bernardo was very friendly every day he greeted us and whenever we went by the towel hut always called out a greeting. My daughter and niece wanted to mention Javier who was at the Catalonia Riviera pool, always social and friendly. The entertainment in the evening was ok, it is a quiet resort for my niece and daughter who were looking for more action, as for my husband and I we enjoyed a early night as we were tired from the activity throughout the day. Check out was quite easy, however I only have one complaint, the resort asked to have the safe paid in Canadian currency, so we did and the safe was 21.00. However when my husband paid the fee the desk person Gabriella, was quite rude that they did not except our coin. I understand that but they asked specifically for Canadian. We always bring US currency with us and so she was quite rude and said some very impolite things to my husband and I. So They want Canadian but not our coined dollar which is the loonie, I am not sure what other dollar she expected us to have. This is our fourth time in Mexico and we always carry US currency with us. Otherwise everything here at this resort was great. I would recommend this resort, however I would suggest this resort figure out what currency they would like their fee of the safe paid in.

Nice resort , poor beach

The resort is very good , food is very good , with welcoming margaritas everyday , but the beach sucks big time. There is little bit sand on one side of the beach , but the water... U need shoes to go inside. The bottom is all rocks , and full of weeds, so is very ruff and sliperry. The one nice thing they have on site and i didn t find anywhere else, is the snorkeling. You can do little bit snorkelink right the , on the hotel's beach . Kids will have fun .So, if you are a beach person, go somew [... read more]here else , if you just like to lay on the beach , and u don t like to get in the water, than u r ok. Overall, not a bad resort , if u ignore the beach part.

Great place to stay

This is a lovely resort and the Maya area is just bustling with things to do . I like the medium scale of the place compared with some of the larger resorts that require a golf cart to get around. Rooms were clean and very comfortable. Restaurants carried and tasty. The sushi chef does a great show. I travelled as a single and made so many friends. As you may have read the corals are close to shore requiring special care not to get scraped. I bought some water shoes for that. I would go back for [... read more] more scuba and to escape winters grip.

Catalonia Yucatan Resort

We stayed at the Catalonia Yucatan resort from May 1st to 8th. It was a very nice resort, lots of pools, lots of chairs at the beach or pool, great food and service and lots of activities not too far from the resort. The only thing was that the resort is far from the Cancun airport and we were dissapointed with the beach. But other than that it was great!

Wonderful place

We had a wonderful week away from Canadian early spring weather. The location is great, - very secure, clean, not far from touristy attractions (Tulum. Rio Secreto, amusement parks), plus it is in a gated community with a little marina, museum, and dolphinarium, - you can have a little walk to see dolphins, local restaurants, and shops (we did) . The resort has a nice little lagoon, which is a big bonus for families with kids or when the ocean is rough and swimming is difficult. The beach is gre [... read more]at, yet rocky, watershoes help a lot. You can buy them in a little store right in the resort. The reef is dead though, not so much to see if you are a snorkeler. The staff is very helpful and hardworking; oh boy those little Mayan people move fast!!! My husband is a hard tipper, but he could not resist to express his appreciation. We had lovely dinners in a la carte restaurants (Japanese, Mexican, and Italian); menus were not very big, but food was great. Cooks in Japanese restaurant are very entertaining, worth to see. Do not forget to ask for deserts! They were pieces of art in Italian and Mexican restaurants, and very delicious too. The crepes in a little cafe were very good too, we had them for few dinners, also this crepe cafe had a very nice cappuccino. Sadly, there are not so many places (better to say almost none, only the crepe bar which was open after 5 pm only) to get a decent cap of coffee. We stayed in a basic room, which suited our needs (we went there only to sleep), beds were comfortable, no problems with water, cleaning, towels etc. Overall, we have been very happy with our resort choice, and highly recommend this resort.

Nice family resort

All was good....family enjoyed the small feel of the hotel and area. The entertainment was good. Buffets were decent. Restaurants were good, we enjoyed each one. Staff are awesome. Not much beach, but the pools worked well.

Decent resort.

We had a pretty dated "garden" view room that was pretty close to the (very) coral-ly beach which made water access difficult. There is a small sandy beach access a bit further, but it only represents 10% of the resort's beach access. The buffet was good,as were all the restaurants. The nightly entertainment was respectable as well. The air-conditioned game room was enjoyable , and it had billiards, ping pong, and a checkers table. There was no shortage of bars and the drinks were good. The next [... read more]-door resort had a better each, and we enjoyed playing beach volleyball in both places. Bring a fishing rod, the fish bite like crazy in the shallow water lagoon near the resort!

Nice resort

The resort was very clean! The beach was small - lounge seating was too close. We took water shoes for the ocean and glad we did! There are rocks for the first ten feet or so. They had 'privileged' services that were not included in our booking price. They up sell these services at check in. We were travelling as a family (6) so would have added $$$ to a budget that had already been set. Felt like two classes of people. Would have liked to have known this when booking. The staff were very friend [... read more]ly and happy to be of assistance. The ATV Explorer excursion was a blast! Would definitely do that one again. The shopping excursion was fun but went to a jewellery factory first (told we would see how jewellery was made) It was just a hard sell on over priced jewellery The shopping was fun. Overall a fun family vacation. Great memories were made!

Nice, quiet resort

This was our first time to a resort. We choose this because it was a smaller resort with few children, (as we were leaving ours behind). This is exactly what we got, there was no sales people that approached us, no staff coming to offer drinks or snacks, which I was very happy about. We wanted a quiet place. The room had extremely good AC, but the buildings needed some maintenance. We spent our time in the ocean (not in the pools), it was nice to be able to go on long walks, and do some looking  [... read more]in small stores, marina, etc with out needing to leave the area.

Nice resort

Elevators were a consistant problem, stairwells not very well lit. The crepe bar was fantastic The alcohol was watered down The hotel rooms were more than adequate The staff are fantastic and very helpful The tours were not done as explained

Decent

Pools were excellent ,, that's where a lot of the action was at. Staff was excellent and volleyball ball was located such that it was never hard to find players there wasa beautiful little Beach area with snorkeling and calmer waters only complaints were that we had a leaky roof (but they upgraded or room) and that the main Beach area was rocky and not super functional

Enjoyable stay

Overall, we had a wonderful time. People were friendly, lots of Europeans, and staff were very helpful. Grounds were kept wonderfully, and food was good. A few issues with some rooms as this resort could use some major renovations. It is a tired building that could use some pick me up. Beach was great.