Azul Beach Resort Riviera Maya, by Karisma

Beautiful resort undercut by terrible service at ever level

The resort and grounds are beautiful and immaculate. The amount of work it must take to keep the sand raked, the pools clean, every cabana and chair covered in a fresh towel cushion all day and night... very impressive. The food was also good. Much better than the last all-inclusive we tried. Lots of vegetarian stuff. Very fresh. Flavorful. Of course the pizza stunk but pizza isn’t the point of México.

Service was terrible. There was a frustrating error at least 1-2 times a day during our stay and while everyone is human and mistakes happen, no one took responsibility for those errors. Day 1: During the long sales pitch (I mean “check-in”) we were offered an upgrade to a swim-out room. We’d wanted that anyway but they’d been full so we were happy to pay for the upgrade. A 10 min walk and two elevators later we say to the bell hop: “wait why are we going up again? How is a swim-up room upstairs?”... turns out we were told and SOLD the wrong thing. Not a swim up room and there are none available. No one ever called or came to us to apologize and they still charged us for the upgrade. (Comping the $200 upgrade would have been an easy and relatively cheap way to apologize for the error- our company does things like that without the customer asking... because... customer service.) Day 2: a) our room is never cleaned. Until I go to the front desk to complain at 8:30 pm. b) Rico - the sales pitch guy (I mean “personal concierge”) calls. Acts like nothing happened yesterday and when I bring up the room issue he says it was everyone else’s fault and I can come down to talk to the manager if I want. Sigh. He tries to sell me stuff. I remind him he promised to look into special options for my wife’s birthday. He clearly didn’t do it. And forgot. So he says he will call me back. 15 min later he called back and says “It’s all arranged.” I have to push to get him to say what. His grand “gift” at an all-inclusive resort? A piece of chocolate cake. My wife doesn’t like cake and is allergic to chocolate. I say we don’t want that and we are very disappointed. No thank you. c) We hang our Do Not Disturb sign out while our kids nap. And then: “Hola? Hello?” Bang, bang, bang. I go to see what emergency would force someone to ignore the DND sign... it’s a hotel employee delivering... the piece of chocolate cake. Yup. d) when he gets sent back with the cake and the message that we are upset we hear nothing. e) ironically that one 2 hour window when the DND sign was on is used as the reason why our room was never cleaned and also why something we’d purchased the day before was never delivered. Day 3: a) we reserve a cabana over the ocean. Beautiful. And no service. For 4.5 hours. I go to the bars and ask for service 3 times. I get us all our drinks and food and bring them out myself. On the 3rd request I complain until I find someone who promises to bring something specific out. It comes...20 min later. And the person bringing it is clearly the server for our cabana and there is no apology- not even a “anything else?” b) Rico sees us in the lobby and comes over to ask us how we liked the birthday surprise. (Seriously). He says there should have been a banner too. Oh great. Again everyone else’s fault. Day 4: Bellhop, scheduled to come get our bags at 9:45, is a no-show. We lug six bags, stroller, 2 kids all through hotel. Employees don’t help. No return trip here