Emporio Cancun

I booked this hotel though a booking site and did not get all inclusive as part of being on holiday for us is trying local foods and getting out of the hotel. These seemed to be my first mistakes with this place… if you don’t book direct with the hotel your put in the H block, the only one without pool or sea views, we had a lovely view of the car park. And if you have the red-leper-non-all-inclusive wrist band you are treated very differently to those with the blue or pink bands. The hotel itself is massive, and if you’ve seen Squid Game where they walk up and down the coloured stairs that’s exactly what it’s like. You have to go up stairs to get down and vice versa, there’s stair cases to nowhere and few lifts, which are always full of employees with huge cleaning carts. You’ll definitely get your steps in trying to get from H block to the beach and back. There’s 3 lots of pools, 1 at the top which is half full, freezing cold and half unusable because of the construction of what I assume is a restaurant in the middle. The sound of drilling and banging ruins the tranquility of sitting by the pool from 8-5 every day, there’s also dust falling into the water. At the bottom of 10 flights of stairs is the infinity pool, swim up bar pool and finally the beach… if you’re going here get there early else you won’t get one of the 10 free sun beds available and be asked to pay MXN650 for a cabana bed. There’s about 30 sun beds on the beach, but some days no umbrellas. The swim up pool bar was good the first time we went but the 2nd a disaster as we had the misfortune to be served by Esteban, who was extremely rude to us when he saw we weren’t all inclusive and then made the worst margarita we’ve ever had (at about £8 each for a small plastic cup). The hotel should be ashamed to employ this person as every other employee we encountered was nice. We talked to the concierge Alejandra about this incident and eventually she had someone bring us another drink which tasted better. It also transpired that you can register a credit card to charge drinks to your room but we were never offered this option at check in or any other point, perhaps again from the fact we booked thru a booking site. The Legacy Sports Bar was also awful, filthy and awful drinks. The room we stayed in was actually very nice and clean. It very big and had a nice balcony, although 2 out of 4 chairs were covered in bird muck rendering them unusable. There’s also a 7-11 and an Oxxo convenience store close by, make use of these as there’s only 1 shop in the hotel for non-all inclusive guests. Unfortunately the prices in there are ridiculous - they wanted $10 USD for a 100g bag of Cheetos! There’s also a Starbucks franchise in there which although very expensive, was ok. The final nail in the coffin for this hotel for me was when on our penultimate day we went to ask at reception if they had late check out available or any showers we could use as we had a late night flight the next day - they said both were possible and to call the next morning. We did and once they had our room number and determined we booked thru a booking website and were not all inclusive they suddenly decided neither of the previously discussed options existed anymore. When we went to physically check out, we told the guy behind the desk our flight wasn’t till 10:30pm and he said if we wanted to stay in the hotel then we’d have to pay for all inclusive. In all the hotels I’ve stayed at over the years this is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything like this. Usually you can hang out and they will store luggage until you leave for the airport but not here having booked on a 3rd party website…. A very disappointing end to a very disappointing stay. All in all I would not return to this hotel if you paid me, there’s plenty of other hotels in the Hotel Zone so it’s not necessary to spend your hard earned money to be made to feel like a second class citizen because you wanted to try local restaurants and got what seemed like a “good deal” on a booking website.

The Emporio is a very peaceful, family-friendly hotel. We stayed on the 11th floor, so the view was SPECTACULAR!!! The facilities are spotless, as is our well-equipped room. It has two buffet restaurants (one for breakfast and dinner, and the other for lunch only) with a wide variety of delicious food. The staff is very attentive and friendly, and there are hardly any queues. They have two specialty restaurants that require reservations. You can book through the app, and they are usually fully booked. We were only able to get a table at the Italian restaurant, and we were extremely satisfied, not only with the waiter's service but also with the quality of the food. I highly recommend the lasagna there—it was delicious!! Being Uruguayan, I was left wanting to try the other specialty restaurant, "Fasano," which serves Uruguayan/Argentine cuisine. I hope to have better luck on a future visit to this hotel. I'm not giving it 5 stars for two reasons. First, I saw several people fall because they slipped on some of the stairs (at least four). I even fell twice myself, and it wasn't because I was wet from the beach or anything like that. Perhaps they should put some non-slip treads on the steps. On the other hand, I noticed that there are few activities or shows to entertain guests during the day. Otherwise, I loved the hotel! I will definitely stay there again when I return to Cancun.

The food and breakfast were very good. Excellent service.