Occidental Cozumel - All Inclusive

“family trip to Cozumel”

so here is my review of the resort. Beaches/Pools - awesome. 5 starts there. Great beaches and 2 very big pools with available bars and plenty of chairs and umbrellas Restaurants - ok, so this is where it's "meh". There are 5 restaurants. For breakfast, it's really one 1 restaurant. Same for lu… more

so here is my review of the resort. Beaches/Pools - awesome. 5 starts there. Great beaches and 2 very big pools with available bars and plenty of chairs and umbrellas Restaurants - ok, so this is where it's "meh". There are 5 restaurants. For breakfast, it's really one 1 restaurant. Same for lunch. Dinner has 4 restaurants available....3 of the 4 are reservation only. So if you don't have any reservations...then its the same 3 options. Staff - there were awesome. we did have an issue with not having hot water in the shower and it was taken care of that day Activities - there was plenty of activities organized during the day; darts, volleyball, ping pong. Even during the evenings, there were some organized activities that were great. If I had 1 negative thing to say, it would be the lack of air conditioned spaces. Yes, the rooms had AC. The only places that really had AC was the bar. The buffet areas were not air conditioned. 2 out of the 3 reservation restaurants were air conditioned but that's it. Was that a big issue, no but its something that might have factored into my decision on choosing the resort.

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“Middle of the road - you get what you pay for.”

This hotel is very middle of the road. Would I go back – Unlikely, but you get what you pay for. We stayed here with family for a dive vacation. Pros: The grounds are immaculate – it’s like being in a little nature reserve. Very peaceful. The wait staff was very helpful, though I don’t think ther… more

This hotel is very middle of the road. Would I go back – Unlikely, but you get what you pay for. We stayed here with family for a dive vacation. Pros: The grounds are immaculate – it’s like being in a little nature reserve. Very peaceful. The wait staff was very helpful, though I don’t think there were enough of them, so service could be slow on busy days at the beach. The rooms we had were well kept, nicely done, and a decent size. Cons: Check-in process – This took 45 minutes to an hour, and there was no one in front of us. Rooms – We had requested two rooms close together with two beds each, but they booked us into two rooms with one king bed in each. It is difficult to sleep three people in a king bed. Originally, the solution was to bring in a cot for the third person. We pressed them to move us into a double-bed room. They then said they would move us to new rooms the next day, but we had to be out of the room early so they could turn it over. The issue was that we were diving in the morning and would not be able to accommodate that request. They finally found us two rooms close together. The AC – There was no AC in any common areas, notably in the dining hall, and one of our rooms did not have working AC. When we called, they said it was a resort-wide issue. Cozumel’s real-feel temperature was getting above 100 degrees, so no AC was no bueno. They tried to “fix” the AC, but to little avail. The room never got below 24 C/76 F. Ice machine – There was no working ice machine in our building, so we had to go to the second floor of the next building over for ice. Diving – The diving itself was great. Having logged over1,600 dives throughout the Caribbean, and not having been back here in five years, I had forgotten how beautiful the diving is here. The dive crews were great. We booked diving through the hotel package, which was a mess. There was no communication between the hotel and the dive shop. You are probably better off booking with your own shop, as most will pick you up at the dock in front of the hotel. When we called the hotel to book the days and times for diving, we were told to call Pro Divers, the onsite dive shop. When we called the dive shop, no one picked up the first time. We called two more times and were told that we needed to go through the hotel. This went back and forth a few times over the course of three days. We were finally able to get someone at the dive shop to respond to an email with a request for information, including certifications, number of dives, last dive, and requested dive dates. When we went to the dive shop to check in, it was evident that whoever we corresponded with had not passed the information on to the actual shop. I believe there are several locations, so it might have gotten lost, but we did specify where we were staying. Pro Dive International advertises free nitrox, but it is not free. Nitrox is $8 per tank, which is probably not worth it, and there is also an $11-per-day marine park fee, so be ready to pay that as well.

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“Nice Property, but Average Food and Service”

Very nice property. Location is distant from town and isolated - that can be perceived as a negative or a positive, depending on your perspective. Service and food were inconsistent in our experience and quite average overall. No house reef for snorkeling. Nice beach.