Thompson Playa Del Carmen Beach House, by Hyatt

Beautiful hotel and lovely accommodations. I stayed at here for four days and attended a wedding. Overall, I was very impressed with the location and courteous staff. The only reason I did not give a perfect score is because check-in was awkward and conducted on paper. There also was a proclivity for superfluous fees despite having the entire facility booked for the event I was there to attend.

This hotel is on 8th North and right in the middle of the action in Playa del Carmen. If you want to be close to all of the restaurants and shops this is an ideal location. The hotel promoted itself as a five star, Hyatt Hotel - but in my opinion, it’s in need of a lot of work and maintenance. Even a little bit shabby in some places. For instance, the glass screen on our 2nd floor balcony deck was held together with rusty brackets, and looked pretty dangerous. Lots of areas of rusty and unpainted metal and a tired looking building. The hotel charges you for some extra room items. For example if you use more than the two coffee capsules supplied per day, you can order more from the front desk, but they charge you. They charge you for additional bottles of water too, if you drink more than two supplied on a daily basis. Which is a little cheap given it was $400 per night. The hotel is right on the beach, but make sure you get there early as they do not have enough loungers for all hotel guests to use. They do have a cute, small pool with sun loungers and cabanas but again, space is limited. The bar staff were friendly and pool bar drinks were generous. We did not find the hotel food to be good at all. We had lunch in the restaurant, and ordered nachos. The cheese on the nachos was liquid “Cheese Whiz”, which was incredibly disappointing. We also ordered room service on our first night, as we arrived late. The club sandwich was tasteless, the salad was a weird construction of beetroots, apple and lettuce with very little dressing. The person that delivered the room service food, asked for a tip in cash because “it would be better for him“ which was strange to say the least. The hotel takes advantage of the fact that it’s in central PDC and doesn’t do a good job with food. Luckily there are other restaurants close by for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We found the hotel to be noisy at night very close to loud bars and strip clubs. Convenient for these if that’s why you’re in PDC. When walking through the main street of PDC, be prepared to be constantly stopped and accosted for all kinds of services from street vendors. Massages, tourist gifts, tequila, clothing etc….we were literally stopped 20+ times when we walked for 30 minutes on the main street. Overall, we felt that the hotel was a waste of money compared to other hotels that we stayed at in Mexico. Staff need to work on the service and the food was pretty poor, plus the building needs a massive upgrade and maintenance.

Hotel is nice and very quiet - a pleasant surprise for the PDC craze. Value was good, food was only OK but not crazy expensive so that was fine. 3 stars because the service was not good and it felt like I was getting scammed. At every turn they try to force you to use dollars instead of local currency, but the exchange rate is not at all in your favor. I asked many times to be billed in pesos yet they ran my card in dollars. The difference between their exchange rate and my banks was almost $100 for the bill. The woman who processed my checkout was visibly bothered that I asked for correction. In the end not only did she charge me in dollars, she also then charged in pesos, and then she was shocked when I asked for proof it would be reserved or refunded. Overall the hotel is nice and VERY quiet. It is not a scene at all, the pool and bar always empty. But that was nice for us. We were able to relax when we wanted and go to the other Thompson when we wanted more of a vibe. It was quiet there too FYI. Last note: I came here to work and couldn’t because the WiFi never worked and when you called front desk she seemed bothered we even cared. For the price, I expect functioning WiFi and to not be scammed via exchange rate.