Villa del Palmar Beach Resort & Spa Cabo San Lucas - European Plan

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

9893 reviews

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  Amazing staff!

  Staff is beyond amazing! Especially Brandon and Francesca who work at the pool. Very family friendly an perfect time! Thank you!

  Jan 03, 2026
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  Loudest hotel outside of Manhattan, long lines, terrible customer service and sub par rooms and food-stay away!

  The villas group are dishonest and unprofessional. The only good thing about this hotel/time-share is that it is on a beautiful swimmable beach. We stayed at Villas de Palmar over New Years week and it was a nightmare from the start. We arrived after using their recommend transport company which made us wait for over an hour in the sun at the airport before putting us in a van with a dangerous driver. (Our whole van thought we were going to crash). I’ve lived in Mexico in the early 2000’s so I know how driving is and this was legit dangerous. When we arrived there was a huge line and they kept suffering us from one line to another. This took over an hour. Then we had to endure the sales pitch from the time share salesman. There an abut ten to twenty people trying to sell you on the time share and two people working the desk with 30+ people in line. It’s clear the time share is the priority not the hotel. When we finally got to the room we could hear all the lobby noise as well as the lot noise. I had called three times to explain I had a medical condition requiring quiet and was told all three times not to worry. It would be a quiet stay. We asked to move rooms and told there were none available and to speak with the manager in the morning. We then went to the restaurant for dinner to find it was an hour wait and then tried the other one and it too was an hour. Just why you want after a 12h travel day with kids-no food. We regrettably got the all inclusive and this were forced to endure waits like this for every meal. And the food other than the tacos was sub par. The food is prefect for Americans who don’t really want to leave America…well basically that’s the whole hotel vibe. It’s designed for Americans and Canadians who want to go to Mexico but without really going to Mexico. To sum up the food-disappointing. Not worth the wait. Breakfast buffet had cold eggs, rubbery pancakes and the worst coffee I’ve ever had. Dirt water. No wonder everyone had Starbucks with them. There is an up charge for many food items so beware! For NYR, we had to pay an extra $200 beyond the all inclusive price for a buffet and show. We night tickets three days in advance and were told it started at 6:30. We got in line at 6:10 and did not get let in until 7:40, by then the music had started and the line behind us was still 50-100 people deep. I heard some people were still in one at 8:30pm. They were taking same day ticket purchases before those with tickets which was ridiculous. The buffet food was ok-but they had a lot of the sushi not on ice for hours and hours…and the desserts were awful. The servers stopped clearing and serving to watch their friends in the show and two of them completely blocked our view and were rude when asked to move. So we paid for an experience we didn’t get to see and also didn’t get out included drinks for over an hour. The show was hard to see and was really just ok. Back to the room situation. On day three I finally found the manager-he was hard to find. I explained the room situation and he moved us to a higher floor. It seemed like it would be better so we moved only to find the noise carried even more and the outside noise was crazy. We could also hear every movement above us including chairs scraping and their music and TV. We could hear our neighbor puking and all their bathroom noise. Other than a night I spent in mid-town Manhattan I’ve never been in a louder hotel. I travel with a white noise machine and even with that and all phones on white noise we never could fall asleep before about two am. I left with bags under my eyes. I know it was New Years week so perhaps it’s better at a different time of the year. The hotel is very badly managed. Staff is only friendly if you are tipping them. I think they don’t like the all inclusive guests since tip is supposedly built in. I question that. This hotel is kit equipped to handle the volume of people at New Years. The pools didn’t have enough chaises and they ran out of towels a lot. By the way you have to return your towels and they track this. Also the security is a joke. I watched people walk onto the property several times without the bands. On NYE no one was guarding the beach entrance for at least an hour and I watched a teen come in five times to take the food and bring it to his friends down the beach. When you’re paying $200 on top of a 2k five day all inclusive food bill it rubs the wrong way to see they don’t monitor people coming into the party. Overall this was one of the worst hotel experiences I’ve had in my life. I have worked for resorts (including other all inclusives in Mexico) and the management here is truly the worst. There is no communication between the main office and the hotel. And the staff has no idea what’s going on. I asked ten different people how and where to get tickets to NYE and was misdirected each time. I was told to meet the ticket woman at 10am one day and waited an hour and she didn’t show. Some thing the next day-meet her at 3–no show. Even the night of the show the staff working didn’t know the schedule. Each time I asked a question I was redirected. I even called the main management line because I got conflicting info about the what was included in the all inclusive and they told me something different than the hotel. Anyway, I would never return to this hotel or any run by this group. They lie constantly and it’s all just lip service. Everyone I talked to at check out was pissed abut how bad everything was during our stay (we had to wait almost an hour to check out so there was lots of time to commiserate). And for the finale-just checked the credit card bill and was way over charged. So now I get to fight them about this. I went to Cabo to try to get healthy as I have a very serious illness and came home worse than I left. The Villas group doesn’t care at all about their hotel guests unless they buy into the time share. We talked to a lot of people on our tours who loved the resorts where they stayed so I would recommend reading g the trip advisor reviews (and ignore all the recent ones for this hotel clearly written by bots) and find yourself a better place to stay. There’s plenty of options!

  Jan 02, 2026
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  best bartender ever!

  Juan Carlos was the best bartender we could have had, so welcoming and always fast with his service! We were sad when he had a day off! The resort is so beautiful and the staff are wonderful!

  Jan 01, 2026
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  Poolside experience

  Mauricio is the best. Very friendly attentive and welling to make our stay memorable. Thank you Mauricio for all you do!

  Jan 01, 2026
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  Excellent Service

  The staff are amazing! Luis at Bella’s for breakfast was very helpful and friendly. He was attentive and communicated well. I would love to come back!

  Jan 01, 2026