What We Love
- The Laguna Villa Suite is amazing! It gives adults access to an exclusive lounge, private pool and reserved beach area, so you can kick back in peace.
- The resort has 16 pools, 13 dining options and 13 bars.
- The full-service spa offers Roman, Finnish and Turkish baths.
Things to Know
- Maximize your vacay hours by checking pick-up times on scheduled transfers.
- The resort is 10 minutes away from downtown Playa del Carmen.
- There’s a medical center with 24-hour on-call doctors.
- Accommodations as selected
- All meals and snacks
- Unlimited local alcoholic beverages, juices and soft drinks
- Internal transportation
Location
Riviera Maya - BeachProperty Information
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Resort Details
Dining
Amenities
Activities
Hotel Advisories
General Policies & Fine Print
Check-in Policy - Hotel requires a credit/debit card authorization or cash deposit upon check-in for incidentals; this will place a hold on your funds.
Convention Policy - Individuals attending a convention cannot book this property for their stay. If found attending a convention, guests may be subject to higher room rates upon arrival.
Hotel Spring Break Policy - This hotel cannot guarantee a spring-break-free environment.
Transfer Policy - A price may display when children stay free, if your vacation includes transfer to your hotel.
General Information - Room taxes and service fees are included in vacation price.
Minimum night stay restrictions may apply.
Reservation changes may not be permitted unless authorized by the hotel.
Customer Ratings & Reviews
TripAdvisor Traveler Rating
11109 reviews
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Apr 03, 2020....and then the world changed
I travelled to Mexico with two friends on 13 March 2020. Grand Riviera Princess is a lovely resort..everything you could wish for in a holiday resort, beautiful gardens, lovely restaurants... so many restaurants with every kind of food you could wish for with a service that is faultless. In fact, it is the service that struck me most...nothing was too much trouble and always with a lovely smile. We did have a problem on our first night in that in the bed settee had not been made up correctly and was impossible to sleep on. Well after several phone calls to reception, we were assured that it would be sorted out....thank you to Santos, our room steward, who finally worked out what the problem was and sorted it. It took a whole lot of telephone calls to contact TUI...who were finally contacted by the resort's Concierge team...many thanks especially to Claudia, Chief Concierge (I hope I have your title correct Claudia) who liaised with TUI to ensure that we got on our transfer even shuttling us to the hotel next door because our transfer had been booked from a different hotel. My sincere thanks to everyone at Grand Riviera Princess for your exceptional service in such trying times....ultimate professionals all of you. I know you have a hard time ahead with deep cleaning the hotel for its eventual re-opening and I wish you all stay safe and well. Very best wishes, Mx
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Mar 21, 2020Lovely vacation spot
This was our first time at an all-inclusive, so we do not have anything to compare this experience to. That said, we really enjoyed our stay here. The grounds - The resort is huge. Like a small city. It is 3 resorts on one property. The Sunset & Princess Riviera make up the main part and are mirror images of each other. The Platinum Yucatan is the Adults Only resort off to the side (not to be confused with the Villas of Sunset and Princess, which are also adults only). Grounds are extremely clean and the photos you see online are pretty true to reality. There are people cleaning walkways, downed palm branches, emptying trash, polishing railings, etc. constantly. The beach was always cleared of seaweed daily. Lots of wildlife to see (monkeys, coati, iguanas, cats). Transportation from one end of the resort to the other is available by bellboy driven golf carts which supposedly leave every 15-30 minutes throughout the day, and every 30-60 minutes at night. Don't rely on catching one, as they never really seemed to have a schedule. We caught one during our whole stay. Villa Suite - What you see in the photos is exactly what you get! Very clean and spacious. Mini bar with beers, soda, juice, water and a few Snickers bars restocked every day. Housekeeping did a great job daily and was respectful of DND signs when used. We did have an issue with our toilet one evening (seems to happen on occasion by reading other reviews) and maintenance was there within ten minutes. Villa perks were nice, such as the private adults only pool with cabanas that can be reserved daily, with butler service. This was really the only pool that we used the whole time, since it was so peaceful and it was fun meeting the other folks staying in the villas. Hector at the Villa pool bar was a great guy and fun to chat with. Complimentary Breakfast at the Chill Out Lounge was a nice inclusion for this type of room. We reserved a Villa Suite, and thanks to a fan page on Facebook, were alerted to the fact that we could book our restaurant requests in advance. Our Villa concierge, Eddy, was a big help in making our trip a success. Any questions we had, he was happy to answer and even helped us book several excursions. Food - Everyone has different tastes, some prefer the buffets over the a la carte or vice versa. We didn't really eat in the buffets at all. There were a few issues in different restaurants with drunk folks being obnoxiously loud and or cursing loudly. Unfortunately, the staff really didn't intervene, even though many people who were eating were obviously uncomfortable with the situation. My husband did speak up on two different occasions and was thanked profusely by other patrons. Honestly, I get it. Alcohol is free flowing and there can be language barriers, but when you see that more than a few of your patrons are not enjoying their time there, you really should handle it and not leave it up to another guest to deal with. ChillOut - As previously mentioned, we were able to take breakfast at the ChillOut since we were staying in the villas. The service and the food were both great. Carmen never let our glasses run empty. The chilaquiles were awesome. We also booked a dinner on the beach at the ChillOut. This was a set four course menu with sparkling wine and a private table right on the beach. The waiter, sommelier and others had great timing and provided anything additional that we requested without a fuss. The food (steak, lobster, clam soup, salad and chocolate dessert) were out of this world. If you feel like splurging a bit, I highly recommend the dinner on the beach. La Vaqueria - Neither my husband or I were impressed with the steakhouse. Service was extremely slow that night. In fact, another table was getting upset that they hadn't received their food yet. We let it slide and tried to enjoy the atmosphere. The food, however, was not great. We each ordered a different steak and they were both extremely fatty. I left more than half of mine on the plate because the effort was too great to cut around it all. The sides were fine. Miso - We opted for the teppanyaki show side (there is also a side where you can order off of a menu, which we did not try). Reynaldo was an awesome chef who entertained the full table with his skill and wit. The food was enjoyed by most everyone at the table. I did not care for the sea bass, but again, just opinion. My husband added shrimp and lobster and really enjoyed them both. Mamma Mia - Sadly, we didn't even eat our entrees. The appetizers (soup/salad) were okay, but the lasagna and the beef we ordered were both, in our opinion, awful. We left immediately and headed to the sports bar to eat. La Hacienda - This Mexican restaurant had some great dishes. Fish tacos and fajitas were good. Desserts were nice, too. Black bean dip was good! Service was great at first, but got a bit lax after we turned down wine and seafood upgrades, though. La Fleur - This was by far our most favorite meal. In fact, it was so great the first time around, that we decided to rebook it for our last night, as well. All of the food from starters to desserts was phenomenal. We were lucky to have MaryCruz as our waitress on both nights. She sets an exemplary standard that the other staff should follow. You can tell that she not only loves what she does, but enjoys seeing her customers smiling throughout the meal. MaryCruz should be working in a world-famous five star restaurant. Her skills were impeccable and her smile infectious. We both really hope that the resort knows what an asset they have in her. Sports Bar - The only place we found crispy fries on the resort. Panini's were good. Staff was friendly Taco and Burger Carts by the pools - We had tacos almost every day for lunch. Husband couldn't get enough of them. Burgers were cooked to order and were surprisingly quite tasty for a food cart. Room Service - We utilized room service once for a late night meal and once for breakfast. For the most part, the food was good. Both times, the orders were a little off (missing an item or two, or eggs cooked differently than specified), but it was certainly edible and good. Average time for room service was approximately 30-45 minutes. Bars - all of the staff were fantastic, no matter what bar we visited. Sometime the same drink would vary a bit from bar to bar, but overall they were still tasty. The staff definitely bust their butts to make sure you have a great time. Smoking - Those who smoke can pretty much smoke in any open area (lobbies, sidewalks, plaza, by the pools, on the beach, on your patio). Most smokers were very polite and we never saw butts on the ground. Ashtrays were constantly being emptied by staff and restamped with their logo. Spa - We were able to indulge in a few spa treatments. The massages were great! We also did a body wrap which was nice. It seemed like maybe the time for the wrap service should be a bit longer, because just as you started to relax, you had to get up and shower and they were trying to come into the room to do the next portion before you could completely rinse off and get back to the table again. We just felt a bit rushed during that service. The water circuit was something we hadn't seen before. The steam room and saunas were great. The water circuit itself was interesting to try, but if we were to go back, we would probably skip that part. Lengthy review, but hope it will help some of you in deciding if you would like to travel here or not. Hope it helps!
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Mar 20, 2020Nice Resort, Rude Reception Staff
My friend and I stayed here for 9 days in March. Upon arrival everything seemed fine but we couldn’t check into our rooms until 3pm and we had arrived at 10am. This was fine as we just went to the beach. When we went back to the lobby...which was pretty far as this resort is absolutely huge, we were given our rooms and told our bags would be with us in 15 minutes. After an hour and a half our bags had not arrived. We were tired having travelled for 15 hours and then waited for another 5 to get into the room. When we rang the reception we were told to come back to the lobby which was a 15 minute walk away. We eventually negotiated that they would find out bags which had seemed to have gone awol! After another twenty minutes we received the bags. A few days later we booked a couple of trips with the EXPEDIA rep in the hotel. One of which was a 6.40am pick up to climb the Coba ruins. My friend was not collected and after waiting and asking numerous people it was clear she was not going to be collected. It turned out that the bus went to the wrong foyer to collect her so she missed the trip. We didn’t have WiFi for three days which was really unhelpful, particularly as we were still working and needed access to email, and contact with home as the coronavirus was a growing concern. The reception staff were again very rude and unhelpful and laughed at us. Myself and my friend are pretty good travellers and generally very happy and friendly people, we were quite shocked by how they were behaving. HAVING SAID THIS.....I cannot praise the bar and restaurant staff enough. They were lovely, fun and friendly and we had a lovely time with them. Particularly Fausto, Lisandro, Jamie & Veronica all f whom were so helpful and kind. The food is in abundance and pretty varied. The fondue a la carte and the Mexican restaurants are very good and there are taco and bbq pop up vans at lunch time. All in all, I feel that for a resort of this size, communication needs to be better but we had a lovely holiday in spite of the mentioned issues. The pools are beautiful too.
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Mar 20, 2020
Perfect vacation
The resort is very large and very beautiful . I would personally like to thank Josefina for keeping our room beautifully clean all the time any special request we had she made sure that they were taken care of for the remainder of your trip. Everyone of the workers there was happy friendly smiling all the time it is a beautiful place to visit. The only downside is that we brought our own floaty’s and asked for them to be blown up in the gift shop and they said that they Did not have a pump and I need to go up to that Sunset concierge to get it blown up went up there they didn’t have anything I went back to the gift shop the next day inside giant air tank what the heck? Otherwise I’ll be back in I’ll bring my own air pump so I don’t have to put them out.
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Mar 19, 2020
Big Beautiful Resort but Horrible Food
Grand Riviera Princess is a big beauitful resort that is perfect for families or couples. It has 12 pools to offer and access to the beach which is really nice and clean (no seaweed!!!). You also get wifi access throughout the resort for free. What we didn't like is that we paid for the Grand Riviera Princess but we were put into the Grand Sunset Riviera Princess which is cheaper and farther away from the pools and beach. But they tell you "it is the same". We made a lot of friends at this resort and out of the 15 different groups everyone complained that they weren't placed in the resort they booked. We were all put into the cheaper side and they wouldn't relocate us to what we paid for. Not impressed. I'm glad I only paid $1200 for this resort and not the orignal price of $1600 - $2200. I would only recommend this resort if you are getting a good deal of $1200 or less. The food was absolutely horrible in the buffets and at the a le carte restauraants. The food didn't have any flavour. Get ready to eat omlets every day for breakfast and pasta for lunch. Same food everyday, they say they change it up daily but they don't. Desserts were dry, hard and blah. Dairy products tasted rotten. If you go to the a la carte, prepare to be hungry after espcially after the Miso Restaurant. The service took over an hour for two people and we left starving. Make sure to bring a carry on full of snacks as they charge $20 USD for 3 bags of chips. They only have shops in the lobby that are waaay over priced that it wasn't even worth buying a souvenir. I've been to two other resorts in Mexico and they had little shops around the resort that were reasonable priced. If you leave the resort and go to Tulum or Coba markets, buy souvenirs there for half the price. Out of the 12 pools only one was the "party" pool where there was music and activities happening which was packed daily. Because the resort is so big and has way too many pools, everyone was spreadout so it felt like there was no one there. We mostly spent our time on the beach as the pools weren't exciting this year and were dirty. If you want the party pool make sure to go super early to reserve a chair or you won't be able to go later. We are use to resorts having "golf carts" to drive you around the resort, well this one doesn't which is shocking considering how big the resort is. They only had like two on the whole resort going on the outside of the apartment buildings every 30 min so not worth waiting. Basically, book this resort if you're looking for a nice looking resort, don't care about food for a week or which resort they throw you in. We will never come here again. We wish we booked the Grand Bahia Principe Coba again as it would have only costed $1000 and their food and service was amazing!!