HOTEL BARCELÓ MAYA COLONIAL

Beautiful family resort. The service was excellent. The room and the resort grounds always very clean. You can always get a chair at the beach and the pool. The restaurants was good not the greatest. The staff works very hard.

Barceló Maya Colonial Resort was like a beautiful getaway in a tropical paradise. With beautiful beaches and delectable food, the overall experience was excellent. The friendly staff and efficient service made our stay even better. Yet, there are some improvements to be made. Although we appreciate the consistent service, the Barceló staff would sometimes enter the rooms without giving the guests enough time to grant access. Also, the furniture and the bed sheets had a musty smell. The room needs to be equipped with more outlets, preferably near the beds. The night time shows were quite entertaining with a bar and waitresses serving drinks, however, some shows were too repetitive. But overall, we thank the Resort for such a lovely trip. We recommend this Resort to anyone looking for a relaxing and affordable vacation and we would love to revisit! :)

Quick and simple: Large Resort that can be accessed via the double decker bus that comes around every 5 minutes or you can walk from one resort to another. Housekeeping is on point with at least two services a day to ensure a clean room and fresh towels. Terrible/no service from restaurant hosts and you’re not missing much by not going to them. Servers at the buffet are helpful and attentive though! Beds in the rooms are eh, but the rooms themselves are comfortable enough. Details, Details, Details: We stayed at this resort with 20 other family members. Since we were such a large group, they split our rooms between the Tropical and Colonial resorts. We didn’t know this since they couldn’t “locate” half our reservations. Turns out, they were booked at the other resort. Which is fine, however, the systems at each resort do not "speak" to one another, therefore, half our group had to go to the other resort's lobby in order to check-in vs checking us all in at one resort. It also took them a really, really, really long time to check us all in. This also affects any issues or questions you have about the resort. You have to contact the individual resort you're staying at in order to have it addressed. My immediate family had a room with Premium level status. This gave us a separate check-in process. The area for this is well air-conditioned (vs the open air main lobby, which means you'll get hot and sweaty rather quickly if there's a line or checking-in takes a while) and the check-in process was quick and efficient. They also provided drinks for not only my husband and I, but juice boxes for my two kids as well. The receptionist was also very detailed when explaining the map of the resort to us and marking various locations in relation to our room and times of various dining facilities. The resort has elevators to take you up each floor in the residential buildings. The elevators are quite small and have no a/c. They’re located in the central part of the building so if you’re staying closer to the pool area, getting up and down with a stroller or multiple kids can be a bit cumbersome. I’d recommend requesting first floor rooms. Rooms We got an ocean-front room which was nice since the pool and beach were right outside our doors! The kiddie area/pool is located outside the Guanajuanto and Jalisco buildings. Our rooms came with a nice set of toiletries also (toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb, a sewing kit, shower cap, shaving kit). We also requested a crib when we booked our room, and there was one in our room when we arrived. This was an added bonus since we didn’t have to “order” one and wait around wasting time for them to bring one up to us. We also had an issue with our thermostat in that we couldn’t change the temperature. We called maintenance and someone arrived within 5-10 minutes. He said the thermostat was broken and returned with a new one within 5 minutes! Major points for a quick turnaround! There is a tub with a removable shower head and an open, standing shower right next to it. It's pretty cool. Attached to the wall of the shower and tub area is a dispenser with hotel provided shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel. They also provide bath salts and bubble bath solution if you’re interested in taking a bath. The room also includes a blow dryer. However, the dryer doesn’t get very hot so if you have thick/lots of hair, it might take a while for it to dry. And since the room can get rather humid, don’t expect anything to ever fully dry inside the room! There is also a mini fridge with a variety of soft drinks, juices, and Corona extra, along with 1 large bottle of water. There is not freezer compartment in the mini fridge. They also provide 2 small packs of Lay’s potato chips and chilled nuts. Each balcony has a pull-out drying rack and two chairs with a small dining table. Someone came to our room every evening to reprogram our TV. Why' Not idea! The TV was working just fine for us and we never called in about having an issue, but he showed up nightly. Just an FYI. One of the amenities the resort boasts with having Premium level access is in-room pool towels. They were available upon check-in, but were never replaced after that. Fortunately, the towel hut is near our room (Jalisco building) so it wasn’t an inconvenience to obtain new ones every day, but it would have simplified our trips to the beach/pool by having them readily available/packed in our bag. Not sure if this was standard for all beds, or just happened to ours, but our mattresses reminded me of 80’s/90’s infant crib mattresses. In that they crinkled like crazy when you lay down or rolled around. Drove me bonkers! My daughter slept in her crib which also crinkled like crazy and she woke up often due to how loud it crinkled. A great bonus of the resort is that housekeeping came by at least twice a day (once in the early morning and once in the late afternoon/early evening) so that your room was always clean and fresh towels were available. Dining/Restaurants This resort requires you be "covered" up at all dining facilities, including the beach grills. This also means shoes are required. No walking up from the pool or beach sans flip flops to grab food at the beach grill. Ladies - make sure your have a swim cover up or a shirt to pull over with you! Just swim tops are not allowed! Men - if you're dining in the "fancier" restaurants, remember to bring/wear long pants and closed toed shoes. This is a requirement they enforce. Shorts are not allowed. Jeans are okay though. Reservations are needed for the restaurants also and don’t be more than 15 minutes late or they won’t take you! We were late coming back from an excursion and arrived at our dinner reservation 20 minutes late. They turned us away and said they gave away our table. However, if you looked around the restaurant, it was more than half empty! As a family of 24, those were probably our tables, but they wouldn’t take us! We asked how long it would be if we just waited it out (like if another table didn’t show up), and they said they wouldn’t take us no matter what. We inquired with two other restaurants on what their wait time was for non-reservations. The hostess at Tokyo restaurant wouldn’t even look at me when I inquired! She tilted her head to the other host with an unamused look and the other host apologized and said they were fully booked. Both hostess and host at the Seafood restaurant (Marenostrum) completely ignored us!!! We stood in line and when it was our turn to be addressed, they skipped right over us to acknowledge the two other parties behind us! Zero acknowledgement the whole time! This was absurd and extremely rude customer service! We did dine at Kyoto one night and the service was okay. While the restaurant hosts leave nothing to be desired, the waiters at the buffet are attentive and helpful! The moment they saw my hands full with two kids and several plates in hand, they rushed over to me to take the plates off my hands and take it to my table for me. The buffet offers a good variety of food and a kiddie buffet catered to the younger palettes. . If they’re serving Paella one night at dinner, grab yourself a huge plate full (or two)! It’s so good! If you have Premium level access, this grants you 1 night of buffet access at the Palace resort (this resort is typically off-limits to non-Palace guests). You should definitely take advantage of this offer as the buffet is setup differently and offers a different variety of foods. Make sure you grab yourself some tacos while you’re there. It’s the best thing on their buffet!!! It was so flavorful and cooked fresh to order. If you’re not a premium level guest, it only costs $5 per person to go. Pools The kiddie pool area is great! Multiple types/heights of slides and has varying depths up to 1.6 feet so it’ll accommodate smaller toddlers well. The slides are for kids 12 and under only, so if you have a toddler you want to go down the slide with side by side on one of the two super wide slides, prepared to be whistled at by the lifeguards. The resort doesn’t provide lifejackets so if your kids wants one or are used to swimming with one, BYO! Each larger pool has a swim up bar and the bartenders are pretty efficient in providing drinks and getting to you quickly. The pools weren’t crowded either, which was nice! The beach can accumulate quite a bit of seaweed as the day progresses so go early. If you want to snorkel, I highly recommend the area closer to the Palace side. Otherwise, all you’ll see is rocks. Bring water shoes also! There’s always a line of rocky area between the beach and ocean before you hit smooth sand so water shoes are extremely helpful. The closer you are to the Palace while snorkeling, the more likely you are to see fishes, sea turtles, corals, etc.

Loved it and would go back, it was better the the video shows very very clean and beautiful place, lots of fun for everyone, they had the best staff an they are very friendly and will get you want you need .

Marenostrum staff were amazing; courteous, professional and with a good sense of humor. I want to say a special thank to Santiago Faris and Macario, who made our dinner special. They were excellent!!!!