Akumal Bay Resort

Great family trip. We visited at the end of May with our 9 & 10 year olds. Given that it was off season, the property was not super full which was nice. Service was great. We opted for the VIP option which may have not been too necessary for the off season, but definitely would be useful in high season. Food was good and pretty typical of all inclusive resorts in Mexico. We flew into Tulum airport which is clean, small and fast compared to Cancun. We had no problems securing pool chairs (again because off season). The seaweed was an issue at the beach, but expected. Overall, we had a lovely stay.

We recently June 2026 stayed at Akumal Bay Beach & Wellness Resort for 11 days and overall had a very enjoyable vacation. It was our 3rd time we visited this place Pros: • Excellent location, conveniently located not far from Cancun Airport. • Relatively small resort, making it easy to navigate and very comfortable. • Outstanding food, especially in the à la carte restaurants, clean • Friendly, professional, and supportive staff throughout the resort. • Special thanks to Daniela Martinez, Alan Torres, Elvira Abdulkhanova, and Adlene Roldan. We truly appreciated your exceptional support, kindness, and attention to our needs during our stay. Cons: • Sargassum (seaweed) arrives on the beach every day. The locals work hard to remove it, but new seaweed continues to come • More disappointing for us as snorkelers is that the left side of Akumal Bay is now restricted for independent snorkeling. Only a relatively small area remains accessible without a guide. If you swim off the limit, guards on small boats force you to leave • The stated reason is turtle protection, which is certainly important. However, it is difficult not to feel that the restrictions are also driven by commercial interests, since visitors can still access the restricted areas when participating in guided tours, no fins allowed, wearing life jackets, and paying an additional fee (typically around $25 USD or more). Anyways, we snorkeled off the turtle part of the bay keeping straight and right side, over the limits, and have met nice (and not only nice) fishes. For my wife and me, snorkeling is the main reason we visit Akumal bay. We can tolerate the seaweed, but the effective "privatization" of a large portion of the bay significantly reduced our enjoyment of the destination and left us disappointed. Despite this issue, we enjoyed the resort itself and would like to thank the staff once again for making our stay pleasant and memorable. I would rate this review 4/5 stars: excellent resort, excellent staff, but the snorkeling access restrictions are a significant drawback for visitors who come to Akumal primarily for snorkeling. My advise to snorkelers (including myself) - next tome go to Casumel or other place

Absolutely beautiful resort but we were disappointed on a couple of things. The sargassum was terrrible and we couldn’t get near the sea. The second thing was “ no straws” with the cocktails????? How can you drink a cocktail without a straw?

Review Where do I start. My girlfriend and I decided to go away for her birthday this year and our first stay at this resort was nothing but amazing. This review is pretty long and detailed but a detailed review is always better than a vague one 👍 The beach We’ve travelled to Mexico in June before and were prepared for some seaweed but nothing could’ve prepared us for what we encountered when we got there. The beach was absolutely covered with it all along the coast. (See attached pictures). Sadly we did not get to enjoy the beach at all due to it but I cannot complain because it was our own fault for going during the seaweed season. The resort does do its best to try and get rid of it. We did notice every day they had dump trucks and loading machines trying to clean it up. I think a suggestion I would make would be to try and have a buoy net in the water to try and limit the amount allowed to come onto the shore so people have an area to swim in at least. We noticed the resorts on the Cancun strip were doing this and their seaweed was a lot less, allowing people to enjoy the ocean at least a little bit. Pool The main pool is a salt water pool around 4 and half feet deep with a shallow area as well. Lots of seats surrounding the pool and the bar lady comes around often. We stayed from Wednesday -> Wednesday and we noticed our last 3 days the pool started to have a lot of dead bugs floating around in it and they would be there again the next day and the next day. Not to sure why they are obviously not using the net on the pool to get these little critters out but it should honestly be the standard to do every morning as a resort with an outdoor pool. Another suggestion I have is to have music playing around the pool more often. I understand it is a very laid back resort but we noticed some days the music wouldn’t be playing through their rock speakers surrounding the pool area. That led to people playing their own music on their speakers which sometimes was pretty obnoxious. Food I noticed some other reviews having issues with the food and I really wonder did we eat the same food? Don’t get me wrong the buffet was pretty terrible, but we quickly learned that you don’t need to eat at the buffet basically at all. Every morning we went to the snack bar which has a breakfast menu and they make you a fresh plate made to order every morning. Some days we would have pancakes and bacon with fruit, other days chicken quesadillas with egg and so many other options. If you want to you can have something different every day for breakfast. Lunch was more or less the same routine, go to the snack bar, order off their lunch/dinner menu consisting of mostly finger foods, nachos, tacos, quesdillas, burgers, hotdogs, sandwiches etc. All actually pretty good and also made to order. A tip I would add is if you enjoy your burgers well done I would ask to cook them longer which they have no issue doing, just tell your waiter when ordering. They are a little on the red side but we never got sick from them but everyone likes their food cooked a little different. I can see why people might get bored of the lunch food but we actually enjoyed the feeling of getting some drinks, ordering something off the menu and having lunch overlooking the ocean. Now it’s time for dinner. Like with breakfast and lunch skip out on the buffet and enjoy their A la carte restaurants. Unlike other all-inclusive resorts these restaurants are walk ins, no reservations needed. In some other reviews they say to go at either 6 or 8 to be seated but since it was the low season we never had a problem being seated any time we went for dinner. There are 4 different restaurants, The Mexican, The Mediterranean, The Gourmet, and The Grill. All serving a good mix of seafood and meat dishes and all menus had vegetarian options as well. Also when you eat at any of these places including the snack bar they ask you if you have any allergies which is nice if you do. (See some of the attached photos of some of our dishes we had) I wont go into detail for all of them but some notable ones were the Pork Shank at the Mexican restaurant, the Lamb Medallions with mash at the Gourmet and the Bone Marrow tacos at the Grill. We actually enjoyed getting dressed and going to the restaurants every night. It felt like we were going out for dinner and not just going to eat like many other resorts make you feel when you go to their buffets. Id like to mention that when we would order a steak or a beef tenderloin the knives given are supposed to be like a “steak knife” but they were just a glorified butter knife. I had a beef tenderloin cooked medium well which was actually not tough at all but even cutting it with that glorified butter knife was an issue. Same thing for the steaks we had and other meats mostly beef. They cooked our steaks to our liking and they understood medium well. But I would invest in some actual steak knives to make it easier to cut these delicious cuts of meat. Room Service was just the snack bar menu as well. We didn’t have an issue with it because we enjoyed the variety they had anyways. They say it will take between 45 to an hour to come but we had ours come in just over a half hour so they actually did better timing than they estimated. Service The service at this resort truly makes you feel like you can ask for anything. When we arrived we were given a tour by the Guest Services gentleman Alan. After he left us at our room he came back about an hour later with a bouquet of flowers and said to me when I opened the door “These were the flowers you asked for your wife” as he was winking at me. (I did not ask for flowers). After dinner we were exploring a bit we seen him and said hello. He called us over and told us to have a seat. I thought it was going to be the usual try to sell us tours and stuff gig but he asked are we celebrating anything and I let him know it was my girlfriends birthday. He smiled and said wait a moment. He grabbed his book and it was full of all the menus to all the A La Cartes and said to pick a restaurant. We chose to have Dinner at the Mexican restaurant and he set a time for us to be there. When we went the next evening they had Happy Birthday decorations on our table overlooking the ocean and sang Happy Birthday with the desserts after our meal. We had to meet with our WestJett/Nexus rep one morning where they let us know about our transport to the airport at the end of our trip and also informed us about some excursions/tours they do. He also made me fill out a survey about how he did before he really even did anything. After him letting us know about the excursions they offered we didn’t take a liking to any of them but we were interested in the Monkey Sanctuary that was actually less than a 10 minute drive from the resort. He said they don’t do tours there and wanted to move on after I mentioned that. He obviously was trying to sell tours that he would get a kickback on and wasn’t actually trying to help us do something we wanted to do. The night after the birthday dinner we seen Alan again and he asked us how the dinner was and if they did the birthday arrangements. I then asked him if the resort does tours through them. After telling him that we wanted to do the Monkey Sanctuary he called the gentleman whose name I cannot remember at home around 7:30pm and gave the phone to my girlfriend where they spoke spanish with each other to set up the excursion. While they were on the phone Alan and I spoke about local restaurants in the area and which to avoid for being too touristy and which were authentic. The restaurant service was also great. When ordering they understood english quite well and even though my girlfriend helping them understand in spanish it wasn’t absolutely needed. Each A La Carte was a 4 course meal with the waiters and Waitresses coming around constantly with the next dish, refills, and other things you might want during the meal. We had an issue with our AC in the room where it started leaking condensation. They came fast and ended up stopping the leak but that night it started to stink like mildew and fish. We decided not to call maintenance that night because we really didn’t want to move rooms at 11 o’clock at night so we slept with the fan on and no AC. The room was already cold and the smell ended up being tolerable for the night. The next morning when we were going to the Monkey Sanctuary we let them know of the issue and let them handle it while we were away. When we came back in the afternoon the smell was gone and we had no other issues for the rest of the trip. Rooms The rooms were fine, mini bar was stocked every day and bottled water was provided. I recommended bringing a reuseable bottle like an Owala or a Stanley and putting a bottle of water in one of those and getting ice from the bar. We stayed hydrated during the heat and it’s better than carrying around the plastic water bottle that will get hot fast in the heat. The pool also features a jacuzzi tub on the balcony which we used twice and was pretty nice. I am always a little sceptical about jacuzzis in hotels but we just ended up showering after using it. WIFI in the rooms on our personal devices was pretty terrible. Many spots were dead spots including the bed so browsing at night in bed to wind down was not possible. The best spot for wifi in the room was in the bathroom. The room included a Roku smart tv which you could use your usual streaming apps on it. This worked well and it never lagged for us. WIFI around the pools, in the snack bar and restaurants as well the lobby bar were perfect and actually quite fast just in the room it was not possible to connect to in a lot of spots. Other than the issue talked about above with the AC which was fixed we had no other maintenance issues with the room.

Having been staying at this resort for many years, I am always happy to arrive at our "home away from home". we like to stay in Bldg. 2 for easy access to the beach, pool & restaurants, but what keeps us coming back is the staff. They are always willing to help, and make accommodations if they can. A special shout out this trip to Rosa, our attentive beach server. German also is doing very well keeping the "towel game" in check! If you like, quiet, laid back places, this is for you! See you all in November.