Riu Palace Peninsula

The worst hotel experience I’ve ever had. For an ‘all inclusive’ restaurant, nothing is remotely inclusive about it.

When we first arrived we were told we didn’t have to book any of the restaurants, this is not true. You MUST arrive to the restaurant at 6pm otherwise it’ll be full for the rest of the evening. If you do somehow manage to arrive at 6pm, there is a line at least 50 people in in which you must wait to then be given a time to come. This is literally the definition of booking. Multiple nights there has been some of the restaurants closed last minute therefore making the other restaurants busier.

When I approached the reception about it, they didn’t want to know at all and they’d ’sort something’ for the inconvenience. Shock; nothing has been sorted.

The staff here look genuinely annoyed by everyone’s presence, if you ask one thing of them they expect a tip. Every member of staff expects a tip for not even giving the bare minimum amount of effort, let alone going above and beyond.

Around the pool, the waiter staff will only come back to you if you tip them, the bar staff at Pepes bar by the pool told us to tip the waiters if we wanted service.

Horrific experience from start to finish.

Rudest staff I’ve ever had. Everyone seems annoyed you’re there. Countless times you ask for something politely and you get a sigh or they seem angry. Most restaurants were closed on Saturday (we stayed 3 nights). The food is actually good. The room is mediocre at best. Overall would never come back.

The Riu Palace has been my go-to resort since 2009, and I’ve stayed at many properties in multiple countries. This trip, however, was extremely disappointing.

My husband and I, there to celebrate our anniversary, were told upon arrival that we couldn’t have the king bed room we booked, only a room with two double beds. The guest in front of me in line was told the same – he yelled and made a scene, and was given the king bed room. I didn’t want to do that, and instead agreed to pay an extra charge to stay in the adults only area so we could have a king. We specifically asked if our upgraded room would be facing the highway and were assured it was a garden view room.

It wasn’t – you could see and hear the traffic from our balcony.

That night we tried to go to two specialty restaurants. Both were EMPTY, but we were still turned away at both. I’ve never had this happen at a Riu before. Sure, you have to wait if they are busy. But it was obvious they were understaffed and accepting fewer guests than normal. I found out this resort was days away from closing for six months for renovations, which I didn't know when I booked the trip. You could tell they had already started the process of shutting down, and that we were not going to receive a typical Riu experience, which we didn’t.

But of course the price I paid for the trip was the same as always.

I might not have said anything, but a staff member at the sports bar was extremely condescending to my husband when he went for coffee the next morning, and I decided to express my disappointment with everything that happened in our first 12 hours there to the staff. Lalo at the front desk did offer me a refund on the extra I paid for the adults only room if I was willing to move to a king bed room in the main building, which is what I had originally booked. Now, suddenly, it was available? Why couldn’t I have just gotten what I had paid for the day before? It’s like I wasn’t an important enough guest – or I guess a loud enough guest. And at that point, I had heard multiple complaints from guests about the elevators not working in the main building, and I thought things might only get worse if I moved rooms.

Lalo told me to come back after 12 p.m. when a different manager was available and maybe they could do something else for me then. I waited in line for 20 minutes for him to basically tell me the same thing he said earlier in the day. In the middle of our conversation, another front desk worked interrupted us and starting talking to Lalo. I proceeded to stand there for another five minutes like an idiot as the two of them ignored me, then finally walked away in disgust. What was the point of making me come back and waste all that time on vacation? It only made me more angry.

We also had an experience on the beach I wanted to mention. My husband, who is Black, decided to have a cigar on the beach. The hotel has ash trays scattered around, and there are no “No Smoking” signs outside. But apparently it is illegal to smoke on the beach in Mexico, and we didn’t know that. After less than 10 minutes, the Mexican police arrived. They first approached the only other Black male guest on the beach and asked if he had been smoking. Then they came over to my husband. We had no idea what was going on. The cops took pictures of us with their cell phones, then let us go. It seemed obvious that someone had called the cops and reported a Black male smoking on the beach. Either that, or the police came on their own and targeted the only two Black male guests on the beach, one of whom was not smoking or doing anything illegal. Neither possibility is one that would make me feel comfortable returning to Cancun with my husband. This was my seventh trip to the area, and there have always been people smoking on the beach, and the police have never questioned anyone. But I have also only traveled with other white guests in the past.

We finally got into a specialty restaurant on our last night. Again, it was empty and we were initially turned away. The host showed me that 29 people were ahead of me in line and tried to discourage me from adding my name to the wait list because we might not get in. I did anyway, and we were seated 25 minutes later. It made no sense. Our poor waiter got four tables at once and was racing to serve us all. It was nothing like a typical Riu dining experience. We also learned from a staff member that the restaurants are all shutting down before the hotel does -- the guests who are staying there this weekend are really going to be stuck with nothing, and I bet they don't know that. And I bet they were charged the same as I was for my trip.

After this, I am definitely on the hunt for a new resort chain to use as my go-to. If anyone has any recommendations, I would love to hear them!