ClubHotel Riu Tequila, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

This is my complete review for the aforementioned hotel. We stayed there from December 30, 2012 to Jan 6, 2013.

Quick background - I'm 52, wife is 51. 5th vacation down south, 4th resort. We are from western Canada. Haven't written any reviews to date, we would just have been repeating what others have said in other reviews. This trip was different.

Quick review - Food poisoning, read more further down. Definitely not a 5 star, 4 star is a real stretch, 3 star maybe. Resort employees try hard but there are systemic problems here, will address them later in the review. No fans in bathroom, no bathtub, only shower, cleaning staff hit-and-miss. Hallways amplify any small noise into loud reverberating echoes. Difficult to enjoy a vacation when surrounded by rude asocial dour-faced chain smokers. Sunwing was late getting us there and coming back. Sunwing and Riu Tequila - never again.

It is important to note that the Riu chain of hotels is Italian owned and they cater to a large western European customer base, with smaller numbers of North Americans.

General review -

Food poisoning at the resort completely wrecked our vacation.

We arrived at the resort at around 3pm Sunday Jan 30, 2012. (Late, thanks to Sunwing). We were very tired and very hungry. We were first given a room that wasn't made up. Had to trudge back to the lobby and we were given another room. Got ourselves situated quickly and went looking for food. Starving. Found the snack restaurant in the pool area. Had some beef, big mistake. There was one piece of beef at the front of the tray that looked seriously raw, so I, in my tired and hungry daze, reached to the back of the tray and took a couple of pieces thinking it would be OK. Yeah, right.

About 9 pm I started getting lower abdominal cramps right behind the bladder. They got worse and worse. Explosive diarrhea followed with general nausea. Back and forth from the bed to the toilet until around 3 am when the nausea finally overwhelmed me and I vomited like never before in my 52 years. After that, the symptoms began to slowly subside. Oh yeah, did I mention that there is no fan in the toilet? Imagine repeated explosive diarrhea and massive amounts of vomit and... no bathroom fan. Me, sick as a dog, and my poor suffering wife, stuck in the middle of that. Oh, yay.

The next day, Monday, we had to stay close to bathrooms while we carefully tried to figure out what I could eat that wouldn't cause too much intestinal upset. Yippee.. what a vacation so far.

By late in the afternoon Monday, I was feeling a bit more confident about being able to leave the resort. We had wanted to go on a couple of excursions, and darned if I was going to let Riu Tequila's food safety incompetence completely wreck my wifes vacation. So we booked a couple of excursions.

Tuesday we went to Tulum and the water park - Xel-Ha. Stomach was fairly settled by now, so we got a good day out of it. Had some fun, still had some cramping and had to watch carefully what I ate, not knowing how each meal would go down. Couldn't drink hard liquor and had to settle for the odd glass of beer, not my first choice, and not in any satisfactory quantity, (hell we've supposed to be on vacation here), but my wife was able to relax a bit and we were able to start enjoying ourselves somewhat.

Wednesday, woke up depressed. When my wife was in the shower I was nearly in tears. We were halfway through our vacation and most of it had been wasted on me being sick and us managing the sickness caused by the resorts dangerous food handling practices. My wife's the one who wants to vacation down south and she worked a second job for a full year so that we can afford to go there and so far it was a complete disaster. We got out of the room and we spent a quiet afternoon by the pool napping on and off and I started feeling a bit better about it all. That is in spite of the atmosphere at the pool. Let me explain.

The swim up bar is facing west. It is not in the sun except for the very last hour of the day. The pool water is cold. Not cool and refreshing, but jarringly cold. Only a few seriously water-loving people spent any amount of time in the water or at the swim up bar. And no poolside drink service. Either you swim up to the bar in the frigid water and order there, or you walk around to the side restaurant entrance and circle back to the bar, get your drink and make the trek back to your lounger. Nope, not a 5 star. Not even close.

Then there is the issue of the clientele. At first you think - wonderful, some culture. Some interesting conversation. A chance to meet a new group of people with differing ideas and world views. The reality is actually a bunch of seriously rude people who want nothing to do with anyone outside their little groups, chain smoking anywhere and any time they chose. Many of them have a physical demeanor that instantly conveys a serious contempt for everyone around them..

Around the pool, they all just sat there chain smoking and either avoiding eye contact or glowering at everyone around them. No conversation. No interaction. I have to wonder why anyone would spend thousands of dollars or Euros to fly across the big pond to sit by a small pool to chain smoke and glower at people? You may be physically at a different beautiful location but your sad little insular brain hasn't left home. You can do the exact same thing at your kitchen table. Save yourself some money, stay home, and don't impose your complete lack of joie-de-vive on those of us who actually want to have fun and interact with people. Seriously, you people are depressing.

Special mention goes to the couple who outdid themselves by occupying not two loungers but four, by taking the cushions from one pair to double them up on their own loungers. That selfish little act on top of your dour looks and chain smoking in a public place frequented by children at a busy resort where loungers are scarce to begin with, in my opinion, places you very near the top of the heap of selfish rudeness.

Ya just gotta shake your head at stuff like that. Way to go, people. I'm am personally both offended and embarrassed by you. That behavior embarrasses me to no end.

Back to my food poisoning story. In spite of me residually feeling like crap from food poisoning, hanging out at an ice cold pool, with no bar service, surrounded by seriously depressing people, we finally ran into and met a small group of western Canadians, who had just flown in that day, and were getting pleasantly and steadily inebriated and were more than willing to interact and converse with us. We actually had some fun. Great - our vacation has officially begun.

Or has it? Insert ominous music here....

The next day, Thursday, we had a relaxing morning and went to Rio Secreto for a pleasant and fun afternoon. Got back to the resort, cleaned ourselves up a bit, and grabbed a taxi into Playa. Went to a steakhouse for supper.

Here's a fun fact that I learned that day, that I did not know, and I doubt that even most doctors are familiar with this. When I ate that first bit of beef that was crawling with food poisoning germs, my gut acquired an overload of food poisoning bacteria that was reared on beef. If you feed that lingering residual gut infection with more beef, well.... don't. Don't do it. Don't even go there. I made the mistake of eating a 13 ounce rib eye.

But, cut me a break here, at the time I ate it I did not know for certain what had caused the original food poisoning. It wasn't until the next day when I was recovering yet again from, this time, a residual food poisoning episode, and wondering how the heck this happened again, when a mental picture popped into my head of that one raw piece of beef sitting on that white porcelain tray under that red heat lamp when I innocently reached to the back of the tray for a different, better cooked piece that first day on Sunday.

Good news, now I was one hundred percent certain that it was in fact food poisoning, not a stomach flu, nor having drunk tap water, but it was food poisoning and the source was in fact that one piece of beef. Bad news, more food poisoning fun.

Someone in a tripadvisor review suggested that maybe people were mistaking food poisoning with the novo-virus. I checked into that early on. The timing of the onset of my symptoms does not match the timing of a novo-virus infection. It was food poisoning.

It was around 6pm when I ate that steak. At 8pm the old familiar lower intestinal cramping behind the bladder came back with a vengeance. By 9pm we had to get back to the resort and fast. We quickly got in a cab, and in the rush to get into the cab, out of the cab, and to my room, we lost our $300 camera. Probably dropped it in the cab. Buh-bye camera. Yet one more straw on this camels back. Are we having fun yet?

Back in our room. Diarrhea, nausea, stink, mess, spinning room, culminating in overwhelming need to purge and finally projectile vomiting all my stomachs contents. 4 am, stomach empty, symptoms start to subside.

Friday, yet one more recovery day in Paradise. Mission - stay close to bathrooms, try to eat something that I can tolerate, catch up on lost sleep, try to feel better. I stayed on the lounger, wife splashed around the frigid pool a bit. What a trooper. I spend the afternoon falling in and out of sleep with constant fuzzy thoughts of four thousand Canadian dollars and all my wife's hard work slowly and lazily circling around and down a giant Riu Tequila toilet bowl.

When we got back to the room, the cleaning staff had not left us any new toilet paper, we only had half a roll left. I've got a raging gut infection and they leave us no toilet paper. Wife had to go to a public toilet around the corner and grab a couple of rolls. Not a big deal, nor a big oversight, but patience is getting a tad short here. Wondering if there's a conspiracy going on. Not really, just feeling pretty sh**ty at this point (pun intended).

Saturday - last day. (Our airport pickup was to be Sunday, 7 am.) Do or die. Now or never. Time to have fun or die trying. So we got the heck out of Dodge. Straight out the Riu Tequila front gate down to the beach.

Beautiful day. Lots of nice pics. Got our feet wet in the ocean. Went to one of the resorts by the water and eureka, found a beautiful little swim up bar where the pool water was the perfect temperature and the bar faced the sun. The young lady behind the bar worked her butt off serving the clientele with a big smile and a ready joke. Met two wonderful young girls from Vancouver and hit it off. Drank and laughed and enjoyed the afternoon like we were actually on vacation. Thanks again, Morgan, for making our week. All in all, if it weren't for those few last hours in the sun, the vacation would have been a complete waste.

So that's our story. But it was not all bad. Some positives.

The entertainment was quite good. My wife likes that stuff and she was happy with it. Problem though, the theater is kind of closed in and the area around the stage was supposedly smoke free, but the rest of the tables around the outside of the theater area was all smokers. In the semi enclosed space sometimes the smoke was too much. And mix into that the fact that the place is full of children, it's just sad.

We did manage to make it to the disco once. The disco was fun, although it is very dark, and some of the chairs were busted and wobbling crazily and dangerously should someone inebriated try to sit on them. The DJ was playing some modern hip-hop/pop type music and we immediately suggested that he play some dance music. His response was "Like what?". Really? A young guy, employed as a DJ, who has no clue what someone means by "dance music"? He did start playing some danceable music and my wife and I started dancing and got the place going by calling people up to the floor and to come have some fun. Pretty soon the place was hopping. The drinks were very poor, as they usually are at resort disco's for some reason, so I went back to beer. Not the end of world, I kinda expected it at a resort disco.

Hotel rooms. Not bad. Comfortable beds. Good air conditioning. Mini bar didn't work, was fixed promptly, much appreciated. The toilet got stopped up once due to my overuse of the facilities because of my illness, again promptly fixed. Kudos on that. No biggie. Small TV, no problem, we're not there to sit and watch TV. We consider the room to be a pit stop between having fun, so any comfortable place to lay our heads will do.

Having said that, it would be nice to have a kettle for morning tea/coffee as we wake up and get ready for the day. Would be nice to have a little more light in the shower. Would be nice to have a fan in the bathroom/shower area. The four bottles of liquor was a nice touch. Gin, rum, tequila and vodka. Would be nice to be able to select some mixes that we could order for making drinks from the mini-bar. We got two or three liters of bottled water every second day. That was great.

Public bathrooms. Five star resorts generally have real hand towels available. Or lesser star hotels will have paper towels and blowers. Riu Tequila had blowers only. And not top quality blowers that dry your hands quickly. Sucky little bad blowers that made you stand there for several minutes with a lineup behind you to get your hands dried. This could be vastly improved.

Activities. We didn't take part in any. Too occupied with being sick. Took a massage by the pool, very nice. I really needed it.

Food. The food was actually quite good, once I was able to consume some. Good variety so that anyone should be able to get something good. Didn't try the seafood though, didn't think it would be a good idea, and the wife doesn't eat seafood. Tea was good. There is no actual coffee/tea station though. Had to get the hot water and hot cream from some kind of automated hot chocolate/coffee/cappuccino dispenser thingy. But once we figured it out it was good. Did not make it to any a-la-cartes. Hard for us to plan too much when I was sick as I was. But the buffet food was mostly good. As good as we've had at any resort. They just need some serious improvement in food safety and monitoring, as per our sad experience. Seriously, train your cooks in safe food handling and give them all instant read thermometers. Monitor the temperature of the food at all times. Please.

Coati mundis and cats - no problem. Did not feed any. Fun to watch. Especially the babies.

This is a coati mundi: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/3374481

They cruise around the resort grounds looking for scraps. Do not feed them. If you feed them they will not leave you alone.

Sports bar - poor drinks, went back to beer (expected). Snacks available 24/7, poor quality, but it fills the hole when you're hungry. Otherwise not a bad space. TV screens playing sports events. Internet access on PCs at a fee. Games, pool, etc. Not bad.

Lobby - access to WI-FI Internet on our own devices for 90 minutes free per 24 hour period. Worked good. No objections to limited time access. I'm not here to sit on the Internet and Facebook.

Kiosko Bar. Completely surrounded by the same little groups of people speaking to each other and no one else and spewing out a continuous stream of toxic cigarette smoke. Could barely sneak in there to get the odd drink. The drinks were good, but otherwise we were forced to keep a respectful distance from the bar.

The bar by the theater, I can't recall the name. Less busy, less smoke, good drinks. Didn't hang out there much but we went there for drinks during the entertainment.

Staff. All staff were wonderful to interact with, with a couple of exceptions. All working staff were wonderfully, cheerful, hardworking, conscientious, etc. The older fellow and the ladies at the lobby desk were wonderful, attentive, efficient and cheerful. The two young fellows at lobby desk were quite condescending, interrupting and providing unwanted information before they heard the full question, and generally abrupt. Arrogant and off-putting.

Our pickup for the airport was 7:10 am, Sunday Jan 6th, 2013. By 7:50, we and several other couples waiting there were getting a bit antsy about Sunwing being so late with the pick up. One of us tried to get the lobby staff to contact Sunwing and see what was going on. I'm not sure who the staff person was, but apparently they said something to the effect that we'd have to pay for the call to Sunwing (nope, Sunwing's responsibility) and that we weren't really their responsibility anymore, (as we had all checked out moments before).

Seriously? Talk about arrogance. Right there... that is the moment that I knew I would never set foot in Riu Tequila as a paying customer ever again. And the likelihood of setting foot in any hotel in the Riu chain is very very very unlikely. That is just not how you treat your clients. Period. End of story.

And Sunwing? That is another story and I will post a review on that later on.

Conclusion - Watch what you eat there. And if you are an asocial individual who has no qualms about looking and acting miserable while spewing out copious amounts of toxic tobacco smoke into everybody else's environment while on vacation, please go to Riu Tequila and stay there. That is where you should be. I, myself, will find another resort chain where people actually try to be happy and have fun on their hard-earned vacations.