Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Rosewood Mayakoba

Price per night from$1,035.00

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD1,035.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Jungle-draped beach hideout

Setting

Mangroves-on-sea

More adventure heartland than hotel, the exhaustive Rosewood Mayakoba leaves its guests wanting for nothing. Accessed by boat, prepare to disappear into mangroves and lagoons at this family friendly retreat. The heart of darkness this is not – expert staff ensure pure lightness and warmth. Interiors favour a toned-down yet upscale mix of Yucatán limestone and darkwood furniture made by local artisans. Eco-tours, wellness services and eight (count them) bars and restaurants help pad out the day’s entertainment, and your own boat dock, plunge pool, and personal butler service heighten the decadence stakes.

 

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A bottle of mezcal and Mexican salsas

Facilities

Photos Rosewood Mayakoba facilities

Need to know

Rooms

129 suites and villas

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £1114.86 ($1,408), including tax at 36 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional government tax of $1.42 per room per night on check-out.

More details

Rates don’t include breakfast, but it can be purchased for $35–55. With classic chilaquiles and traditional sopes on offer, we advise you to cough up the extra dollars.

Also

Guests are encouraged to embrace their inner Anthony Bourdain and travel two hours to Valladolid, where residents still dress in traditional Mayan clothing.

At the hotel

Spa, fitness facilities, tennis courts, golf course, dry cleaning/laundry service, private beach, four pools, eight restaurants and bars, kids club, bicycles, Wi-Fi. In rooms: personalised butler service, room service, TV, plunge pool, Maison Caulières bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Any one of the secluded-away Lagoon Suites gives the impression you’re floating over the waterways – the type of place where Graham Greene could hole up with a bottle of something strong and while away the hours bashing away at the typewriter. The private boat dock also allows for a quick escape when you’re in need of a late-night mole fix. For a toes-in-the-sand feel, the Beachfront Suite has unbroken blue vistas of sky and sea.

Poolside

There are four options, including a family-friendly beachfront infinity pool and an oval-shaped hydrotherapy pool.

Spa

Sense is set on its own island and includes eight overnight wellness suites. Specialities include treatments influenced by Mayan herbal medicine rituals.

Packing tips

A pair of tailored, yet stretchy, Orlebar Brown trunks and a muted Sunspel polo is a classic duo that will take you from beach to bar.

Also

Mezcal is offered on arrival, allowing you to swing into the nonchalant rhythms of beachlife from the get go.

Pet‐friendly

All pets are welcome; there’s a $100 charge per dog per stay. See more pet-friendly hotels in Playa del Carmen.

Children

Children of all ages are welcome, and the bevy of explorer activities is likely to inspire the next generation of thrill-seeking globetrotters.

Best for

Babies and up

Recommended rooms

With three- to six-bedroom configurations, as well as living and dining areas, any one of the signature suites offers plenty of room for young travellers to kick back in.

Crèche

There’s no onsite crèche, but the kids’ club is open 9am–5pm.

Activities

Rosewood Mayakoba caters to small explorers, offering more than the usual soft-ball pits and climbing frames. The exhaustive programme includes yoga classes, scavenger hunts for mini-Indys, and lessons in Spanish and Mayan. Those looking to follow in the footsteps of David Attenborough can go on eco-tours with a biologist who’ll educate guests in local fauna and flora, and there are also opportunities to learn about the release of nesting sea turtles into the sea. 

Swimming pool

Of the four options, we recommend taking your Smithlets to the Punta Bonita family pool, a lively beachside hangout.

Meals

Highchairs, menus, cutlery, bibs, times for children, kitchen happy to adapt menu, minibar.

Babysitting

Babysitting must be booked 24 hours in advance. There’s a two-hour minimum, and nannies can care for two children at a time. It’s $25 per hour (7am–11.59pm); $30 (12 midnight–6.59am). Changes or cancellations must be made four hours in advance.

No need to pack

Skincare products and bottle warmers.

Also

Spa services are available to children, allowing them to decompress following some arduous hours of building sandcastles on the beach.

Sustainability efforts

There’s an all-encompassing approach to sustainability at Rosewood Mayakoba. Guests arrive at their accommodation via an electric boat, and can also use electric golf carts and bicycles to get around the 620-acre development. The hotel is committed to protecting its mangroves, home to hundreds of species of native flora and fauna. There are daily eco-tours that educate participants about Mexican wildlife and the protection of indigenous sea turtles, there’s an extensive effort to use alternatives to plastic, and there’s a system that recycles water that is then used for landscape irrigation.

Food and Drink

Photos Rosewood Mayakoba food and drink

Top Table

Plump for a reservation at La Ceiba Garden & Kitchen, where the communal seating provides a vibrant fiesta feel.

Dress Code

A brightly patterned camp-collar shirt should cover up any beef birria drops.

Hotel restaurant

There are eight food and drink spots within the complex: the day starts with huevos rancheros at Casa del Lago; seaside Punta Bonita serves flavours from Mexico’s southern Pacific coast; and Agave Azule harmonises northern Baja California with flavours from the Chinese and Japanese kitchen. Pig out on roasted suckling pig at Aquí Me Quedo, or uncover small-batch spirits and a menu that showcases the diversity of the Yucatán Peninsula at Zapote Bar. Mayan techniques are refracted through a local, upscale lens at La Ceiba Garden & Kitchen, and Pan Dulce Bakery makes the case that Mexican desserts are more than just flan and churros.

 

Hotel bar

Looking beyond the hackneyed tiki motifs, Zapote Bar, guided by Joshua Monaghan, is a sophisticated hangout that specialises in cocktails inspired by the Yucatán. The Wana Bana (tequila, lemongrass, soursop purée, lime juice, pasilla and salt) packs a stronger punch than an Oscar de La Hoya uppercut.  

 

Last orders

There are as many variables here as there are restaurants, but with so much choice and 24-hour service, you're unlikely to go without so much as a taco crumb when hungry.

Room service

Room service is available 24/7, with a comprehensive menu featuring tacos, quesadillas, snacks and salads, plus breakfast items and all-day desserts.

Location

Photos Rosewood Mayakoba location
Address
Rosewood Mayakoba
Ctra. Federal Cancún-Playa del Carmen Km 298 Solidaridad
Playa del Carmen
77710
Mexico

Though located just off Highway 307, which connects Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, the secluded Rosewood Mayakoba has an other-worldly feel thanks to its setting across mangroves and waterways.

Planes

Cancún International Airport is approximately a 40-minute taxi ride away. A roundtrip transfer ($420) can be arranged with the hotel. For those wanting to drive, there’s a private onsite car park.

Worth getting out of bed for

Owing to its location between jungle and ocean, as well as its close proximity to city life, visiting Rosewood Mayakoba is an experience as colourful as a traditional sarape. Go full Indiana Jones and lead an expedition to a cenote, a natural sinkhole once important to Mayan spiritual life – descending into cenote El Burrodromo will feel as though you’re travelling to the earth’s core. Sacrifice a day to go to the ceremonial centre of Coba, which is secluded deep in the rainforest and can only be reached once you go past temples, ruins and thick vegetation, the kind of adventure Joseph Conrad would immortalise on paper. And try not to lose your head when confronted with the surreal beauty of Chichén Itzá, one of the new seven wonders of the world just under a three-hour drive away. When all that intrepid exploring takes a toll, grab some prime real estate under a parasol at either Aquí Me Quedo or Punta Bonita and let the soundtrack of swaying palm trees help you drift into a late-afternoon siesta. 

 

Local restaurants

Continue the adventurous ethos when searching for sustenance and head an hour southwards to Tulum, a coastal town known for its intact Mayan ruins, rapid development, and a culinary scene that comprises restaurants by renowned chefs and low-key locals. Open-air Arca gives off the feeling that you’re dining in the jungle, and its artful, micro-seasonal fare is loaded with macro flavour; make a dive for the sea urchin ceviche with Mandarin aguachile, red-cabbage kimchi and cucumber; and don’t let the grilled octopus in a recado negro terrine slip past you. Newave has a locavore menu that’s partly influenced by the Caribbean Sea, partly by the Mayan Jungle – the outstanding mole negro has the all depth and complexity of a celebrated melodrama. 

 

Reviews

Photos Rosewood Mayakoba reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this jungle hotel in Playa del Carmen and unpacked their locally made tapestries and bottles of xtabentún, a full account of their Riviera Maya break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Rosewood Mayakoba in Playa del Carmen…

Set across lagoons and beachfront, Rosewood Mayakoba encompasses both the otherworldly experience of a deep-jungle expedition and the liberating, breezy feel of an oceanside escape, all underpinned by a service that’s as warm as a handmade tortilla straight off the comal. This network of villas and suites is defined by its sizeable proportions and pared-back interiors swathed in glorious natural light, and is a great launch pad from where you can spend your days snorkelling in the Caribbean Sea’s barrier reef; visiting the ancestral city of Coba; or going deep into El Burrodromo sinkhole. Refuel at any one of the hotel’s eight food-and-drink options: Pan Dulce deals in remixed takes on centuries-old baking traditions; or pray at the altar of La Fondita, which specialises in the holy trinity of tacos, tostadas and mezcal. When needing a post-binge detox, try one of the spa’s traditional Mayan treatments, in which the wellness specialists will cocoon you, tamale-like, in a mix of balms and clays. 

Book now

Price per night from $1,035.00