Excellence Playa Mujeres - Adults Only All Inclusive

We truly had the most perfect stay! The staff was so friendly and welcoming. They were accommodating of our every need and helped us feel truly relaxed. We are leaving rejuvenated and eager to come back as soon as possible. We loved the multiple options for day time activities and food. You have so many options for restaurants and can’t go wrong! Gustavo, our main waiter was a wonderful and efficient server. Aldo was so warm and helpful making sure we had all we needed! Sully had many fun surprises for us and made us feel so special on our honeymoon.

We had a wonderful experience! Great service and facility. Premium accommodation. The staff is amazing! Edgar was great!

Josue, Aldo, and Lucy were all three very helpful, kind, and great to talk to. I came with my wife and we know a little Spanish, and they were all willing to be patient with us and let us practice. Would come back just to hang out with Josue, Aldo, and Lucy!!! And the Coco Loco was a plus!

We loved our experience at Playa Mujeres. The staff is extremely friendly and attentive, the resort is SO clean and organized, the food was excellent. We were able to try all of the restaurants except the excellence club ones and they were all great (kitchen table breakfast buffet, agave, and oregano were our faves). The pools are so clean and there's plenty to do on the resort. The drinks aren't strong but they're good and all of the bars/bartenders are fantastic. We loved the circus show and the Mexican fiesta night. We came for our honeymoon and it was perfect. We didn't want a lot of nightlife and a resort that had plenty to do with that luxury feel. Excellence well surpassed our expectations. Will be visiting again for a future anniversary!

Came to Excellence with my best friend for a short girls getaway.. although the resort is aimed more for couples we had an excellent time relaxing on the beach, spa was amazing and definitely recommend the club section as there are really comfortable beds you can sunbathe on, on the exclusive club side of the beach. We want to give a huge shout out to JOSUE, ALDO and our server on the beach LUCY who gave us the most excellent customer service we could have imagined, always asking if we needed anything, always available for drink orders, delivering fruit and chocolate covered strawberries to us while we sunbathed! Also we LOVED CESAR at the martini bar! Never waited long for a drink and he was so personable and fun! Thank you for hosting us!

Service and cleanliness was outstanding. Food and drinks were exceptional. Variety of entertainment was surprising and very enjoyable!

The location, the beach, accommodations, the restaurants, and all the activities were fantastic! Can't wait to go back!!!

TL;DR: The resort is very nice and our vacation was *fine* but it is NOT a 5-star resort and was not worth it for what we paid. The food is BAD and what sets a 5 star hotel apart from the rest are the details and Excellence lost me with the lack of attention to detail with many aspects of our stay over 7 days. If you are looking for LUXURY with good food this is NOT the resort for you. ABOUT US We are two best friends in our 30s who had visited the Finest Playa Mujeres in 2023 and had a wonderful time. We are not all-inclusive people but decided to go for because we need a life break and didn’t want to plan anything. We had such a great time at the Finest we decided to upgrade this time to the Excellence and wish we hadn’t. I am a very thorough trip planner and spent months reading reviews and comparing resorts. We are both truly baffled now as to how this resort has this many 5 star reviews because this resort is not a 5 star resort. Our stay in 2023 at the Finest was miles better, and cheaper, than our stay next door at the Excellence. RESORT VIBE Lots of couples, and as we were traveling as two friends, it kinda sucked no one was really down to mingle that much? So, great if you want a getaway with your loved one, not so great if you like making friends on vacation, even just chill ones by the pool. This is NOT a party hotel, which we loved. Everything basically winds down at 11pm which was great for us as we love sleep and our bed was so comfortable. RESORT + PROPERTY Pros: The property is gorgeous, very well maintained and very clean. It’s large enough to offer many lounge areas while not being overwhelmingly big. The beach and pools are immaculately maintained and we didn’t have a lot of trouble finding loungers or beds each day at any hour of the day. The staff are pretty good at making sure people don’t hog spots for the whole day without using the beds which is nice. Additionally, I will say this resort is VERY LGBTQIA+ friendly! We met many people across the gender spectrum also staying here and they expressed how safe and welcoming they felt which is a huge win in my opinion. Cons: Everything from restaurant and bar menus to resort activity info to event details are all on their dedicated app. This wouldn’t have bothered us if the app wasn’t SO SLOW and reliant on the inconsistent and slow wifi throughout the property. For example there is NO wifi coverage in the main lobby bar which means the app wouldn’t load so while we were waiting for drinks or for dinner we couldn’t check the app or use the wifi at all. ROOMS Pros: We loved our room. We stayed in a garden suite that overlooked a quiet pool area and really enjoyed how chill it was. The beds are sooooo comfortable, the room is spacious, the daily minibar restock was very appreciated and the shower was amazing. Truly, we loved our room. Not a con, but worth noting: the lights are all touch sensors and we never fully grasped how to turn on which light for which sensor the entire week were there. The bathroom toiletries were minimal (no dental floss and no mouthwash) Cons: We did have a number of issues with our room that weren’t really followed up with. When we arrived our TV was broken, it was completely blue. Someone came, took it off the wall and installed a new TV. This new TV seemed to not be fully integrated with the remote from the old TV though so it was very difficult to navigate. When we tried to use the app to chat with the front desk about it they made an appointment with us the next day to come look at it and then no one showed up. We were on vacation so who cares but this is an example of details not being taken care of. Also, if you like to listen to music in your room, bring a speaker! There is no clock radio or Bluetooth speaker in the rooms which was a huge surprise to us as this is pretty standard for hotels now even mid-tier ones. FOOD I cannot express how bad the food was. We are two well traveled adults who weren’t expecting Michelin star dining but for a 5 star resort to be serving consistency unseasoned, unsalted food with no flavouring whatsoever was shocking. What makes it worse is our meals at Finest in 2023 were amazing! The food was consistently tasteless and to be honest, Americanized. If you are someone who has traveled anywhere and loves traveling for the food or come from a major city with good food locally you will find better food at home. I am not being dramatic when I say the meal we had at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the Cancun airport was the best meal we had all week. We had pasta and burger… I have attached some photos, they spent all their time making the food LOOK nice and zero effort on how it tasted. The breakfast buffet had hands down the best food and was the highlight of our day. We loved the omelette station, the pastries, the waffles and French toast…etc. The two restaurants we liked were the French and Indian restaurant. I wouldn’t say the food was authentic but it has FLAVOUR and RANGE. All of the other restaurants were bad. Sadly and particularly the Mexican restaurant was very bad and particularly bland which doesn’t make any sense because I KNOW that’s not typical for Mexican cuisine. For specific examples: - if they say cheddar cheese they mean American Velveeta cheese, which is NOT the same thing!!! We loved ordering cheese quesadillas for lunch to the beach or pool at the Finest in 2023. They were easy, pretty light and paired with the pico and guac they came with a perfect lunch. Now the quesadillas are made with this Velveeta cheese and the guac is clearly not made in-house anymore. - I’ve attached a picture of the “loaded fries” at their sports bar. Taco Bell does it better. Final food note: I am a pescatarian and loved that the Finest/Excellence hotels have a plant-based menu for all their restaurants. In 2023 at the Finest there was a plant based menu that reflected the restaurant’s main menu so every night I had new options. No more! There were 2 plant-based menus for ALL the restaurants on the property and they were all BAD. Additionally, they are more vegetarian and less vegan friendly. I would NOT recommend this resort if you are plant-based, your options are LIMITED. DRINKS They were fine. Once again, for a 5 star resort it comes down to the details. The bar lime and bar lemon were very poor quality and all cocktails were made from mixes which means their flavours are whatever and they were SWEET!!! That being said, they made a great Aperol Spritz which when I discovered this was the only thing I drank for the rest of our stay. SERVICE Pro: When the service was good, it was GOOD. The bartenders are kind and generous with their time. The servers by the pool were lovely and remembered us daily. Cons: When it was bad, it was bad. After 2 days at the beach with terrible service we just stopped going to the beach and opted to stay pool side for the rest of our stay. The server at the beach either told us our food orders would “take too long” then walk away or one morning I wasn’t approached for 1.5h to see if I needed anything and in the end I had to CALL after him to get his attention. And I fully recognize complaining I’m not being doted on enough is a 1st world problem but when we’re paid nearly DOUBLE from our last stay in 2023 for a five start resort it’s shocking that this isn’t the standard? Additionally there were a few times my friend would order a pretty standard drink, like a Dark and Stormy, and instead of asking what that was to see if they could make it our server said “we don’t do that” and walked away!!!! ENTERTAINMENT It was fine. Nothing special? The stand out for us was the Freddie Mercury performance. Karaoke was also fun. FINAL NOTES Look, I’m not someone to secretly rage and then blast a company online. We told them when we checked out how we felt about our stay and gave all of this feedback in person. They had a manager come speak to us and she seemed to understand what I meant about the missing details and honestly didn’t seem surprised about our feedback regarding the food. She was very apologetic and gave us a complimentary upgrade for our “next stay”. To be honest, while the Finest made us think “oh, are we all-inclusive people?????” The Excellence has sealed the deal we are NOT all-inclusive people. I could have paid less and gone to Italy for a week.

Josue was absolutely amazing to us at the Excellence club beach. Exceptional service from him. He was the highlight of our trip. So kind and attentive - he made our experience truly wonderful! Thank you so much Josue❤️❤️

We booked the Playa Mujeres location after Hurricane Melissa. We were afraid that the Oyster Bay location would be unable to open, and wish we would have just waited. This is not Jamaica!! The location is beautiful and the grounds are well kept. The beach was clean and the staff worked each day to clean the seaweed off. A few complaints would be the benefits of Excellence Club. Beach chairs were limited, the rooms were average, the jacuzzi tub took over an hour to fill in our room, the Excellence Pools were not heated, and the champagne breakfast came to us cold. Food at the resort was average. The best meal was at The Grill. Cesar at the Martini bar was amazing. It is a must to stop and try one of his drinks and chat. He puts on a show but also welcomes you like a long lost friend. The Excelence Club concierge staff Aldo and Josue were very attentive and help is secure beach chairs and pool chairs for the day. The nightly entertainment was a hit and miss, but what we did attend were pretty good. The resort is OK. I feel it is overpriced, and there are others more affordable options to consider.