Zoëtry Paraiso de la Bonita Riviera Maya

I would lightly recommend this resort to couples and families looking for that authentic Mexican experience. From the moment you arrive at Zoetry, till the moment you check out, you feel as you were a guest of a home not of a hotel. Not only will you get the chance to experience incredible hospitality, beautiful and spacious suites, fun boat rides and clean and delicious Mexican food, but you will get the once in a lifetime chance to experience authentic Mexican culture.

A wonderful hotel, very nice and helpful staff! Amazing view, very relaxing with a great beach (apart from the algae that stay on the shore), great pool and spa as well. Great for relaxing and unwinding and then you can get a taxi to go visit all other places. It also has two great restaurants, but the "La Canoa" is a must! Bust duck I ever had and the staff is just great too! The hotel also offers some activities every day that include snorkeling, diving, tequila and wine tasting, sunset cruise in a catamaran and others. It's a really great and quiet place to be!

This was paradise at it's best! At first we were hesitant of traveling to an unknown area of Mexico, to a new resort to us, but we are now hooked!! El Paraíso de la Bonita tops any beach resort we have ever been to in Mexico. When you don't have to ask for what you want but someone offers it to you instead, you know you are in the right place Everything was of exceptional quality and VALUE, it surpassed our expectations of a five diamond resort. We will definitely be back!!

Where do I start? I booked this hotel because we stayed at Zoetry before in Cabo and It was truly paradise! Without doing much research I opted to book at Zoetry once again and let me tell you it was a big mistake. I checked the reviews here after I booked my trip and the reviews are great. I read some of the bad ones and I thought to myself maybe the people who wrote them were a bit picky and so forth. Honestly, everything the bad reviews said were true and most of them were from people who had stayed at Zoetry before. I'm going to begin with the positives and work my way down to the negatives. The hotel was beautiful and truly looks like paradise. Some of the staff were friendly and the hotel is kept in pretty good shape (clean) etc... They have a bunch of parrots and different animals within the hotel including a crocodile. The rooms were nice with a lot of space and It was fairly clean and well taken care of. One 2-bedroom suite and a 1 bedroom suite both with plunge pool. If you're staying at this hotel pay the extra money and get the plunge pool as it was very useful and relaxing. The reason you should get the plunge pool is that main pool in the lobby closes at 7pm every night. Zoetry offers to take you to isla mujeres which is an island with an amazing beach. This was one of the only good parts of the trip. Furthermore, the food was subpar at best. The only good part about the restaurant was the manager, Caesar. He was truly an amazing guy and did everything to make our restaurant experience as perfect as possible hence why I gave Zoetry a 2 star instead of just one star. Unfortunately, he was only there during lunch time and that was the only time I could get a good meal. Now let’s get to all of the negatives. The main pool in the lobby closed at 7pm every night which didn't make sense to me. Any service that I required took ages and by ages, I really do me ages. It was to the point that I would forget that I even requested the service. This included the housekeeping, Room service, restaurants, snack bar, and everything else. I’ll start with the issues with one of our rooms. First, the toilet had a very low flow which caused it to overflow the first night in one of our rooms. I contacted maintenance and after a day they finally “fixed� it. It wasn’t fully fixed but bearable. Second, Day 2 of our stay, they started doing construction right above our rooms without any prior notice. I thought it was a one day thing but it ended up lasting 3 days!!! From 10 am up until 8pm!!! We couldn’t take a nap and relax in the rooms. I ended up telling the front office why they are doing construction work if they rented the room to us. Even once they were informed they asked me when I wouldn’t be available so they can continue their construction. I explained to them that this was unacceptable yet they ignored all requests. The management was very weak and I couldn’t get a single straight answer from anyone in the hotel. If you ask a question from 4 different staff members, you will get 4 different answer which is very annoying. Now let me share my experience with the food service. I was looking forward to eating at the sushi bar; however, the sushi maker was very disrespectful. My father and I went to the sushi bar and we took a seat. We were the only guests there at the time and the sushi bar had just opened. We sat there and the sushi maker just looked at us while we greeted him. We asked for a menu and he didn’t say a single word. At this point I just assumed he didn’t speak English. After about 5 min he asked if we spoke English and my father and I just looked confused. He then asked what do you want and my father ordered but never asked me. I waited as I thought he will come back and ask me but he placed one sushi roll in front of us and turned away. I said, “excuse me sir� but he didn’t respond so I got up and went to the other side of the sushi bar. I told him that I needed to order and he told me to sit down. At this point I was agitated by the behavior of this individual. I went to the front office to let them know how their guests are being treated. They spoke to the sushi maker and told Caesar about the issue. From then on Caesar personally took care of everything. When Caesar was there everything was perfect; however, when he wasn’t there the service was 0. Their service is very slow and anything that you order they will get wrong which means you’ll be spending a good amount of your time at the restaurants. The portions are very small so usually we would have to order multiple plates and 99% of the time they would “forget� to bring the additional plates. Another issue here at Zoetry was the beach. It was disgusting due to a lot of algae being washed to shore. Don’t come here expecting an amazing view of the blue ocean shown on their pictures. Once you go to Isla Mujeres you’ll know how bad the beach really is. Overall, Zoetry Paraiso de La Bonita was a big disappointment with a lot more flaws then anything good. Their service was very slow, and a lot of their staff are untrustworthy. A few of them such as Caesar went above and beyond to help you make the most out of your vacation. We truly regret spending money staying at this resort. I know there a few things that are beyond anyone’s control; however, in this case everything was within control and the management was just not up to par. I know the management will try to respond with a sorry reply but they had their chance and didn’t do anything about it. My loss is your gain!!! Don’t waste your valuable vacation time here. To all the future travelers, I would advise you to shop around and avoid staying here. Unfortunately, There’s nothing special about this place but a few animals.

I stayed here July 1-6 with two friends for a relaxing "girls getaway� and what a mistake that was. We each booked our own rooms with plunge pools. Having visited several Secrets and Breathless resorts, we were expecting this place to be even better since it costs more and boasts of being a 5 Diamond Award recipient for many years in a row. I don’t understand how this award was given to this property based on the fact that the air conditioning in all three of our rooms never got cold enough to be tolerable (I called maintenance, but the temp never improved), both of my bathroom sinks had mold and discolored water stains (Gadjner unit-see pics) and my toilet didn’t work (I had to call twice to have it plunged because the flow was so low it kept getting stopped up with even the smallest amount of toilet paper). To top it all off….my friend in the Cairo unit had to call to get a huge rat removed from her bathroom that she could hear scratching around in the middle of the night. This trip got off to the wrong start immediately upon check in. I arrived 3 hours before my room was ready so I changed into my bathing suit and then took my luggage to the check-in office and asked them to keep it until my room was ready. When I returned, I found that they had moved my luggage from the inside, air-conditioned area where I had left it to the outside of the building in direct sunlight for 3 hours in 90 degree heat! What luxury resort does that? When I complained and said that was inexcusable to put my make-up, medication, toiletries, etc. in that type of environment (my hard case suitcase was too hot to even touch with my bare hands!), the office personnel tried to tell me that it was my fault for not explicitly telling them I didn’t want it outside. I have never had such an experience at any of the other 8 AMResorts that also stored my luggage until check-in. They all put it in a secured and cool environment, so why would I expect anything less here? This place doesn't even have a covered driveway or dedicated luggage storage area. I guess if it rains, they just leave your luggage out in that too! Other disappointments include: The so-called “plunge pool� is complete false advertisement. There is no way to “plunge� into it. The water is only knee deep. It's the most shallow pool I have ever seen in my life. Most plunge pools are at least waist high. These are more akin to a bird bath or baby wading pool. Room service food was cold upon arrival and not good at all. During one b’fast service the server mixed up our orders and gave us the wrong omelettes. We only found out after we starting eating them and could see that we had been given someone else's meal. There were many KIDS there (lesson learned, I will definitely go back to adults only options). We started having to change our dinner plans once we saw which restaurant the constantly crying toddler and his parents were going to. I mean seriously, who brings a 2 year old to a place like this? It magically appeared at b’fast every morning at the same time as us and there wasn’t a meal service that week that it didn’t burst out crying (and not just for a minute or two….extended periods of time with the parents doing nothing nor removing it from the area). That wasn't the only obnoxious child. Four doors down from my “plunge pool� and patio, two kids were laughing and screaming in their plunge pool so loudly to the point that I called the front desk twice to complain about the noise level. I had only decided to lounge around my pool to get away from the cigarette smoking guests at the main pool. There was no escape for a decent place to read a book, breathe fresh air and hear the sound of the waves. Oh, and I failed to mention the squawking parrots that are located right by the main pool. I received an 8:30 am call on the ONLY day I decided to sleep in and skip b’fast. It was from the front desk asking me how my trip was so far! That was just a false pretense to then ask me if I would come by to discuss membership (aka timeshare). What 5 Diamond resort would allow solicitation phone calls at 8:30am for their guests who are on vacation? Someone needs to seriously change the criteria for this award. I removed the do not disturb sign from my front door when I went to the beach and closed my gate entrance. I got no maid service that day and when I called to ask why, they said that the gate being closed meant “do not disturb�. How would I have known that and why would they also provide a sign if both mean the same thing? That's just ridiculous. Lastly, the two “free� activities we tried to sign up for (sunset champagne cruise and wine tasting) were already booked 2-3 days in advance. They only allow 10-14 people for each, so what is the point of telling us about events and publishing them in the daily newsletter if we can’t even go? I would never go back nor recommend this place. The wait staff was nice (especially Antonio), but it was not at all worth it. I didn’t have one single day of total relaxation and that was the only reason I went.