Villa La Estancia - Riviera Nayarit

Villa la Estancia is wonderful. From the minute you arrive, you are warmly greeted by the bellhops, Gerardo (Jerry), Ryan and Omar. They are so helpful and friendly. Upon entering the beautiful lobby, Alma is there to receive you and get you settled. Her name is perfectly suited to her as she truly is the "soul" of the place and she immediately makes you feel like family. At the pool, Jesús and Daniel are simply amazing. They go out of their way to get you a great pool-side chaise lounge and are constantly coming by to move umbrellas to make sure you have as much or as little shade as you might want. They are friendly and fun and they make paradise even a little nicer. We have gone to Villa la Estancia six times and it is the fabulous staff that keeps us coming back. ¡Hasta el próximo año!

This review will contain a shout-out to some of the people that served us, a list of things that I thought were great, as well as some suggestions to the hotel for areas of improvement in case they look at these reviews. We had a wonderful experience and thought the place and the staff were fantastic. I suspect that most hotels in the area have exceptional staff as this is just the nature of Mexican people (caring and hard working), but I would like to mention some of the staff that stood out while we stayed at the hotel. Not any of the staff were sub-par, but these staff mentioned below were exceptional. For those that helped us around the pool, Jesus and Daniel were so fun and helpful. They really understand service and how to maximize the vacation experience for the guests. Ernesto was our pool waiter for a day or two and was very attentive and he deserves our praise. For waiters at the restaurant, the tippy- top waiter goes to Angel at La Casona. He should be working at a top Michelin restaurant in New York. His staff around him were also exceptional (Jose Jaun, Eduardo who sings wonderfully, Benjamin, Hugo Capitan). The hostess Ada was just lovely and good at her job. Regarding the hotel (we were at La Estancia), it was very clean and put together everywhere. The grounds were perfect. It was obvious that the attention to detail is of concern of the management. It was a huge pleasure to stay in a place where things looked so nice and cared for. The house staff cleaning the rooms deserve a shout-out. I don't know their names, but they did a phenomenal job. The pool was unbelievably clean and well cared for. Also, we really appreciated that the music was down low and not obnoxious (loud constant Mariachi music) that is so prevalent in other Mexican resorts. We came to relax and the environment was so conducive to relaxing. Well done! We loved that the pool stayed open until 8pm. This is unusual for a lot of resorts in the area and we have NEVER understood why they close so early - so it was a pleasant surprise and we enjoyed a swim in the dark many of our nights. The design of the place is great - with plentiful hot-tubs that were at the perfect temperature (99-101) that sit on the edge looking out at the sunset over the ocean. The workout gym was so clean and in excellent condition. In fact, it may be the best gym for a hotel I have seen. They have tons of equipment and machines - as good as a regular gym. The food was so so so good. I can't say enough about how excellent the food and food prep was. The beach was well cared for and excellent. Okay, so here are some suggestions - and these are only being listed because I think no matter how great you are, you can always have places of improvement. Pool Chair management - I assume this is a chronic problem at most resorts like this one. But the places we have stayed at that manage it the best have some policy about unused chairs over a certain amount of time. I think that would serve these guys as about 1/10th of the chairs are ever in use, but they are taken all the time. I don't know the best solution, but any solution over what they do now would be an improvement. Maybe give someone 3 hours and if the chairs are unused in that time, it can be taken if needed by the staff. By the way, there are PLENTY of chairs, but not that many umbrellas. One solution would be to get more umbrellas. This would actually solve the issue completely. We played tennis and were SHOCKED at the poor condition of the tennis rackets, and pickle-ball rackets. The grips are so worn out. A replacement grip is so cheap and so easy to get and replace. Why this isn't done regularly is beyond me - and so easy to fix. Seriously, wait until you see how bad these grips are - it's shocking. Also, my tennis racket was bent in a weird shape. Again, tennis rackets aren't that expensive and it is easy to get a non-odd shaped and bent racket. We love to get massages at places like this, but the price here was outrageous. Consider this. Wages in Las Vegas are about 5-7x than average Mexican earners - so one would expect that a massage at the Wynn might be more expensive than at this place. But NOPE! I get the owners want to squeeze as much money out of all the guest as they can. Money money money! Gimme Gimme Gimme (I"m sure they say to themselves at night). But it seems like a very poor decision to make it so expensive that hardly anyone would ever use the service. Why not make it a reasonable, cheaper price and get more people giving you money? That seems like a no-brainer to me. We looked at the Spa area and it is very nice. What a waste of space that no one seemed to be using. Perhaps the owners should do some serious research into "Price Theory." We did the all-inclusive package, and not all items on the menu are included in that, and the staff was not always up-front about what those items were. I suggest that if a guest orders something, that the staff prompt them when it isn't included. You don't want to seem deceitful (which it felt like at times when we made that mistake). My wife forgot her book - and so we thought a great idea for this hotel (or any actually) - would be to have a book repository that guests could leave their books they read and finished with the hotel, and other guests could browse and borrow a book while they are here. Also, having some games available (Jenga, Spot-it, etc) would be a nice touch. There have two pools. A nice touch would be to have the upper pool be adults-only. That's all. We will likely stay here again because we loved it, - but hard to say...so many places to try out.

Everything was great. Angel was terrific as were Jesus and Daniel. All provided impeccable service and always with a smile.

Great resort, great service, our waiters at the beach and swimming pool Jesus, Daniel and Angel were excellent. We celebrated our wedding here and it was the best.

Always top notch and never a major issues. Love the staff and have been coming here since 2020 during covid. The staff in every area from checkin to checkout are always willing to go the extra mile for your experience. Why do we keep coming back because year after year the level of performance is always great. The staff is basically family to us and we always miss them.