Secrets Aura Cozumel

Location is great but very understaffed. Clean but outdated.plan on doing excursions because the resort is very boring

Terrible overall experience. I will give the shortest version of this that I can and focus on the major issues but if you are reading this, please know that I skipping dozens of other daily inconveniences to save myself the agony of even reliving this experience more than I have to. TLDR: food and cleanliness issues but safety is biggest red flag. The moment you get there you are greeted with a cold towel and everyone keeps telling you "welcome" which is nice, whatever. Any questions that you ask about the resort, they tell you it will all be covered in the welcome package. After you get your room key you are quickly moved to another room where you get this "welcome package" which really turns out to just be an aggressive pitch about joining a "special breakfast" in the morning to listen to their timeshare presentation (which is like 2.5 hours long btw). I think we told the lady that we were not interested at least four times before she finally gave up. When I asked my initial questions about the resort, timing and location of things etc. I was told to just use the app. The beach, the pools etc. are all very fun and nice. Dining varied from either mediocre bordering on nice to completely horrific. Some of the speciality restaurants had very nice atmosphere and while nothing was spectacular ( within reasonable expectations of being at an all-inclusive) the food was pretty good and we occasionally found ourselves order more of a particularly good dish. However, the buffet and the beachside "grill" or whatever they call it are both truly shameful and border on being an actual health violation. We tried the buffet twice, arriving earlier each time and both times most of the easy grab-and-go food like chorizo, beans etc. were all empty. The breakfast food that was still there (mostly eggs cooked with different things) were left out with no cover and were absolutely covered in flies. Like I mean you couldn't even scoop the eggs without getting a fly or two in there. The staff tried to be helpful but there was only so much they could do, I guess they have a very strict limit of how much they can cook so they cant replace anything if its empty or becomes cold/inedible etc. The beachside grill was no better and the one time we tried to order something there it took us 30min to get a hot dog and anyone we interacted with was giving us attitude like we were inconveniencing them by being there (this was 2:00pm). After our fantastic breakfast experiences we decided to try our luck with room service. The wait was about as expected and the food was not great but not horrible, in my opinion it was fine for room service breakfast although my fiance really didn't like hers. What made the room service an issue was that the trays of food that we would place back outside upon the wait staffs' request would sit outside our door for hours and hours! Once we came back to our room and there was a stack of plates clearly from someone else's room now stacked along with ours?? Another time, the tray has been outside our door since 11am and was still there by 11pm that night. We left for dinner and when we came back, the tray had been moved from beside our door to right in front of it as if someone was hoping we would walk right into it?? I don't know, that stuff was weird. That brings me to the biggest issue of the whole trip which sadly is a safety concern. On our last night my fiance and I changed and left our room for dinner. We were tired of the food on-site so we had scheduled a reservation downtown. We got downstairs and my fiance decided she wanted to change her dress so she ran back upstairs. It is a little after 8:00 at this point. She gets into the room and starts changing and a few moments after she hears someone at the door and yells to them not to come in because she was changing. She yells twice more and a man continues to come in and makes it about halfway through the door before she slams the door shut. Mind you, we had not ordered any room service, turn down service etc. that evening. We had already put all of our dishes out front that morning and they were all still stacked up outside our door. On top of that, we did not notice a single male member of the cleaning staff AND we were told by the front desk that they have a resort policy that no one will enter a room past 8:00pm without explicit permission from the guest. So needless to say that was pretty scary for her and upsetting for me. We reported all of this, they came up and scanned our door to figure out who entered and promised us an explanation. That was two days ago and I haven't heard anything. No idea if they were coming in to search our room because they had just seen us leave or if they were coming in because they had just seen her enter alone.. Either way, I would avoid this hotel like the plague.

Service was great! The food was ok. Buffet wasn’t the greatest but the specialty restaurants were great! The hotel could use some updates. Our room was very clean and the beds and pillows were very comfortable. No seaweed issues at the beach. It’s a bit rocky at the shoreline (great for snorkeling) but once you get a few feet in, it’s very smooth sand.

The staff is shockingly rude and incompetent. Simple food or drink orders were constantly messed up. On our second night, the resort lost power around 6:30pm, and our AC wasn’t restored until 2am. When I asked the supervisor on duty, Pablo, for an update, he had no answers and even refused to give any timeline at all. To make matters worse, they ask about food allergies but clearly don’t take them seriously. I told my server I was allergic to lactose, and he still brought me fruit with yogurt. When I reminded him of my allergy, he swapped my plate with another guest’s who had already eaten from it. Completely unacceptable. The supervisors clearly lack training and professionalism. I’ve stayed at 12 different Hyatt properties over the past five years and never experienced service this bad. Stay elsewhere.

This is the 3rd resort that we have stayed at, and I believe it is our favorite. The beds and pillows are amazing. Beautiful location, and plenty of good food and drinks.