Bahia Principle Tulum Reviews

Excellent hotel accomodations. I've travelled extensively and this beat any other caribbean holiday i've taken including maurituis and the Le Meridian hotel which rated poorly compared to here. Although I must state we made many wonderful friends who made our holiday entertaining and extra special. The food was excellent, plenty of choice at the buffett style restaurants. We tried the 6 A La Carte restuarants we were allowed. Best were the Don Pablo and Le gournmet at Coba. Only A La Carte restuarant we disliked was the Gran Tuga (not sure if that;s the right spelling) , staff were rude and couldnt be bothered - hence they didn't get a tip. We left the maid a tip everyday and tipped staff for good service. Fridge in room filled daily with cold drinks and beer. Entertainment reflective of all caribbean destinations. We spent most of our days on the beach when not visiting local attractions, if you wanted a bit more you could go around the main pool at Tulum where the entertainment team worked all day. There was music from 7-9 in main bar, then a nightly show 9-10 and on certain nights they had an after show party 10-11 with Karoke and games. After that it was off to the Hacienda where they had a band and dancing from 11-12 then into disco which was open till 2.30. After that if you still hadn't had enough it was off to the 24 hour snack bar which serves the best burgers I've ever tasted. I can't fault this holiday in anyway. Yes some staff arn't that friendly but they are in the minority and it's like anywhere you get good and bad service. We had the most wonderful waiters in the Buffett at Tulum

What a beautiful place resort country and location all fabulous.

The resort is truly luxurious the beach comes sraight from a brochure and the food is bar none.The resort is vast three centres fed by good transport thank goodness in two weeks we did not see it all. The restaurants themselves are superb if you cant find what you want here you must be the problem. In addition to that the speciality restaurants offer such excellent cuisine and service that you feel so special it adds a touch of luxury to a great place. Brilliant bus service from the resort front you are watched across the road onto the local bus service which is just for tourists so you can travel around at low cost to the various sites and parks. A must visit is xel ha a natural waterpark amazing sights well worth the short journey in the heat. The humidity is the hardest thing to adapt to cotton loose clothes are the ordernof the day here . The rooms are luxurious and very clean there is no pressure to tip at all and you are well looked after if you ask for branded name spirits that is what you get no argument food constantly on tap . The only downer for us was the lack of evening entertainment of the english variety its rather sedate unless you meet a good bunch which we did. There are quite a lot of canadians and americans at this resort and not so many english this did not detract from the holiday.

The long flight was quite painless would advise you to take lots of books and games for youngsters my three year old was fine but we were reading watching tv cutting out shapes and anything i could think of however the parents who werent so well prepared were finding it hard. WE swam with dolphins again we made our own way there it worked out far chepaer than going with the tours we really enjoyed that. All in all we had a fantastic luxury holiday, long haul,and in a beautiful caribbean location and it cost us hardly any more than self catering in ibiza would recommendf it to anyone

I cannot reccommend this hotel enough. From start to finish it was an incredible holiday. The hotel was enormous, made up of three hotels. The food was amazing, something for everyone. With all the a la carte restuarants you could near enough eat in a different restaurant every night! So many bars to choose from. Plenty for the kids to do.
They cannot do enough for you here. They do like their tips , so i would reccommend taking plenty of $1 bills!
We went on trips to coba and Xcaret which were brilliant and i highly reccommend. We also did the swimming with dolphins which was well worth the money!
We had such a relaxing time at the hotel and did not want to come home.

What a fantastic holiday. We've just returned from a brilliant chilled out holiday where our only worry was what cocktail we were going to have next!
The resort is so big you don't feel confined. There are three hotels in the complex and they have two or three pools each plus a beach that must be at least half a mile long. There is a free 'train' that can take you to the different hotels/pools that runs every few minutes. You need to use it because the complex is so big and the sun so hot that it makes sense to use the transport.

Cancun airport - only took us half an hour to get through customs (must be the time of year).
The bus journey to the hotel takes about 2 hours with drop offs. The travelling time from Cancum to Tulum is 1 hour 40 mins and about 85 kms from the resort. (Not what is written in the brochure). This was the only downside to the holiday and we lost a day travelling.

Xel-ha - don't book through the rep. It's only 5 mins from hotel and you can make an excellent deal with the taxi drivers. It cost $59 all inc to enter Xel-ha and $89 with the rep. You can also swim with dolphins for $100 and it's cheaper than the trip to Dolphin Discovery. The taxi rank is opposite the Hacienda shopping centre.

Tulum ruins - again book a taxi. We paid $50 for the taxi for the day plus 45 pesos each to enter the ruins. There's a beach there so take a towel. We then went to Playa Paraiso beach which was idyllic and spent a few hours there. There's a cafe/bar at the beach so take some pesos. The whole day cost us about £30. If we booked with the rep it would cost us $68 each.

Dolphin Discovery - again book a taxi. It's only 15 mins from hotel and you can pay at the door. The first swim is at
9 am and if you go with the rep the bus leaves the hotel at 7.30 am. I don't know why? There was nothing open until
8.50 am! The early morning swim is the best as it's the least busy and not so hot.
It costs $139 with rep, I forgot to price it locally but hotel reception will be able to tell you the price. I found this trip to be the most expensive with a lot of time wasted. We were out of the resort for 5 hours and the swim with dolphins lasts about an hour. Four hours of hanging around with nothing to do. If you go by taxi you can come home whenever you want. The driver waits for you until you're ready.

Captain Hook - this was the best trip of the holiday. It's hilarious. It was an hour and a half drive to Cancun but it was well worth it. Unfortunately the bus leaves the hotel at 4.30 pm and the boat leaves the harbour around 7 pm so again we were hanging about for an hour or so.

Playa del Carmen - we took the hotel courtesy bus into Playa del Carmen which cost us 190 pesos return (about £8). We thought it was free! The bus leaves at 8.50 am and returns at 1 pm. We decided to stay in town all day and do shopping/lunch/sunbathing. We got the 5 pm local bus back which only cost 14 pesos each. The bus station, taxi rank and ferry are all at the bottom end of town and easy to find on the street maps.

Trips to Cozumel - I would take the courtesy bus into Playa del Carmen, walk 5 mins down to the ferry, sail over to Cozumel and spend the day snorkelling then get the bus back to the hotel. It sounds like a bit of running around but it's so easy to use their transport and it will save you a lot of money.

I would recommend this hotel to families and couples who are looking for a laid back, sun worshipping holiday. The food was lovely with plenty of choice and the drink is freeflowing. The staff are lovely and the resort is very clean and well maintained. We never saw anyone abuse the drink and we never saw any rowdy behaviour. The clientele were mainly Italian, Spanish and Canadian with very few Brits.

This turned out to be a memorable holiday - for all sorts of reasons!!!
We were extremely lucky at Cancun airport - we sailed through. I was really apprehensive after reading all the reviews of the airport but we had no problems at all.

The hotel was fantastic and the staff couldn't do enough for us. The room was lovely, clean and we had a great view of the sea. Food was good - great choice which seemed to cater for a lot of nationalities. The white wine was soooo nice - I was willing myself not to like it but it was just too drinkable and there seemed to be a lot of branded drinks available.

The first 2 days were absolutely fantastic but then we were hit by Hurricane Wilma and the trauma began...
Being approx 100m off the beach and being hit by 300kph winds was absolutely terrifying especially as it was predicted to last just a few hours but it went on for 2 days. We were holed up in our room in pretty much total darkness as we had hurricane shutters and no power.....
When it had passed through we were amazed at the damage and also at the way the Mexican people pulled together. They basically risked their lives getting us food and putting the power back on. They were brilliant. Sadly the same couldn't be said for the Airtours rep with whom we had minimal contact and the other rep was unable to help us.

The staff at the hotel worked around the clock to put the hotel back together and give us the best service they could. Nothing was too much for them - they were brilliant.

Downside was seeing how bad human nature was. Some nationalities had looted the bars and had taken the spirits and wine and some greedy nationalities had taken a lot of food from the restaurant (and I mean a lot of food!!)to stockpile in their rooms whilst Wilma was raging. Very sad.

When we were evacuated the Airtours crew on the flight were brilliant (unlike the Airtours rep at the hotel) Allowed the children in the cockpit and looked after us very well. Can't recommend them or thank them enough.

To summarise, please, please go and support the Mexican people. The hotel and it's staff were fantastic, and in a very beautiful location. I most certainly want to go back - but preferably not in the middle of a hurricane!!