Iberostar Selection Cancun

Just back from 14 days on the coral side of this hotel and our experience was fantastic. Hotel: Definitely stay coral side, it’s well worth the extra cost. It is modern and spotlessly clean. Restaurants: The buffet restaurant is excellent and is very good quality. It’s smaller and far less busier than selection side and as a result much nicer and relaxing at meal times. They also do themed menus in the evenings, the gourmet evenings were great. Selection buffet - bigger, more variety but much busier and noisy as a result, but still good. Japanese - excellent American Bistro - specials were excellent. Service was a bit slow. Italian - average White shark (coral poolside snack bar) - excellent Selection poolside snack bar - good Coffee bar - excellent Ice cream bar - good Mexican - poor Bars: All were excellent on coral side. Make sure you specify which brand of spirits you want to drink otherwise you get the cheap stuff which isn’t very good. Same goes for coke, ask for a can or you get the cheap version from the pump. The only criticism was that there was some inconsistency between bars. Some cocktails were great but the same one at another bar was made differently and not so great. Entertainment: The daytime entertainment was good fun. The entertainment team work hard, are friendly and good fun. Special call out to Dhiara, Beto, Valerie and Angel for all their efforts and fun. Evening entertainment was pretty good. Beach/pool: Fantastic beach location. Although it was red flag (due to wind) for a lot of our stay you could still go in the ocean as long as you didn’t go out of your depth. Given it was 28-32 degrees a breeze was welcome. When it was less windy the ocean was amazing to swim in! There were plenty of sun loungers for everyone and no need to reserve which was great. However, a few days when it was windy umbrellas weren’t allowed so the only shade was in the cabanas on the beach of which there were only about 10 so they were getting reserved early. My only criticism was the loungers on the beach didn’t have umbrellas but all at the pool did. You need more umbrellas on the beach! Didn’t spend much time on selection side but didn’t look to be many sun loungers with umbrellas at the pool but there were plenty on the beach. Staff: They were all so friendly and polite across all areas from housekeeping, reception, waiters, cleaners, everyone!! Overall we had a fantastic stay and would definitely return!

We spent 5 nights during spring break so crowds were expected. The location is a quick ride from the airport but you have to get your own transportation. We stayed in the Coral section preferring adults only. The one adults only restaurant had good variety but food was often not warm and somewhat bland. The adults only pool and swim up bar was very nice and not too crowded except on Saturday when the day pass visitors ramped up. The service was really good and everyone was friendly and nice. Upon checkin there is a bit of a push about the “club” in the sit down with the concierge to review the property. But once we said we weren’t interested we didn’t hear about it again. The room was nice, good size and clean. The views are amazing and the pool and beach areas are what you would expect for Cancún. You have to play the chair claim game to get a good spot on the pool deck but it generally wasn’t overly crowded. The pool service staff was great (Saby-baby busts her butt!) and you don’t wait long for service or you can get your own drinks easily. Daytime poolside entertainment was just enough to be engaging but not over done. They offered a spin class in the pool one day, a yoga class on floating mats the next and had a pool aerobics session one day as well. Evening entertainment was good and varied nightly. The Japanese restaurant was very good with a set menu but you need a reservation. We tried to go to the Italian restaurant but they said a 2 hour wait and lots of families with kid so we passed. The Mexican restaurant was our one not good experience. The food took a long time and wasn’t worth the wait. If you are looking for a very romantic, quiet place with high quality cuisine this might not be your best choice. My boyfriend thought the food was good but I was expecting a little higher scale. But if you want a safe, clean all-inclusive with beautiful views, nice pool and beach, great service and decent food this is a good choice.

We spent a week to iberostar Cancún We received a fantastic service from Yoania all week long she was a great help for us. She is a very professional person with a smile on his face in any case. She is a five stars thank you Yoania. We greatly apprediated.

Our stay was wonderful from start to finish! Room was a good size, clean, and comfortable. Great ocean views from outdoor balcony too. Staff was great, always going above and beyond. Beto, Sabi and Jorge around the pool/beach area were incredible. Always willing to help every guest, even with the littlest need. Thank you for making our trip a memorable one. We’ll be back!

Preface my comments by the following: It's closer to 3.5 this rating. Any detracting comments are not directed to the staff who are excellent and friendly. This trip was a week long stay from March 8-15/24. 1. For approx. 4 of these days only one elevator was working (Saturday to Tuesday). I believe it was Wednesday where it was repaired. In fact one customer advised me they were caught in the broken elevator for 1 hour. When we arrived on Saturday it was broken. One elevator servicing numerous guests over several days. There are 13 floors to service. We were on the 11th. One can imagine the inconvenience this caused and the numerous lineups as the elevators themselves are slow. 2. Scant umbrellas. Tried one umbrella and it had no pin. Another guest had an umbrella but the staff had to find a makeshift pin. You look down your room in the morning and there are just a few umbrellas out. Really? Why doesn't your hotel have numerous umbrellas readily placed in the morning - instead of having to go beg for an umbrella if one is available. This is just sloppy. The scramble for chairs is pathetic enough but to have chairs with no umbrellas you just look down there and say 'here we go again.' 3. You are not told, but you must know that your room is serviced by two buttons. One pushed is red, the other is green. So there is not the traditional sign for service. We didn't know this and found out the next day because the red was pushed and forgotten (not knowing it's function). Read this and know that pushing red will mean no room cleaning. Green is cleaning. Live and learn. 4. The balcony door in our room had no outside handle. My girlfriend could barely close it and if you're not careful you could get your finger squished trying to close it. There is a handle on the inside. Looks like the outside handle was broken and never replaced. 5. The App for this hotel. Fine if you have an app and it replaces the traditional paper items such as a menu. But when your app is a glitch fest then the whole thing breaks down. One particular day i thought I'd use it. So first started with the listing of the numerous cocktails. Click on one. Nothing. This means when ordering your food I should do what? Call the guest services? lol. But then the app kept getting a 'no internet connection' false indication as it quite clearly had an internet connection. Listen guys, have a redundancy built in: paper menu. That way I can see the listing of cocktails, food etc. and order the old fashion way as it seems this app can fall prey to problematic functioning. So calling the guest services I asked if there was a paper menu and was told to go down to the main desk and ask for a QR code. Really? Then if not a paper menu in the room what about a QR code in YOUR ROOM to do exactly what should be done in your room - looking for room service. 6. This is out of the control of the hotel (with one possible exception as noted) but be aware that swimming here is not really feasible because it is very rough almost constantly. My girlfriend is the big swimmer. She went out once. Now I think the hotel next to us (not the Selection) has a breaker/buoy of sorts to mitigate the waves as I saw fairly consistent swimming there and a lack of rough waters. So I asked myself why doesn't this exist for the Coral area if indeed this hotel employed a breaker process? 7. The swimming pool is not a swimming pool. It's a wading pool. About 3'9" or so. You never see any swimming there. Just standing around and drinking and playing whatever games they have. Of course it would be stated you can use the Selection side but since you paid several thousand dollars more to be in an adult only side this basically defeats the purpose. The Selection side has all the teens, kids etc. 8. The food is very good. We almost exclusively used the buffet and a la carte at Coral. We went to two restaurants on the Selection side - The American Bisque and Mexican restaurant. Whatever selections and quality they had was easily met on the Coral side. On top of it the other side is mayhem with the running around, children, teens, etc. and you risk lineups to get in those restaurants as only one, the Japanese one needed to be reserved. In any event everything from the coffee, to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, all very well done. 9. The room, junior ocean view suite was excellent. Small whirlpool bath on the balcony is a nice touch. Again something you're not told, but the desk can control individually the AC in your room. We only found this out a few days later. None of the reviews we saw mentioned this but now you know as necessity (was freezing) made us go to the front desk and ask. If you like swimming in the ocean/Caribbean Sea/Gulf of America (lol) then this may not be the place for you to put it plainly. The pool doesn't make up for it. You are then compelled to go to the Selection side which defeats the purpose of your spending several thousand dollars more for an adult only experience. I come away from this experience noting two positives: the room and its view and the food selection.