May I first say that my wife and I had a great time in Mexico. The people are really nice, friendly and helpful. The vast majority of the staff in the Golden Parnassus Hotel was absolutely fantastic; especially Pasqual in the Paradise Food Court.
On the whole we were very disappointed with this hotel and would not rate it as beyond a 3 star in the context of our experiences of hotels.
The arrival at the hotel was smooth and staff were there to greet us and take our luggage. No problems there then.
When we got to our room it was refreshingly cool from the air conditioning. However, we discovered there was no refrigerator. This may seen trivial but we were of the understanding rooms had a fridge as one would expect in the very hot and humid climate of the Yucatan. To receive movies on the TV you had to pay a premium and phone calls phone calls were expensive. There was no coffee making facility neither. Now, I am not apportioning blame here because perhaps I should have done a more in-depth research because when we booked we assumed all these would be included after reading the adverts and our travel agent didn’t advise us otherwise. Afterwards we found out that other guests has similar expectations too so it was not just us. The rub was that you could ‘upgrade’ for an additional cost. This does seem to a little suspicious here “put the guests in basic room and hope to get some more money out of them through an ‘upgrade’”. The moral here is to have your expectations checked before you book your holiday and have it in writing, that is, if you decide to stay here.
The hotel itself is very dated and is in dire need of major investment. While the main reception area does look impressive the floors to the rooms look more like prison landings (really, they do). The inside of the hotel is very hot and humid, there needs to be more air conditioning in the public areas. Due to the open structure there is much, echoed noise that rises right up to the fifth and I assume sixth floor (we were on the fifth).
The cleaning of the rooms was ok, I suppose, but the times were very inconsistent. Often we would return to our room well into the afternoon and find it had not been cleaned, this is very inconvenient. Also, often you would see food trays left outside of rooms still there hours later. In the interest of hygiene this is unacceptable. On one occasion we saw a dead cockroach on the landing outside our room; this was removed swiftly. On the same note another couple had a live cockroach on their balcony. We worked out that the ‘Gold Standard’ rooms had all the priorities for services. It is clear that there is not enough cleaning staff employed to be able to perform expected services efficiently and consistently. If we could just add here, the vast majority of the staff (waiters, bar staff, cleaners, porters etc) work for the Mexican minimum wage, which is approximately 52 Pesos (around £2 04 $4US) per eight hour day. You can check this out on the Interent. They work six days per week and get one week’s holiday a year ( these poor people really do rely on tips). So it would not cost the hotel much to hire more staff.
The food, on the whole, was very good. We tried all the eateries except one, the Japanese restaurant, but we were told by others that it was very good. The service was very good and you didn’t have to wait long for the food. So no problems with the food. Well, not quite. The ‘snack bar’ was very disappointing and the ‘hot’ snacks were more often than not, cold. This was the only place that you could get a late snack. It was a disappointment that the Paradise buffet restaurant was not open later into the night. Instead it closed a 4.00pm. This would have been great, especially if you had been on a long days tour and didn’t feel like getting ready to have a formal meal in one of the restaurants. We must add here that when the buffet was open the selection and standard of food and service was excellent.
The drinks were one BIG CON!!! There was very little choice in what I would call proper drinks. For example, there was only one type of beer available, a brand called ‘Dos Equis’. This is the cheapest beer in Mexico and is certainly not the Mexican people’s first choice, the main ones being Corona and Sol. Dos Equis is basically cold, fizzy, yellow liquid. The ‘cocktails’ are a joke. Anyone with a knowledge of cocktails and how they should made and how the should be served would agree. Basically, cocktails were crushed ice (what we call slush in the UK) flavoured with the sickly, flavoured sugar syrups and given a kick with mostly cheap vodka. There was no fruit garnish and all drinks were served in the same, small glasses, these were plastic if you were drinking outside. In our experience a Pina Colada should be made up of three parts fresh pineapple juice, three parts coconut milk and two parts either Bacardi or dark rum shaken with some crushed ice and garnished with pineapple and cherries. Here it was a glass of crushed ice with coconut flavouring and some cheap, white rum in a Barcardi bottle. Other drinks were similar. So, if you think you’re getting a good deal here then we can definitely say you are not!
The entertainment was appalling, full stop! Reading the advertising you would expect professional, well organised artistes etc. Wrong, the entertainment was done by the staff and included bingo, karaoke, quizzes, water volleyball, table tennis and other pathetic forms of ‘adult’ entertainment. If you’re from Britain all I can say is that it was more akin to a working man’s club and Skegness type ‘fun’ rather than a supposedly 4+/5 star hotel.
There is very little beach. However, this is not the fault of the hotel, a hurricane a couple of years ago wiped out the beaches. They are gradually building back up though. As for the sun-loungers. There is no apparent hotel policy of preventing ‘claiming’ a sun bed and there ought to be. People were coming down to the pool and beach areas at 7.00 am and putting towels etc on the loungers and then going back to bed only to return some five hours later to take up their claimed loungers. This is unacceptable and the management should do something about it. Guest wearing ‘gold’ wrist bands get priority for the umbrellas, which are taken down each night. On one occasion a large area around the pool and the beach was made unavailable to guests due to a wedding being held. Is this right?
What about the other guests? Well, on the whole there were some very nice people from all around the world. However, there are always the ones who are going to spoil the enjoyment of others. We had more than our fair share of loud-mouthed, arrogant Americans whose sole purpose seemed to be a desire to let everyone else know that they were around. Then we had the cohort of chavvy, Neanderthal Brits with their annoying antisocial behaviour. One particular has-been Brit for the whole of the stay advertised the skills of the local NHS plastic surgeon by flashing her grotesquely remodelled breasts for the best part of the day.
To go back to the hotel in general, it seems that the problems here lie within the senior and executive management. The senior hotel management are incompetent and have no idea nor perhaps the inclination to raise and uphold standards. The executive management don’t appear to have the desire to invest in the hotel to bring it up to modern requirements expected of ‘4+/5’ star hotels. Perhaps, they have become complacent because the majority of its target clientele (or apparent target clientele) have lower expectations and satisfaction thresholds than the minority. If that’s snobbery then we are snobs. However, when you pay costs you do for this hotel (and it certainly wasn’t the cheapest available) then you really should have higher expectations.
Make your own mind up.
