Occidental Grand Xcaret Royal Club

The Second Time Around

Or as I titled my Trip Advisor review about our visit last year, “How to be Treated Like a Millionaire Whether or Not You Are One.”

Main Lobby, River Fountain and lounge Occidental Grand Flamenco Xcaret Hotel

From the moment you are greeted at the Concierges’ desk with a glass of champagne to the final moment when your luggage is delivered back to the huge portico of the hotel lobby you enjoy the most attentive staff and excellent amenities imaginable. From the Royal Club’s own private pool and restaurant, and meals delivered to your suite’s dining room - ours had a view overlooking lawns, coconut palms and Caribbean Sea – to the staff that treats you as though their life’s task is to take care of you personally, this experience exceeded my expectations on both occasions.

The View from our suite's dining room

The Royal Club lower Pool at Night (our suite was in the building in the background)

The Royal Club's practice does involve a bit more expense, but has little to do with prestige or lavish and pretentious expenditures. Instead it has everything to do with a truly relaxing vacation away from the “madding” crowd, with people who want you to feel as pampered and well cared for as is possible. There is the ubiquitous spa that one expects to find at any resort that pretends to Twenty-first Century perfection. I mention it so that those who adore being served in this way know that a spa with all the amenities is available. However, the most important element of the Royal Club is the flawlessness of care and service brought to each guest in an environment that is - honestly, and almost unbelievably in our technologically self absorbed culture - loving, and reminiscent of a different era in which the middle class could afford the occasional excursion into such restful luxury. We left the hotel with hugs from staff members who have through these two visits become friends, and left envelopes with small gifts - I refuse to call them "tips" because they were inadequate as such, and - in an all inclusive one is not expected to tip.

I could continue with a detailed description of all the other amenities that the hotel and the huge extended complex beyond the Royal Club has to offer, including a fun packed day at Xcaret Water Park. I prefer, however, to write only about the perfection this staff brings to the vacation experience of each guest precisely because it is so unusual, and they care to provide the best of service in a world that has forgotten that love of work and ones fellow human beings can be accomplished simultaneously. I believe that the Royal Club’s mission is to make each individual feel as though the Mayan Riviera is his/her home away from home. It is, however, a home without the problems that this fast paced contemporary life brings to each of us on a daily basis.