Desire Riviera Maya Resort is set amongst lingering ocean breezes, powdery white sand and a seductive, picture perfect view of the Caribbean. Additional features include: beach beds, as well as beach and pool concierge services, providing every element necessary for a relaxing day of sunbathing. This resort goes the extra mile by equipping all concierge staff with two-way radios, ensuring all guests’ needs are met with utmost efficiency. A new beach bar, conveniently located mid-way among the beach beds, offers an assortment of exotic cocktails. Desire Riviera Maya Resort sets the scene for your wildest dreams to come to life. Open your minds, fall under the spell, and feel… Desire.
Location
Riviera MayaProperty Information
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Resort Details
Hotel Advisories
General Policies & Fine Print
Check-in Policy - Hotel requires a credit/debit card authorization or cash deposit upon check-in for incidentals; this will place a hold on your funds.
Convention Policy - Individuals attending a convention cannot book this property for their stay. If found attending a convention, guests may be subject to higher room rates upon arrival.
Hotel Spring Break Policy - This hotel cannot guarantee a spring break-free environment.
Transfer Policy - A price may display when children stay free, if your vacation includes transfer to your hotel.
General Information - Room taxes and service fees are included in vacation price. Minimum night stay restrictions may apply. Reservation changes may not be permitted unless authorized by the hotel.
Customer Ratings & Reviews
TripAdvisor Traveler Rating
3439 reviews
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Dec 10, 2024Best Staff
The resort is beautiful! The staff is amazing and very attentive! Ever was the best bartender, and fully attentive to all alcohol needs. Definitely will stay again. The food and drinks were great, and the shows were epic. The rooftop hot tub had the best views, but unfortunately wasn't that hot.
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Dec 06, 2024
New Eden is lovely with a few issues
This is about our 8th visit to Desire and, as usual, we had a very good time all because of the amazing staff. We would hope that Management would give special recognition to the individuals and groups that have taken care of us directly so well. Africa always makes the number one person on our list based on her caring personality to help us with any of our needs as well as busting her ass to take care of everyone around the pool. The Butlers, starting with Raphael and the rest of his crew, have always been very attentive in checking in with us throughout the day. The entire Pool Crew have always been very attentive and helpful as well as going out of their way to take care of us. Eunice always has a great smile and a dedication to making sure the dining rooms run very well and checking in with us from time to time to see if there is anything she can do for us. The Suki staff is always pleasurable and fun to interact with and makes us feel very comfortable when dining there with a shout out to Ivan. Abraham at the new pool bar always remembers what we drink as we swim up to the bar on our first day back for each of our stays. The new Spa is beautiful and the staff there continue to do a great job. Every interaction that we have had with any of the housekeeping staff has always been positive and efficient in filling any of our needs. Generally, we appreciate all of the staff and all of the hard work they put in to making our time at Desire pleasurable, memorable and relaxing. From the time Arcos welcomes us on arrival and says goodbye when we leave our vacation at “home” is worry free. We are scheduled to be back in April of 2025 and look forward to seeing our extended family members. The new Eden facility is very lovely and a lot roomier as we know from previous visits than the quiet Desire side. This being our first time on the Eden side, we noticed a few things that possibly Management could address and we make these comments not as a criticism but as constructive feedback to make things better for both the guests and the staff. 1. The new hot tub – the texture of the seating inside the hot tub as well as its floor is a very sharp, abrasive to it. It is not a texture that you want to slide on or drag your feet on at all – way too coarse. 2. As you leave the new Eden lobby and go down the stairs as you head to the pool, whenever it rains water flows towards the lobby stairs and has nowhere to drain. This engineering error causes the staff to squeegee the water away, but more importantly creates a very unsafe and dangerous slipping hazard for all of us, staff and guests. The tile surface is way too smooth once water gets on it. 3. Another engineering error when it rains is water flowing into the bar of the little private bar area next to the main pool bar. This is not good for the bartenders that would staff it whenever it rains. 4. Perhaps a little more attention could be given to the “quiet side” of Desire. To us it seems Management has neglected a little more staffing on that side for interacting with guests. Not all guests prefer to be on the louder, busier side of the resort yet they still should have their needs met equally as well. 5. As a general comment, we feel, and in talking with other guests, we agree that Management could do more and should do more to support their staff. Management’s position should always be there for staff support, unfortunately, in most cases, Management is there to support only the bottom line of profit. During our time of this latest visit, we encountered two couples that had very poor interaction with Management to the extreme that they are now going to be going to Pearl because of Management at Desire/Eden. As well as the staff treats the guests, we hope Management will treat the staff and guests as well. See you in April 2025. Mike and Mary Wendell
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Dec 02, 2024
Awesome
Highly recommend for a truly amazing experience. Great service and quality of food and drinks. Yara, who explained everything about the place was simply awesome and made us feel so at home. The new extension is quite remarkable and of the highest quality.
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Nov 29, 2024
Very fun and relaxing vacation.
Great place to stay. The staff makes you feel welcome. We will be back. Special thanks to Teresa from the Spa, Chef Jesus and Chef Jose, also Samuel from the pool bar, Elvis waiter at the Asian restaurant. Ana from the front desk. All these people made our stay memorable.
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Nov 27, 2024Incompetent or greedy management going to run this resort into the ground
This was fifth time to Desire Riviera Maya and the first since the new Eden part of the resort has opened. We never really had any complaints from prior visits, but we have plenty this time around. Before I get into that, a few positive comments... The capital improvements are very nice (new restaurants, disco, pool, hot tub). The beach volleyball is always great fun as well as the socializing and networking with other guests in the pool, hot tub, and the late night parties. The playmakers are very warm, friendly, and fun to spend time with. If I owned the resort, I would fire the entire management team and start over. The front-line workers for the most part are fantastic, but their management team has set them up to fail by overbooking the resort. Service was consistently bad all week long. Greed has overcome common sense in that the number of rooms/available occupancy has expanded by 55 when Eden opened up, but the resort did not add more staff directly proportionate to the number of additional guests staying there. The end result manifested itself through lack of available beds/chairs by the "Sexy Pool", up to two hour waits for food in restaurants, running out of menu items at restaurants, non-existent butler service, wrong reservations at restaurants every night of the week, etc. I heard from several other guests that frustration was boiling over and some guests were taking it out on the front-line workers (i.e., "I'm paying $1,600 per night for a room, you better find me a bed by the Sexy Pool!"). There was ONE person performing the role of both server and host for the entire Sushi restaurant on Sunday night. At Eros (another new restaurant), they were so short staffed that service was consistently terrible during the lunch time hour. The restaurant had plenty of guests, but appeared to be abandoned at times as far as seeing anyone working there. As a Premier member, we expected we would be able to use the basic spa services of sauna and steam room each day without additional cost. Nope. After one use, they charge $100 per day for each additional use!! At the sister resort, Temptation, we do not pay any additional fees for daily access to the spa, steam room, and hydrotherapy hot tub. That brings me to my next point: who thought it was a great idea to design a new spa at a high-end resort in 2024 that does not include a hydrotherapy hot tub? Temptation has one, Desire does not. Go figure. Why is Desire ashamed of its Mexican heritage and culture? Why is almost all of the live music the typical American pop music that we try to get away from when we travel to Mexico on vacation? We visit Mexico to immerse ourselves in the culture, music, food, etc. The first (and only) live music band playing Latin music was a joke. It was a woman with a Karaoke machine and two fellow "musicians" pretending to play a keyboard and electronic drums. That's not a live latin music band. We were expecting a real Salsa music band. The best live music band during our stay played entirely U.S.-based American pop rock music. Sigh. The quality and selection of the food on the buffet has really gone downhill compared with prior visits, and all of the drinks are now watered down (who dilutes a passionfruit juice or pineapple juice at a high-end resort? Desire does, now). Also, Desire has adopted the same menus from Temptation Resort, which is fine except that when you are paying a lot more to stay at Desire, you expect a different and better menu at the restaurants. I agree with a prior guest's comment that the takeover by a fitness club on the day we arrived seemed very out of place considering the entire group was clothed while the Desire regulars were not. I understand that "clothing optional" means "optional," but what is the point in allowing a large group to "take over" a clothing optional resort when 90%+ of them kept their clothes on in the presence of Desire regulars who did not? If they are not interested in the clothing optional aspect of the Desire experience, just respectfully suggest that they try making their reservations at a different resort instead. Some very common sense suggestions for resort management: (1) Don't offer a butler service if the staff is not well-trained with the capacity to support the number of guests they have been assigned. Assign ONE butler to a guest, not THREE. There is a saying that when everyone is responsible, nobody is responsible. That was the case during our stay with three butlers not doing anything for us. (2) Don't open any restaurant on a given day for which you do not have sufficient staff to provide an acceptable level of service for guests. (3) Turn Desire Resort into a members-only resort since ownership has oversold Premier memberships to the point where now there are not enough perks and benefits available to go around to all Premier guests during a given stay. For example, when you are told that you will need to find a bed at the Quiet Pool because all of them are taken by the Sexy Pool, that means Premier members are no longer receiving what they paid for. Another example is being unable to secure a restaurant reservation during a 7-night stay due to lack of availability. (4) You've created a Catch-22 situation for yourself. You've either got to hire and train more qualified hospitality staff for the resort (which apparently is a big challenge right now), or you've got to restrict the number of available rooms in order to provide an acceptable level of service to the expanded resort. When you choose the latter option, you will inevitably upset Premier members who have made an investment in staying at a resort which no longer has availability for them to stay in the future. (5) Stop diluting the drinks! This includes the fruit juice drinks as well as the alcoholic beverages. (6) Improve the quality and availability of steak at the resort's restaurants. Clearly, management has some difficult decisions to make at this time unless they accept poor service as the new standard going forward for this high end resort.