Xcaret Arte

Great experience loved it we will be back! Restaurant Tah Xido hibachi style was delicious and Alexis at the pool area was an amazing help getting us great seats for the day!

Hotel Xcaret Arte itself is genuinely lovely. The resort is beautiful, the staff around the hotel were generally fantastic, and we had a great honeymoon overall.

Unfortunately, our experience with Mexico Destination Club (MDC) was almost impressively bad.

Our problems actually started before we arrived. Our flight to Cancún was cancelled because of the UK ATC disruption, meaning we physically couldn’t get to Mexico for our first night. We contacted MDC immediately and rearranged our stay for the earliest opportunity. We accepted that the new dates were more expensive and paid the difference.

What MDC didn’t mention during that conversation was that they had also downgraded our honeymoon booking from a River Suite to a Garden Suite with two queen beds. We only discovered this after arriving.

We also still had to pay for the original first night that we couldn’t use. We weren’t demanding money thrown at us — we asked whether that paid night could simply be added to the end of our stay. We emailed explaining everything. No reply.

During our second day, we attended the MDC sales presentation. We actually raised these issues there and explained that it was difficult to consider becoming members when this was the customer service we were currently receiving. A supervisor, Victoria, told us she would help resolve the problems regardless of whether we joined.

Then came the sales pitch. Not 90 minutes by the way like they said. We spent over 3 hours there.

We explained that we weren’t going to make a significant financial commitment based on numbers scribbled on a piece of paper without having proper time to consider the terms. Instead of helping with our existing problem, we were passed to another person to try to sell us a different package. When we declined that too, the promised help mysteriously evaporated and we were left in a completely different part of the enormous hotel complex to work out our own way back.

Apparently the complimentary customer service package expires at the same time as the sales opportunity.

Fast-forward to 16 September. After still receiving no response to our emails, we went to the hotel concierge. They contacted MDC and told us our case would be reviewed and we would receive a call within 90 minutes.

Ninety minutes became 24+ hours.

No call. No email. Nothing.

When checking out the following day, we went back to concierge, who kindly contacted MDC again. This time we spoke with Jenner Garcia, who acknowledged during the conversation that our room had been downgraded without this being disclosed to us.

Despite that acknowledgement, he wouldn’t offer any meaningful assistance. I asked to speak with somebody else who could actually review or resolve the complaint and wasn’t able to do so.

So, after multiple emails, conversations during the MDC presentation, two visits to concierge, a promised callback that never happened, and MDC acknowledging the undisclosed downgrade, we left Mexico without anybody from MDC actually dealing with our complaint. Not to even mention that our room was next to a hanging bridge near the night club, so we had drunk people making noise on a ridiculously loud bridge keeping us awake at all hours of the night.

The contrast is what makes this particularly disappointing.

Hotel Xcaret Arte: beautiful resort and a wonderful place to spend our honeymoon.

Mexico Destination Club customer service: genuinely one of the worst customer-service experiences I’ve encountered.

If you’re considering joining MDC during your stay, my advice isn’t to automatically say no — it’s simply to pay very close attention to how you’re treated when you’re not saying yes.

We weren’t asking for anything outrageous. We wanted someone to acknowledge that we’d paid for a night we couldn’t use because our flight was cancelled, address why our honeymoon room had been downgraded (with two beds instead of one) without telling us, and actually respond when they said they would.

Apparently that proved considerably more difficult than trying to sell us a membership.