Mexican Riviera Maya: The Valentin Imperial Maya All-Inclusive Adult Resort at Playa del Secreto

For our girls’ trip to Riviera Maya, we got two rooms on Hotwire at the Valentin Imperial Maya for $250 a night each. The rates on Expedia usually end up at $450 a night so we were pretty happy with the deal Hotwire got us. I usually check hotel rates on HotelsCom­bined. It lets you check hotel rates on 30+ booking sites at once like Booking.com, Expedia, Orbitz, hotels.com, etc and I could not find anywhere close to the rate we got!

The Valentin Imperial Maya is an adults only all-inclusive massive resort located in Puerto Morelos, about halfway between Cancun and Playa del Carmen. It’s set on Playa del Secreto, a beautiful beach with soft white sand and clear blue water. The hotel itself is huge and never felt crowded, although it was completely sold out when we were there.

Getting to/from the airport

Our four-girl group was arriving around the same time on three different flights, but leaving at three different times. The three options for transportation are booking through the hotel, third party transit company or taxi. The airport is about a 30-40 minute drive from the hotel.

1. Hotel transportation: The hotel has a personal transportation option you can book with them, but it’s extremely expensive unless it’s booked as a package. I called a few days before my trip and was quoted $100 per person each way. We were going with four people so this would cost us $400 just one way. Needless to say, we didn’t take this option.
2. Third party transportation: There are a few companies that offer transportation between the airport and hotels in Playa del Carmen. We got a private transfer with BestDay for $111 for the four of us. A transfer with other drop-offs would have been about half that, but we thought it was worth it to get to the beach sooner! BestDay charges the same rate for anywhere from 1-4 passengers.
3. Taxi: Two of us were traveling between the airport and hotel by ourselves. From the hotel, there is a flat rate of 500 pesos for a taxi to the airport for up to four passengers. This amounts to about $40 and the hotel has an ATM on the premises. The ATM will give you a better rate than exchanging at the hotel. The hotel exchange rate is only 10 pesos to 1 USD while the foreign exchange rate at the time of writing is 12.69 pesos to 1 USD. The hotel will call the taxi for you and none of us had any problems. They use pretty much the same vans that the third party transportation companies use and charge less than half! Since I don’t have any experience taking a taxi from the airport, I can’t comment on that. I don’t know whether taxi rates from the airport are significantly higher or whether you have to negotiate.

Checking into the Valentin Imperial Maya

When you arrive at the hotel, the bellmen take your bags and will deliver them to the room. Since we wanted to be able to change and go to the beach immediately, we took our suitcases with us to the check-in. But we had to fight for it and promise the bellboy that we will report that we insisted on this, in case anyone asks! Entering the lobby, it’s clear they want to have a nice, elegant, champagne aura to the check-in area and don’t want to ruin the view with suitcases. Fortunately, we had carryons only!

Valentin Imperial Maya Map

The resort is absolutely huge. With 542 rooms and two people per room, you expect about 1000 people roaming the grounds at any point. The resort, however, is big enough where everyone somehow finds an activity and a place to go. Unless you’re where the party is at that particular moment, you can always feel somewhat secluded. I don’t know how that’s possible!

On one end of the resort is the front desk and reception with all the restaurants and a main Piazza that is surrounded by restaurants. The rooms are between the restaurant area and the beach area. There is a huge pool in the middle.

The signs around the resort are pretty informative in terms of directions so you can always find your building, pool, beach, restaurant for dinner, beach buffet, etc. There are also employees driving around  in golf carts willing to offer a ride for anyone who needs it. Definitely comes in handy when you have four girls walking in pretty dresses and stiletto heels to dinner!

Hotel grounds and decor

The decor is quite peaceful and tranquil. The hotel is surrounded by fountains and gardens. There are opportunities for pleasant, and possibly even romantic, walks…

The gigantic pool

The pool is massive. It’s the biggest pool I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. Walking around it is a serious hike! It runs from the beach to the restaurant area.

There are plenty of areas to swim around as well as swim-up bars. You can grab a floating raft, swim to the bar and then enjoy the sun with your drink like Natalya is doing above!

The pool is surrounded by chairs and cabanas. Although the hotel was completely sold out, we never had a problem finding chairs any time of day. The cabanas are theoretically reserved for an extra charge. Most of them have signs saying they are reserved with a guest name, such as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Cabana’ (one of the signs said this, no joke!). We discovered most of these names are fake, but the hotel wants it to appear that cabana reservations are in high demand. Not a bad strategy! We actually had no problem grabbing a  cabana in the afternoon once we saw which ones are free. We did have to move once when the couple who reserved it showed up, but no one found it to be a big deal. Others may or may not be comfortable doing this.

One drawback we found is there is no jacuzzi hot-tub at the pool. There are smaller circular areas connected to the pool with jacuzzi jets, but they are not hot. Would have been nice to sit in the hot tub in the evening… but I suppose people can always go back to their rooms.

Rooms at Valentin Imperial Maya

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of rooms, but ours looked almost exactly like this one from the website except that it had two bed.

We booked through Hotwire so expected the most basic room. With four people, we had two rooms. Both rooms were offered an upgrade, but to different buildings; one to the Gold area closer to the beach and one to the Silver area further away. The four of us being so far apart would really take away from the vacation. We asked them to just give us what they have so we’re as close as possible. They were extremely nice and accommodating and we able to place us only two doors away from each other! We ended up with two Deluxe Junior Suites in building 3. 

Even the most basic rooms at the hotel are junior suites and have a separate seating area with a TV. We often had all four of us in the same room (usually waiting for one of us to get dressed!) and never felt cramped. I assume the upgraded rooms are nicer and/or bigger, but I didn’t see them. We were more than happy with the room layout and what we got!

Food at the Valentin Imperial Maya

Room rates at the hotel are all-inclusive so every meal,  mixed drink, glass of wine is complimentary once you get there. The only options I saw for an additional charge were an occasional restaurant meal upgrade, such as lobster, or a selection of nicer wine.

For breakfast and lunch, we always went to the restaurant by the beach called Mar & Tierra. It’s outdoors and buffet style and you can see the ocean from the seating area.

Breakfast is buffet with a chef that makes omelettes and crepes to order. There is also fresh fruit, yogurt and muesli, various hot breakfast items such as waffles, french toast, sausage, potatoes. There is also a fresh squeezed juice station (lower right above) with ten different varieties of juices. From cactus and cucumber to papaya to pineapple, you have nearly every juice concoction you can think of.

Lunch is also a buffet. Instead of the omelette station, there is a chef that makes prawns, shrimp and grilled fish to order. Other items include Mexican themed food.

For dinner, there are seven different restaurant options, all of which can be found here: Valentin Imperial Maya Gastronomy.

None require reservation and you receive a beeper that will buzz when your table is ready. You are likely to be seated right away if you show up when the restaurant opens around 6 pm, but expect to wait 30 minutes to an hour if you go after 7:30 once most guests have started eating.

• L’Alsace: French
• Il Olivio: Italian
• Ginger: Japanese
• Taman Sari: Indonesian
• La Hacienda: Mexican
• Restaurant Tierra: Meat/American
• Restaurant Mar: Seafood/lobster (extra charge for lobster)

We went to the first three. We weren’t amazed by any of the food (being from NY, I think it’s hard to be impressed by culinary experiences outside of France!), but we did have a few reasonable meals. We go to Cancun for the beach, the sun, the friends so we aren’t looking for a five star dining experience! The French restaurant was our favorite, maybe because they gave us as much foie gras as we wanted. Foie gras is actually illegal in California so Tatyana, Svetlana and Natalya all loved it, having just come from there. The Italian restaurant, we didn’t like at all. All our meals were particularly disappointing; I know my salmon was unusually dry. The sushi restaurant is hit or miss. The salmon sashimi was quite good; the tuna not so much. They did have some spicy crunchy rolls and interesting banana roll that were definitely above supermarket variety. All four of us had lived in California, where the standard for Asian delicacies are comparatively high so perhaps it’s not fair for us to be evaluating sushi in Mexico!

Beach bar

There is a nice beach bar that is open from morning to evening and serves margaritas and other mixed drinks. It’s quite popular most of the time with dance music being played regularly.

Some nights, they have live band performances and it’s also the setting of the fire show, mentioned later. They also have four swings. It’s a nice setting to watch the sunset with a drink…

Entertainment

The Valentin Imperial Maya has a full evening entertainment program.

A few samples of what we experienced:

Casino Night: Our third night there, they had a casino night. They had a hold’em poker table, but weren’t playing with real money. This personally sounds crazy to me, but hey, if others enjoy it, let them have their fun!

They also had blackjack, craps and other table games. It looked like the people there were definitely enjoying themselves!

Live Music or DJ: Some nights have live music at the bar by the beach with the swings. The main Piazza de Spagna has either a DJ or live music every night.  Our second night there, there was a Frank Sinatra style performance. Our third night, there was a DJ playing the latest club music. He takes request and we definitely asked for some.  There was a good group of guests enjoying the party and dancing.

Fire Show: One of the highlights of our stay was the fire show at the beach.

Since my description really can’t do the show justice, I uploaded the videos to my YouTube Channel

Enjoy!

To book hotels on Hotwire:

Summary

• We stayed three nights at Valentin Imperial Maya for $250 a night on Hotwire over President’s Day weekend
• Given what we got and the fact that the hotel usually costs $450+, we are very happy with the deal we got.
• The four of us had a super time in Mexico and returned to our home cities of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles fully entertained and relaxed!

Questions about our stay? I’ll be happy to add to the review! Just comment below.

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