Originally Posted by EuropeanPete

A short, delayed review of La Casa que Canta where we stayed over Christmas.

The hotel undeniably has a special charm, both in terms of the architecture and the staff there. Despite having been spoilt over the last year by giant Thai pool villas in otherwise empty hotels, we enjoyed La Casa que Canta a lot.

Some things we especially liked:
- Our Master Pool Suite (Bacia mi Molto) was huge and the indoors vaguely cavernous. We had a nice outside area and a relatively private pool area. Small touches like clean white towels down by the pool and in two levels of the stunning marble shower area provided a luxurious feel
- The core staff were more relaxed and informal than we'd expected, but were very welcoming and accommodating. We had an amusing moment when we met Teresa (the GM) as my girlfriend who has travelled less than me obviously had no idea why a random woman was asking us questions like which room we were in and how things were going (In Asia I'm more used to a formal greeting, an intro and a business card from GMs)
- We liked Zihuatanego, a nice change from up the coast where we've been based. We did a very decently priced sunset cruise and saw dolphins (or porpoises?) just as the sun was setting. We also enjoyed an afternoon day drinking at the Thompson on La Ropa beach where we saw turtles hatching right in the beach club. For $75 a person you get something like $40 of F&B credit, plus towels, access to the pool, etc. It's a bit livelier than the LCQC location. We also did some paddle boarding and saw both adult and juvenile eagle rays. The hotel concierge's reaction when we told her all this suggested we were unusually lucky with wildlife for a given 24 hour period
- F&B price are very fairly priced. As I booked through Hyatt.com we were meant to get free continental breakfast, but as the breakfast was a la carte and $6-8USD per person I didn't bother. I don't know of any >$1,000+ a night hotel with breakfast that cheap (if not included)

What could have been better:
- As the hotel was sold out, I suspect they brought on some temporary staff to keep things working. Not all of these were especially on top of their game
- The F&B while cheap and obviously far better than a Cancun all inclusive was not up to the standards of the hotel itself. I'd recently stayed at Casa Oaxaca which had one of the best chefs in Mexico and while I wouldn't expect quite that level, LCQC's F&B could definitely do with some modernisation
- The integration with Hyatt wasn't really working. We were in one of the best suites so there was no upgrade available, but in general the hotel didn't seem aware of any of the Hyatt/ SLH partnership. Nights and points didn't post. I had to call in with my credit card details again after booking and again to pre-pay a Christmas dinner which was a hassle. Having said that, I'm pretty sure my rate was a mistake one and so I paid for Christmas about 1/2 as much as the room is going for in late January, so maybe this one is mainly a win for me
- I complained above about bad pre-arrival communication. Some of it relates to the Hyatt issues mentioned above. I've also found since my stay that a couple of the hotel's email addresses were being sent to my spam folder - it's very very unusual for personal emails to ever end up in there, so just a heads up in case anyone else comes across the same

I'd definitely return and indeed we were tempted to go back for my partner's birthday in a couple of weeks, but we thought it would be a mistake to try to copy a recent holiday. So having taken LCQC as KatW's top recommendation, we're now off to Las Alamandas which was her second.