Originally Posted by iahphx

So having completed my stay, I can't really recommend the Hyatt Centric. Playa del Carmen itself is pretty "meh" (although very easy and cheap to get to on the ADO airport bus, which stops a few blocks from the hotel). There's a main street (5th avenue), with tourist eating, drinking and shopping. Both branches of the Hyatt are just off this street, meaning noise can certainly be a problem (they gave us earplugs, which we used). A couple of blocks behind fifth avenue is a "real' town that has grown up to service the tourists. This features some less touristy restaurants and stores. Other than eat, drink, shop and swim, there really isn't much to do in this town. You have to leave town to do sightseeing, and walking to town isn't that enjoyable due to many holes in the sidewalks, and other obstructions. The food scene is fine, but perhaps more expensive than you might think Mexico should be.

The Hyatt beach house is a small property right on the beach. The main building (called "downtown") is about two blocks away. The only advantage of the beach house is being right on the beach, as the downtown hotel has better facilities. The beach itself has erroded and comes within 20 ft of the beach hotels. Right now, there's a bad sargassum seagrass problem. They cart away the sargassum every few days, but it is a less than ideal situation.

The rooms at the beach house are large and comfortable, but the hotel service is uninspiring. No welcome gift or anything for globalists, although when I walked over to the downtown building I did cajole a non-alcoholic welcome drink out of them. There is a globalist breakfast menu with a few reasonable choices, but they are sometimes out of ingredients (like bacon) and the service can be extremely slow. They seem understaffed.

The pool area is small, as is the pool, which I would characterize as a single person lap pool. There are very few umbrellas set up, and it is basically impossible to sit by the pool in Mexico without an umbrella due to the heat and sun.

Bottom line, I don't think this is a great place to spend your Mexican vacation. Certainly, if you're using points, you should use more points and go to one of their better all inclusives.