Occidental Grand Cozumel - All Inclusive

Snorkeling was great right off the shore. The beach was very clean. There was a dive shop right on sight. The staff was very friendly. The grounds were beautiful! The food was good but lacked variety for the lunch menu. You have to get up early, or stay up late, to reserve a chair at the beach or pool. A little far from town but quiet and peaceful. No other resorts nearby. Small gift shop. You need to go into town to shop. Massage was wonderful!

Like the location. The grounds are very well kept. Food was OK, but then all-inclusive is not where you go for gormet food experience. Staff very friendly and helpful, except for attitude problems with the front desk staff. Also, a shortage of beach chairs most of the time. Overall we enjoyed our experience.

Amazing, can't wait to go back. Friendly staff, private beach, and did not get pressured once to buy a timeshare. Simply blissful.

We enjoyed every minute. The staff were very friendly and went out of their way to help you. Especially Ceaser. Taking a trip around the island is a must. The other side has awesome scenery. Our only complait is getting there. Take the stop in Dallas so that you can fly direct to cozumel. Otherwise to get there from Cancun is expensive.

The hotel and grounds were beautiful. Food was very good for an all inclusive...not gourmet, but plenty of variety and nicely presented. The only disappointment was the service. The Occidental Grand is billed as a 5 star resort, but the service (especially the front desk) was only 3 star. We also got tired of people trying to sell us timeshares.

I thought the staff at the Occidental Grand were polite and friendly. The grounds were beautiful, clean and well maintained. The rooms were large, hard beds, but clean. The Grand is located away from the downtown area and a cab ride is $14.00 one way. No buses to take you into town. The Occidental Grand is one of the top three resorts in Cozumel. I have heard this from many of the locals and after looking at some of the other properties, I was glad we picked Occidental Grand. The purpose of my visit was to relax and enjoy the beach, pool. The entertainment was okay, but after visiting Mexico several times, it basically is all the same.[...]

This was our third trip to the Occidental Grand. We took another couple along this year. Their first trip to Cozumel. They are non divers. They thought the place was great! Had heard some negatives about the Occidental Grand from someone who had been to Cozumel the previous month. Nothing negative at all. The place was fabulous like every other time. Great staff, plenty of activities, delicious food and beverages. Most satisfied!Great vacation!

My husband and I travel to Cozumel to dive twice yearly and decided to try a different resort on the trip this March. Oops! Clearly, the location of The Grand is great. Beautiful beach that is accessible with clear blue water. The other guest must go the beach after closing down the Disco or get up by 4am to "save" lounge chairs on the beach. Not just prime seats, but ALL of the chairs and the three beach beds are covered with Occidental towels by 6am each morning, even though there's no one in the seats until 9 or 10am. The moment that you walk onto the grounds, you are attacked by the time share sales people desperate to make a sale. And they don't stop there, no, they continue to stalk you. My hustand grew up in El Paso Texas and is no stranger on how to send a message that you aren't buying to someone trying to make a hard sale, but these people are relentless. It certainly put a damper on our vacation, having to repeatedly say no and eventually, just rudely ignore these people. We were very hesitent to speak to anyone Mexican on the grounds as it is very hard to differentiate which are timeshare salespeople, and which are Grand employees. The food is absolutely the worst that we have ever had at a resort and we've been to Couples, Riu, Iberostar, El Cozumeleno. Leftover food would be combined and reserved later in the day, or the next day. The selection on the buffet was limited to say the least. We both had two days of diarrhea. Did I mention that the wifi charge is $26 a day? The Dive Operation, Dive Palancar is a real "Maw and Paw" operation...very disorganized and poorly managed. They cancelled several of our dives as two of their three boats were sporadically "broken down". On more than one occasion, they would run out of weights, making it impossible to get the amount of dive weight you needed. Also, the weight has to be picked up by the diver, placed in your BCD or weight belt, then lugged down the pier to the boat. I must be spoiled but weights have always been carried on board the dive boat so that I didn't have to lug them back and forth with all the other stuff that I am already packing (mask, fins, regulator, BCD, etc...). Each of my dives lasted a whopping 30-40 minutes and I surfaced with 1200-1500 lbs of air left as the divemaster would end the dive. I really felt that I didn't get any bang for my buck with this dive op or this resort. I paid what I consider a premium price to stay at the Grand however, if you are not in the Royal Club Section of the resort, you are segregated and treated as a second class guest. They make it very difficult to schedule the "specialty" restaraunts as you can only schedule one at a time. The grounds are lush and well-kept. We noted that in the late evenings, the water springers would be on and they used what must have been sewage water as it stunk to high heaven. There was one poor fellow working the pool bar and the line was at least 10 persons deep at any given time. I was sorely disappointed in the lack of quality and hospitality at Occidental Grand Cozumel and would not recommend a stay there to any of my family, friends, or aquaintainces.

The staff was great with the exception of the people at the front desk. I am not sure if they are just too busy or don't care. The buffet was nice, but gets old after a week. Make sure to get your specialty restaurant reservations immediately as they fill up quickly. You need to claim beach chairs very early. 7:30 Am is not early enough. The mosquitos are in abundance and even though I used OFF bug spray I still ended up with alot of bites.

It was fairly easy to get to the resort from the airport, it only took about 30 or so minutes by ground transport. We only spent 4 nights, but were able to hit up every single restaurant, order room service, visit the spa and visit each of the pools and the beach. We chose the grand romance deluxe package, which included strawberries and champagne in our room, breakfast in bed, a reservation at the private Royal Club restaurant, and massages at the spa. We were quite impressed as soon as we stepped in. We were handed glasses of champagne, and shown to our room even though we arrived prior to check-in time. The facilities were beautiful, and all the pictures we had found of the place did not do it justice. The room was exactly as promised, with a king bed, shower and tub. The bed was reasonably comfortable, as expected for a hotel. The thermostat worked just fine, though the room was a bit cold when we first got there. It was fully to our expectations. Our housekeeping staff did a good job of keeping it in good shape while we were there; they even made us new towel swan sculptures after the first day. The only issue we encountered was that our tv was flaky. One day it was overcast and we stayed in a bit; both the remote and the buttons on the tv to change the channel were flaky. The up button sometimes went up, sometimes down, and sometimes didn't work at all. We didn't report it, so it wasn't fixed, but we got by just fine. Our 'balcony' was a small concrete patio immediately adjacent to a wall of greenery. We didn't use it much, seeing as even during the day during off season I was bitten by mosquitoes quite a bit. The breakfast and dinner buffets are in the same area, and both were adequate. The service was always good, very attentive. Lunch is served in the Beach Club on the beach, and also had good service. The food was fine. We even tried the late night pizzeria, which is in the same area as the breakfast and dinner buffets but is only open later. Nothing spectacular, but good for late-night cravings. Los Olivos, the Mediterranean restaurant, has excellent decor, and the food was good. The Sonora Grill was packed, but well worth the extra effort we went through to get in. These restaurants require reservations, which we weren't able to get; however, we simply went and asked about an hour or so after they had been open and they accommodated us. We also went to the Royal Club restaurant La Carreta. The food there was excellent! We had breakfast delivered to our room one morning, which was fine. It was colder than if we had gone to the buffet, but that's to be expected. There was a bar at each of the pools - a relaxation pool half way between the villas and the beach, and an activity pool at the beach. The lobby also has a bar. The bar staff was knowledgeable and always friendly and efficient. We also used the spa services. It seemed like few people knew about the jacuzzi tub and sauna that are available to everyone, included in the price of the stay. The facilities were very quiet and relaxing. We also got massages, which were described as Swedish. My previous experiences with Swedish massage were that it was a bit more of a deep tissue massage. This was not as intense, but still very pleasant. We also walked by a couple of the night-time shows in the main plaza, and we checked out the disco. It had a DJ and dance floor, and it seemed there was a screen for showing films as well. The concierge could be a bit pushy on trying to sell you packages for activities not included in the stay (snorkeling tours, motorized water sports, etc), but by the second day we had figured out how to work around their 'suggestions'. This was my first experience, and my boyfriend's second, with an all-inclusive resort, and overall we were quite pleased with it. We would definitely recommend it to others, and hopefully we will go back!