Oleo Cancun Playa Review – Honest Take on This Boutique All-Inclusive Resort

Overview of Oleo Cancun Playa

Oleo Cancun Playa is a 4+ star resort located in the Hotel Zone in Cancun. It is part of the Atelier Hotel Group, serving as the lower-end counterpart to the Atelier Playa Mujeres.  We booked this as a last-minute trip in November through a package with Expedia that included hotel and round-trip airfare from Montreal to Cancun. It is a rather small boutique hotel with 166 rooms.  This is my honest review of the Oleo Cancun Playa resort based on my week-long stay. 

Location in Cancun

The Oleo Cancun Playa is located in Cancun’s Hotel Zone.  It is on a rather narrow stretch of land with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the lagoon on the other.  It is located about 12km from the airport in Cancun, which is only about a 15-minute drive.  

First impressions of the resort

The water here is stunning, and that is the first thing I remember after pulling into the resort.  Since you enter the driveway from the lagoon side, entering the lobby and seeing the ocean for the first time is quite something.  

Arrival experience and welcome

When you arrive, you are going to be ushered to the people who try to upsell you with sales breakfasts and excursions.  At the time, we were newbies to the all-inclusive experience.  Now I realize what they are doing and decline, but this time we actually did book the sales breakfast and ultimately bought a plan, which has since proven to be a waste of money (more on that later).  

Our Oleo Cancun Playa Room

Our room was located on the top floor and in the back (lagoon and street view).  The ocean view rooms are all the Atelier rooms – hence all the upselling sales pitches.  Our room was actually a huge room – the standard king.  It had a large area with a couch, king king-sized bed, and a large bathroom.  We did have some issues with this room, as one night we were out, and it was raining very heavily.  When we got back to our room, we had to call maintenance because the ceiling was sinking and it was essentially creating puddles in our room.  Luckily, it was not on our bed or belongings, but it was not an ideal situation.

Dining at Oleo Cancun Playa

Restaurants and cuisine highlights

The Oleo website states that they have 5 restaurants and 2 bars.  One of these restaurants is the Azul buffet, which is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

The Almar Restaurant requires reservations and is only open for dinner 6 nights per week.  We enjoyed dining in this restaurant.  The Mediterranean-style food was great, and the staff was really nice.    

The second à la carte restaurant is Hakka, which is an Asian style restaurant that also requires reservations and is open for dinner only.  This is mainly Japanese food with things like tempura, fish, curry, and sushi.  

El Botanero is more like a snack bar.  It is the outdoor area by the pool that is open for lunch only and has things like burgers and tacos.  On different days, they were offering different things here on the grill.  I was usually able to find something vegetarian, but some days it was all burgers and hot dogs and things like that.

The last “restaurant” is actually a coffee shop, the Brown Bag Coffee Corner.  This coffee shop has coffee and pastries, and desserts. 

The food was pretty limited, but it was fine for a week.  We really enjoyed the Mexican food night at the buffet, so if you go, be sure to check that out.  The handmade tortillas were amazing, and there was a traditional Mariachi band serenading us at dinner.  

Also, since we were celebrating my husband’s birthday, I found a restaurant right across the street, which was excellent.  I would highly recommend that restaurant if you get sick of the buffet food.  It is located right on the lagoon.  The food was excellent, and the service was wonderful too. I had an excellent vegetarian meal here, which was a stuffed Poblano chili with quinoa and vegetables.  My husband enjoyed the fish and ceviche appetizer.      

All-inclusive bars and drinks

There are two bars at the Oleo Cancun Playa.  The pool bar is a swim-up bar at the main pool area.  It has some small stools so you can sit at the bar while in the water.  Then there is the lobby bar located in the main lobby.  It is a large bar with stools around it and has TVs with sports games playing.  There were also waiters coming around.  When we were on the beach, there was an excellent waiter providing drink service to us every day. 

Room Service

The Oleo Cancun Playa also offers 24/7 room service.  We did order snacks and drinks a few times because we often skipped lunch, and they had decent options comparable to other hotels we have stayed at.

Pools, Beaches, and Relaxation

The resort’s pool and swim-up bar

There is only one small pool at the Oleo Cancun Playa.  The pool is raised above the ocean, so it has excellent views of the beach below, which are accessible by a set of stairs.  The pool also has a swim-up bar.  

The pool was nice; however, since it was so small, we could never find lounge chairs there.  Although there were signs everywhere that said you could not reserve lounge chairs, there were huge groups here that would regularly reserve 10 lounge chairs at 8 am, go to breakfast and the gym, and come back to their chairs hours later.  We basically never were at the pool until later in the afternoon when it cleared out a little. 

Because of the lack of pool facilities, I would rethink booking here again.  It just isn’t fair to the rest of us when people do that, and the hotel won’t enforce their own policies, and it seemed to be a huge problem the week we were there (which was not even peak season in early November).       

Our time on the beach

The other issue we had was the ocean.  Although the ocean was beautiful, the lifeguard had red flags out every day except one day we were there.  But we looked down the beach and saw people in the ocean in front of other hotels.  It was a bit confusing as the hotel lifeguard was telling us we couldn’t go in the ocean, but it was allowed in other places. 

We were able to find some lounge chairs at the beach and relax and read during the day, but often had to wait to find a spot at the pool so we could bring our belongings up there and swim in the pool.  The ocean itself was beautiful, and the one time we went swimming, the water was refreshing.  The beach was also rather small here, as the ocean came quite close to the hote,l so there was limited sand to walk on.      

The gym and spa

There is a small gym on site, which I did use a few times.  There are a few pieces of equipment – ellipticals and treadmills – along with weighted machines.  There is also a spa, which I cannot comment on as I did not use it personally.  However, there were workers from the spa coming around constantly trying to sell you treatments during your stay.  They had hydrotherapy, a sauna, and treatment options like massages.  

Exploring Mexico Beyond the Resort

Exploring Cancun

Since we were too far to walk down to the main drag of Cancun, we took the bus.  It was easy to do.  The bus stop was a short walk from our hotel.  The cost was only 50 cents USD (12 MXN pesos per ride).  We used cash for our fare. 

Downtown, we walked around the souvenir shops and bought some souvenirs to bring home.  We went to Senor Frogs and had some drinks and appetizers.  We also stopped at Playa Delphines, which has a big Cancun sign in front of the beach.             

Chichen Itza Day Trip

Another trip we took from Oleo Cancun Playa was the day trip to Chichen Itza.  This is a 12+ hour day from Cancun.  You will stop first to watch a typical Mayan demonstration and have a buffet lunch.  Then you will head to Chichen Itza and tour around the site there.  After that, you will cool off and swim at a cenote.  Lastly, you will briefly stop at the town of Valladolid before returning to Cancun.  You can read about our full experience here.  

Tips for Staying at Oleo Cancun Playau

The hotel sales breakfast

I would recommend skipping the hotel sales breakfast.  We bought an Inspira Elite Vacations package here, which was a mistake.  Part of our package was supposed to allow us a stay certificate at the Atelier Playa Mujeres for 7 nights for $1599 USD.  However, every time we have tried to use it, the person on the phone gives us some excuse why we cannot use it.  The first year, we got a reservation for the following year because we were too late.  Then the next year, we called, and the story changed.  They were now telling us that the first week of November was considered high season.  It has just been a complete waste of money, and I will never go to another sales breakfast again because of this experience.     

When to stay here

If you want to swim in the ocean, I would not recommend staying here in November.  The beach was fine to sit on, but swimming was nearly impossible.  There was no sargassum on the beach in early November, so the sand was nice and the water was incredibly blue.  November had some nice discounts, so it was an affordable stay for us.  Since you are coming in the shoulder season, the hurricane threat is low, but the hotels aren’t fully crowded.   

Final Thoughts on Oleo Cancun Playa

Pros

The hotel is small and intimate, and I definitely liked that.  The location is great as it is only a short 15-minute ride from the airport.  The beach here was small, but the water was beautiful, and there were plenty of lounge chairs.  The price to stay here was also very low, even compared to other all-inclusives in Cancun.  

Cons

The small pool area was a big con for us.  Since we weren’t allowed in the ocean here, we had a routine where we sat on the beach for most of the afternoon until we could get a spot at the pool.  When we finally got to the pool, it was less crowded and pleasant, but it was annoying having to plan that out every day and try to find spots there.  

The sales pitch was also a big con, knowing now how hard it has been to use the Atelier certificate we were most excited about having.  There were also limited dining choices – only 2 a la carte restaurants, which both required reservations.       

Would we recommend it?

Since we both love to swim, I would probably skip this resort next time.  It was too much of a struggle to get chairs at the pool every day.  The ocean in front of the hotel had a red flag almost every day we were there, so that left us with limited options.  

We had a much better experience staying in Playa del Carmen, which you can read about here.  This was a much bigger resort, but since we stayed in the Platinum area, we had a small pool area that was available for Platinum guests only, along with other huge pools and a beach.

If you like to sit on the beach every day and aren’t much of a swimmer, it is a fine, affordable option for a week in Mexico, accessible to the Cancun airport.  If you go into the experience expecting more of a budget stay and managing your expectations, you can have a great week here.