Catalonia Playa Maroma

I booked through Qantas hotels. We live in Australia and I travelled to Canada and then on to Mexico. Been many times before. Although this hotel was clean I felt it was not what I wanted for my holiday. It is a Spanish style resort and has none of the Mayan decor I have seen in other places I stayed at. Staff wears Spanish style uniforms. I did see security looking for an intruder they had walkie talkies and appeared to be searching all the areas someone could hide. Location is not bad, its about 25 mins drive from the airport on the coast side of hiway. Ample free parking for rental cars. You go down a lane through a security gate and down a bumpy road paved with bricks. Check in was fine except that I found out that our room which was Oceanview swimout suite, the top priced room, was up 42 steps and the farthest away from the lobby area. It was extremely tiring for us my husband is 68 years old with heart problems. The desk clerk told us to carry our own luggage the 500 meters to the area of our room which I found actually shocking and I insisted that she get a porter.
There is only one pool, it has different depths. One side is very deep and the other quite shallow. It became very hot in the sun and I suspect full of bacteria. Loud music and yelling from staff goes on for several hours a day, no way to get away from it except leave the resort. There is a sign saying no reservation of pool chairs which is clearly ignored, many people put towels under the prime shade and don't even use it. We had to move chairs and umbrella to get ourselves some shade. You have to tie a rope on the umbrella to make it stay up. The beach is nice, lots of chairs under the palm trees, but the sargassum is so thick. We we only able to swim for about an hour one day before it filled up again. The seaweed causes us to sneeze and made my eyes itch. Red ants in the sand will bite your feet so do not put your feet in the sand. I got sick part way through the week which has not happened to me before in Mexico.
The buffet was disjointed and confusing. They did not have a normal toaster and you have to use a press to toast your bread. The desserts are boxed type cut up and nothing made on site. Even the cheesecake at steakhouse was frozen thawed type, mine was slightly frozen. At lunch I only found pizza by the pool which had awful puffy sweet crust. I could not eat it. We had access to the Beloved restaurant which was up a big flight of stairs. I saw a man with a palsy struggling to get up there. Food was average, the steak was not very good in the steak house. I had a burger, it was fine. Japanese restaurant was average, the serving was huge. Too big for me. The room itself was nice, big bed, comfy sheets. The sofa and sitting area comfy enough but no table to eat it if we ordered room service. The fridge barely chilled the beer. I noticed a dial on the back turned down and I turned it up. Staff turned it down on me again during the daily cleaning. I called the desk they said they look into it and never did. The shower is huge and has strange controls for the water that take a bit of playing with to get it to work. The big tub took forever to fill and the hand shower part would not work properly. The toilet is in a closet like area with automatic blinding light that burns your eyes if you wake up in the dark and use it. There is a large clothes closet that lights up when you open it.
Overall staff was friendly but the front desk was a bit off. I ordered a porter to help us to carry luggage at 8:45 am on the day we left. I checked the night before and it was not noted at the desk. They told me to call 15 mins before for a porter. I tried in the morning and the desk phone was off the hook. I ran down the 500 meters and 42 stairs. I asked the attendant why she is not answering the phone. She says it was very busy. There was literally no one in the lobby so I found that hard to believe. I had to wrangle the sole bellboy to go up to our room he had to leave the entrance unattended because he was on his own.
Would I go back to this resort? No. Visually I don't find it as beautiful, I also found the lack of little golf cart trains that shuttle you around to be a huge negative. As a footnote their was a talented musician in the lobby one night playing the violin. We did not attend the other entertainment as we were exhausted from the long climb back and forth to the room. Once we went up after dinner we didn't want to bother doing the giant climb again.

Luis and Bernabe and Alejandra were wonderful!