The Fives Beach Hotel and Residences

The staff at this resort are amazing, Eric, Toni, Jonathon working on the beach Eric especially always ensured our needs were met. Charlie from Epic travellers also made our stay a pleasure. Ricardo from Lizards provided us with great service and conversation. The hotel itself was a complete shambles, miscommunication is abysmal at present the different departments are clearly not working with each other. For instance there were only 3 functioning restaurants offering 2 styles of cuisine not the 8 as advertised so service was beyond a joke with 2+ wait time as there was not enough space to cater to capacity at any one time. The same situation happened with the bars long queues for drinks more staff cleaning and organising the area, restocking than serving guests. Guests reserving loungers when signage clears states not to. The rooms need an update in terms of equipment checks as the ac frequently cut out, the jets within the jacuzzi only half worked and when reported no attempt was made to address the issues. The design of the shower door means water always escapes onto the bathroom floor as you can’t open it the other way. Having a broom and dust pan and brush would be useful in between house keeping. Half of the pools were closed due to renovations which were not communicated at any point thus making the infinity pool (with a view that’s blocked by Bali beds and sun loungers) very busy. The entertainment was repetitive and its placement squashed in between a main walk way was ridiculous as well as hot and inappropriate. The activities besides aquafit which was the only activity that consistently happened and if the location changed staff didn’t think they needed to inform guests, on occasion had been waiting up to an hour. Overall this hotel has a lot of potential its lack of communication and poor operational organisation has let itself down.

The staff were very helpful. Lots of choice of restaurants and the food was very good. Our suite was large and quiet. The pools were beautiful. We had fun playing volleyball in the pool. The hotel was clean both the rooms and the landscape.

Nice property, mediocre rooms, and a sales pitch that cost us over $30,000

We stayed at The Fives Beach Hotel & Residences in Playa del Carmen in March 2025.

The stay. The property itself is fairly nice, but the rooms were mediocre. Our first room was damp and in poor repair, bad enough that the hotel had to move us. The room they moved us to was a real improvement and we liked it. The staff handled the move well, but we shouldn't have been put in that room in the first place.

The sales presentation. During our stay we were invited to an Epic Travelers "club presentation." Don't go. We signed up for a membership on March 17, 2025 and paid over $30,000 up front. The pitch was built on unlimited exchanges through Interval International. We were told we could use it for business travel, personal travel, and nearby hotels like Marriott, all for a flat exchange fee.

What happened after. It never worked. Getting our weeks loaded into Interval took months of phone calls. Once they were loaded, nothing was ever available. We tried Florida, Boston, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, and every search came back unavailable or with the wrong unit size. After 18 months we haven't used a single night or exchange, and Epic's own portal shows 0 nights used.

When we asked to cancel, Epic said the 5-day cancellation window had passed. But nobody finds out the exchanges don't work until they try to book a trip months later, long after those 5 days are gone.

Our advice: Skip the presentation, and think twice about staying here. The rooms don't justify the price, and the resort is the front door for a membership sale we deeply regret. DO NOT DO IT!