My girlfriend and I just returned from a week at the Presidente Inter-Continental, May 8-15, 2004. We took advantage of a special advanced booking offer that requires you to pay the entire amount up front with no changes or cancelations allowed. Dangerous, but a big money saver if you want to gamble. Then I followed the advice of other Inter-Continental guests and paid to join the Ambassador Club, which gives you a guaranteed room upgrade. So for a very low price and a "garden view room" we got a high floor ocean view. At check-in they gave me the option of further upgrading to a beachfront deluxe room, but it would have doubled the total price for my stay! Those rooms are larger and possibly better appointed from a quick glimpse I saw through someone's open door. The complex has three main sections for rooms. There is a five-story high rise, where we stayed, a one-story horseshoe thrusting off of it for beach and garden view patio rooms, and a long one-story straight section fronting the other, longer section of beach.

Our room was big enough, but had zero decorations on the walls. Just some yellow paint on the wall behind the bed. One of the walls was rather badly stained. It was not unattractive, just not what I have come to expect for full luxury resort prices (and this is not a cheapo Mexican discount hotel!). There was a tile floor that helped keep the room very cool. We usually didn't run the air conditioner at all. A large balcony permitted sightseeing and air drying bathing suits and scuba gear. The bed was hard as a rock.

We had no bathtub. The bathroom featured the toilet and shower stall together, with no boundary on the floor. So when you take a shower, the entire floor is soaked and you get to feel it whenever you use the toilet. The solution is to use the hotel beach towels to build a barrier at the edge of the shower. Towels are available all day, and you can exchange used ones for clean ones at any time, as often as you want. The towel area is located next to the swimming pool, which got a fair amount of use from families. There were lots of families with small children there.

The staff was plentiful, ubiquitous, and unfailingly polite, pleasant, and helpful. One of the best overall hotel staffs I have ever seen. I set up a special romantic private dinner for my girlfriend's birthday and the concierge worked with me ahead of time via email and then at the resort to follow up and ensure it went well. The concierge also put in a lot of effort on my behalf when reservations went amiss for an offsite activity (not her problem, but she took it on).

The grounds are very pretty. Lots of lush greenery, with palm trees, hibiscus hedges, and big green lawns. The beach areas are constantly raked and smoothed with a board so you can feel like you are walking on untrammeled nature. There are two roped off snorkeling areas (only roped to keep the many scuba boats from running you over). The coral was fairly dead along the shore, as expected from the number of guests running roughshod over it, but there were plenty of little fishies. There is a current that flows parallel to the beach, so you can drift along without effort in one direction, then get out and do it again!

A dive operator (Scuba Du) has rental and booking facilities on the hotel beach, but they are not part of the hotel and you can't charge things to your room. We had no problem with equipment availability or condition.

The hotel has two restaurants on site, with a third opening later in 2004 to concentrate on pasta. We didn't try the fancy expensive restaurant (El Arrecife), although they produced the food for our outdoor birthday dinner. The food was acceptable but not exceptional. The other restaurant is an open-air covered area near the scuba boat dock and the beach. They put on a very comprehensive buffet breakfast (you can also order off menu) that we both enjoyed. Dinners were just fine. Again, tons of servers and polite, friendly faces. The bar features a 2-for-1 happy hour from 5-7 each evening.

The hotel is about a three-minute cab ride from downtown Cozumel. Taxis were charging five dollars, and I threw in a dollar tip. You are halfway between town and Chankanaab Park, which makes it easy to get to the dolphin/sea lion programs that are noted as attractions.

Notes on travel to/from hotel:

If you fly in to Cancun, catch the regularly scheduled express bus to Playa del Carmen. It saves you about $30 per person over a taxi ride. The bus drops you across the street from a ticket counter for the ferry to Cozumel. Ferries leave on the hour, with a couple of "dark" hours each day to let them take a siesta or something. The crossing takes about 45 minutes and can be choppy. Sit in the lower center of the boat to minimize the effects. There are plenty of guys with little tricycle carts to help cart your luggage between the bus depot and the boat.

On the Cozumel side, you just walk from the pier to the taxi ranks right there at the street corner. There were always tons of taxis waiting everywhere.

May 1 - May 5Summary:We had a very nice stay at Presidente. The hotel staff were as courteous, polite, responsive, and efficient as we could possibly have imagined. We had an ocean-view room which was beautiful although a bit smaller than expected. The beach, swimming pool, and other hotel amenities were wonderful. I only have two complaints -- 1. Everything at the hotel was 50-100% more expensive than the equivalent in town (San Miguel, Cozumel). 2. I was not thrilled with the dive shop (Scubadu.com) located at the hotel, as they seem to engage in a lot of false advertising and were quite a bit more expensive than average.Detailed report:Check-in, check-out. The check-in / check-out process went perfectly smoothly, and the glasses of champagne offered during check-in were an especially nice touch. We had pre-paid for our room months in advance in order to get a better rate.Room. The room was nice, but a bit small compared to other similarly-priced hotels we stayed at on the mainland. I wouldn't normally mind the room size, except that we had a baby with us as well as 3 suitcases. When on vacation, I basically like to live right out of my suitcase as opposed to unpacking everything and closing them up. And with this room, there wasn't really enough space for us to leave our suitcases horizontal and open, and still have floorspace to walk around.Beach. The hotel's sandy beach area was also a bit smaller than I was expecting, but it was nice. The size really wasn't a problem at all, since for some strange reason, there were never very many people on the beach at any given time. We usually felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. They've roped off some safe areas in the water for snorkeling, which was nice -- so you don't have to worry about boats and other watercraft.Food and drink. It looked like there were two restaurants at the hotel, a casual one and a fancier one (not sure about their names). We only ever ate at the casual one, because we had a child with us. They served decent food, but it was expensive. Room service was also pricy, as were drinks/snacks served up by the pool or on the beach. They seem to tack on various taxes and service fees with every order, and then there's an expected 15% gratuity on top of all that. So it adds up fast. A standard breakfast buffet ended up being U.S. $20 per person. We quickly realized that having 3 meals/day + snacks/drinks all at the hotel itself was going to end up costing us more than the room itself. So instead, we frequently took a taxi into town (45 pesos + tip = ~U.S. $5.00 each way), and found random restaurants to eat at there. Even with the cost of the taxi included, it ended up being cheaper than eating at the hotel, and in my opinion, the food was better and the experience more authentic.Service. The hotel service can't be beat. Everyone is so friendly and so efficient and so willing to cater to your every need. It's just perfect to be served lunch and drinks right on the beach as you sit there and relax in your lounge chair under your palapa. Almost all of the staff spoke enough English to communicate with us about anything we needed. Housekeeping did a fantastic job too and were very accomodating.Phone. You think hotels in the U.S. overcharge for phone calls made from the hotel room? Forget it. At Presidente Cozumel, I ended up paying U.S. $5.00 for a phone call to a toll-free Mexican phone number. Unfortunately for me, I made a lot of those phone calls and didn't realize the price until check-out time. It's pretty standard for all hotels to screw you on phone calls, but this was pure robbery unlike anything I had seen before.Diving. A company called Scubadu has their dive shop set up right on the hotel premises -- very convenient, but the not the best deal. I wanted to sign up for an introductory lesson and shallow reef dive. They had such a package available, which was quoted to me at U.S. $71, including equipment. Seemed reasonable to me, but only after I signed up did the guy bother to tell me about the additional $10 wetsuit rental fee and the $4 marine fee. I should have done my comparison shopping (which is nearly impossible to do without going into town). I would have found out that other dive shops do the exact same thing for roughly U.S. $55, including everything. Okay, so I got ripped off a little bit... that's not the bad part. The scheduling was a nightmare. At first, the guy told me they had a spot available at 9am the following morning. I said I'd take it. He called somebody, and then informed me that 9am was full, and the only spot available was 1pm. Okay, a little less convenient for me, but no problem, I'll take 1pm. I planned my day's activities around the 1pm dive, and showed up promptly at 1pm, only to be told that there were no instructors available and that I should come back at 3pm. Grrr, okay, I can handle 2 more hours of waiting around, no big deal ... after all, I'm on vacation, right? I came back at 3pm, and this time some other lame excuse, and I should come back the next day. So I ended up basically feeling like they robbed me of a whole day of vacation when I could have been doing other stuff instead of waiting around the hotel for my dive. Finally, they took me out the following day with several other beginner divers, and it was an okay experience. We didn't even take a boat out into further waters; we just dove around the beach area, max depth of 20 feet. The corals weren't really that impressive, and the biggest fish we saw was about 12 inches long. I saw cooler stuff than that just snorkeling around the beach on my own.

Family of five stayed at the El Presidente over the Easter break. The hotel was totally booked when we arrived. We had asked for adjoining rooms but the message apparently had not warrived in time. Our nanny and two little ones were in a room down the hall. Worked out ok but my wife was no pleased. We were upgraded from garden view to ocean view for no additional charge and that eased the sting. The hotel is big and you will do some walking to get about. The pool is relatively small for the size of the resort and there is quite a chair reservation game that is played every day. The food is middling to good and it is expensive. We ate there a lot just for the convenience but you should really check out the restaurants in town for better food/price. The staff wewre very accommodating. The rooms were a little dated but quite adequate. Nice view, good AC, cable TV with maybe a dozen channels. Water pressure and hot water were fine. The beach is very nice and the snorkelling was pretty good. This is a very kid-friendly resort. Lots of families and noise. Perfect for us maybe not for you.

The Presidente Inter-Continental Cozumel is incredible! We loved everything about this resort. We did pay a little extra to get a deluxe room and I will never forget how beautifully decorated it was in the Mexican theme with the large hurricane glass and candle in the room and the lavish marble floors and shower. Luxury all of the way. The food served in the restaurant is quite good. Not all inclusive and you get what you pay for!! And there is a sunken ship right outside next to the boat dock and the snorekling and diving is superb right outside your hotel room. This resort is a little slice of heaven, and I would recommend it for anyone, expecially honeymooners!! I've also stayed at the Cozumel Dive Resprt formerly the Fiesta Americana and it is also a good one but the Presidente is the best!