My wife and I stayed at the GOC from January 10-18, 2008. We stayed in a Grand Club villa room which was great. The Grand Club gives you access to a club restaurant for breakfast and lunch for your stay, a private club only pool, and other amenities that are listed on their webpage. It also allows you to eat every night in the a la carte restaurants with a reservation of course. The special private check in was nice. It was definitely worth the extra bucks.

The room was great, well appointed and clean. The staff was great and food in the restarants and buffet was great, even though we only ate at the main buffet a couple of times. The beach buffet was perfect for lunches and close to the dive shop and pier so it was handy coming back from the morning dive.

We have decided to return in April 2008 with our adult children.

Jan 15, 2008 we travelled with Signature vacations form Calgary via Cancun to Cozumel then return non-stop Cozumel to Calgary. Signature transported us from the airport to the hotel and check in was very prompt complete with champaign. They took 2500 peso imprint of visa and had me sign. I also paid for 30 minutes of internet for $6 USD. We asked of room with king bed but had to take 2 doubles. The room was clean and spacious. Houskeeping was excellent. The design of the buildings have intrerior entrances with a hollow centre. Unfortunately this allows for poor acoustics so any noise is heard in the rooms. The gardens and grounds are exceptional and the overall maintenance is first class. Upon checkout (12:00 PM) they did provide us with a hopitality room from 1:30 > 2:00 so we could shower and change.
We only ate at the Mediterranean restaurant once and it was excellent. All the other meals were at the main buffet dining room or the beach restaurant.
The only frustration was the experience with the Occidental sales staff. We were not inteested in hearing their sales pitch and they did not want to take a simple no thank you. We had to quite insistent on two separate occasions. After you are there for a few days they do leave you alone.

My rating 1-5
beach - 5
service - 5
beach sports equipment - 4.6
food - 4.8
facility - 5
programs - 4
drinks - 4.7
friendliness of staff - 5
front desk - 5
Location - 4
Occidental marketing team - 2
Vendors on the beach or on the property - 4.5

The staff do not give you the impression that they expect tips but we were happy to tip $1 for bar service and $2 to $5 for each time we ate at the buffet restaurants.
Playancar Diving runs the dive shop onsite. I went on a night dive with them and it was excellent. All my other dives were with Dive with Martin.

My husband and I went for our honeymoon/babymoon for one week at the Grand Occidental. We had an amazing time and I promised that I would briefly share this experience to fellow travellers as this is the way I chose the location.

Location: The hotel is about a 17 minute drive from the town of San Miguel.... about $20 taxi ride. It is a big resort with 2 pools and a beautiful beach. Lots of green, lots of animals- Iguanas, turtles, fish, birds, Beautiful.

Food: Delicious. Tons of variety, great quality- I am vegetarian and had no quarms getting a great variety of food...and my hubby is a meat and potatoes guy and he enjoyed the food very much also. The french toast were to die for in my opinion- and the fruit oh the fresh fruit!

Staff: Fun, friendly, and accomodating. The only thing that we found a tad annoying is that the food can not leave the restaurant and they are pretty sticky about this unless you are sneaky or tip!

Activities: So much to do. We swam, I did aquasize, pool volleyball, ping pong, dancing, pool, snorkelling and there was much more to do. But at the same time there is a relaxation pool where you can chill with a cold beverage and a good book and take in the sun!

Weather: It was perfect for a Canadian Chica like myself. Sunny and hot during the day around 28 celcius and in the evening it rained a bit and cooled things down.

What else: It was a really good time, I recommend this for anyone who scuba dives, loves water, loves the greenery of South Eastern Mexico and who wants to have a relaxing time with activities and partying that is all inclusive!

Not for? Maybe not for people who want to bar hop and city shop everyday- it certainly is less "Americanized" than it's neighbouring Playa Del Carmen and Cancun- but more spectacular if you ask me!

We stayed at the Grand Jan 11 to Jan 18/2008. It was Grand and then some! We had come here via a recommendation from a good friend of ours, so we had pretty high expectations! And we were not disappointed at all.

We arrived at approx noon on the Friday and check-in brought us a pleasant surprise. The front desk informed us we had been bumped to the Royal Club. Thus we were whisked off to the Royal Concierge to get ourselves checked in. They provided us with a glass of champagne and we were promptly checked into our rooms. Seeing that it was before 3pm our room wasn’t quite ready, so we were told to come back in a couple hours and they would give us our room key, and the bellman would bring our bags to our room then. We also were able to book an evening to the Royal section restaurant at this time.

We were then off to the pool to soak up some rays, drink some cervaza's and enjoy our holiday. And right off the get go we met "Broant", fellow Trip Advisor, and her girls. We all hit it off and ended up hanging out most of the week. So far great resort and new friends!

The main pool, beach buffet and beach are over the mangrove via a bridge. We did not find any smell in regards to the Mangrove at all! It is cool to see the turtles and ducks hanging out here, the resort tries to be as eco friendly as possible. We also at one point in our trip saw a big iguana swim across the water and into one of the trees in the middle of the mangrove, who knew they swam that well??

Our room was ready at 3 when we went back to the concierge, Building 19, second floor, 1924. King size bed, huge bathroom, killer shower, which we want to have installed in our basement now! And a huge bathtub, which the wife enjoyed! We faced the jungle with a partial view of the ocean. The room could not have been better. Super clean, mini fridge, which was always full of pop, water and beers. The cleaning girls always did a great job in cleaning our room and providing us with towel art most days! We did tip them everyday as we saw them working early every morning and till late in the day! There was also a turn down service every night with chocolates left and the next day newsletter. We did use the room service one day and it was quick and very good.

As far as the restaurants and buffets we could not have been more impressed. I am a fussy eater in regards to not eating a wide variety of items. But not once did I find it hard to find lots, and I mean lots, to fill my plate with! The food was always a good temperature and very tasty. We have been to other resorts where the food was cool or warm to taste, never found that here, including breakfast which can be hard to keep hot. People I think that complain of the food here need to either not goto an AI or realize that it is hard to make every meal with lots of spice. These places are trying to appeal to the masses, not that keen one on one order that one would get at a true 5 star restaurant!!

The Royal restaurant was very nice and had a nice atmosphere. I had some issues here, as it was a little too different here in regards to my tastes. But my wife enjoyed everything immensely. I did too on what I had, its just I stick to the things I like. We also went to the seafood ala carte. This was also very good from start to finish. The grouper was a hit!!

As for the beach and bar service, very nice. We never had an issue in getting a lounger, no towel games here! The sand was soft and we never found a need for our beach shoes. We saw a few varities of fish from shore. A barracuda, corral stingray and a variety of other fish. The pools were a little cool but once in it was all-good. We also played some of the pool games and my wife did the aquasize. The entertainment staff was very good and would try to get people involved, but not overly pushy! The bar down at the pool was good and became better as the week went along, new bartender that was a little more talkative. There is also a girl that went around the pool and beach taking drink orders, which was great! She worked very hard taking drink requests.

The nightly entertainment was ok, your typical AI entertainment. We did find the Friday night show quite funny, Mr. Occidental contest! We didn’t catch all the shows but they were ok from what we saw. There is a Mexican market one night, where you can barter for some items that was nice. There is an artist that paints plates and pictures onto a feather, very cool. We bought a painted feather painting.

We also went down to Alberto's 2 times. The first time we walked the beach, very safe and about a 10 minute walk. This place was amazing. We had a crab and lobster that we split between the 2 of us. These things were huge and very good. Good enough that we went back again and had the crab and shrimp the second time! When we went back the second time we took the road as it was raining a little that night, so it was a faster walk via the road. Highly recommend checking this place out!

We took part in the timeshare meeting, to get a good deal on a jeep! We did not find the timeshare boys out front to be as aggressive as anticipated. And once we had done the meeting they seemed to still want to help us out, and no we did not sign up either! With the timeshare discount the jeep rental was $40 including insurance. We went around the island, stopping at Playa Palancar, great beach, but on this day, Sunday, they were not operating the snorkel boat. Then we cruised the east side, some really amazing sights and beaches here. Worth the drive over here. And we had to stop at Coconuts for lunch.. The food was great, nice atmosphere and view. We left a t-shirt here, so will be interesting if they put it up? If you go, look for a black t that says HyperActive Watersports with a big Canadian Leaf on it! Let me know if it is up?? And no the wife would not go for a free tequila shot! Bummer!

We did a snorkel tour thru the resort also one day. It was great as there were only 4 of us on this tour, which took you to 2 reefs. Lots to see down there. At the second reef, our captain, Jose, joined us in the water. He would point out some of the fish that we didn’t see ourselves. Lobster, baby nurse shark, eels, rockfish, starfish and lots of others. He also drew in a nice big barracuda to give us a chance to see a big Mexican piranha, lol

The staff at this resort are beyond reproach! They are always acknowledging you while you are out and about, with a “hola” or “another cervaza?”. They honestly do care about you and the time that you are having. It was nice to have someone want to give you good service for a change. It is something that we don’t see that often anymore back here in Canada or even the USA. Another big bonus here is NO wrist bands or towel cards!!

In closing, I am glad my friend told me about the Occidental Grand. It is a great resort to check out if you are looking to have a nice relaxing vacation with enough to keep you going and provide you with the opportunity to do more if you so desire! We will be back here one day and will not hesitate to tell our friends about this great holiday retreat!