This is a long review. However as frequent visitors to Cozumel we wanted to post our experiences for others who may not be as familiar with the island. We have relied on Trip Advisor for many of our selections. We have given our review first for the Occidental then for their dive operator Dive Palancar. If you do not want to read the entire review the bottom line is we enjoyed our stay at the Occidental.

When visiting Cozumel, our primary objectives are great diving and relaxing in the sun. When in Cozumel we have stayed close to town and on the southern end of the island where the larger resorts are located. Staying close to town you can walk to shopping, great resturants, and experience the local culture. The disadvantage is longer boat rides to the best dive sites. ie Columbia and Palancar Reefs. The advantages of the large southern resorts are typically more luxury, better beaches, and short boat rides to the reefs. The disadvantage is a $15 - $25 cab ride to town.

For this trip we decided to split our time between a hotel close to town and the Occidental on the southern end of the island. We spent 4 nights Jan 28th - Feb 1st close to town at the Scuba Club Cozumel and 6 nights Feb 1st - 7th at the Occidental. If you have the luxury of spending more than a week, and are in Cozumel to dive we recommend this approach

The Occidental is a wonderful resort, and at least as good as the other nearby all inclusive resorts. We know we have stayed at them all. The rooms are new, clean, and fairly large. The bathrooms are large with separate showers and a tub. The staff was friendly. Note: we are typically skeptical of reviewers staff ratings. At the Occidental, the staff gets the job done, they are attentive, and overseen by Occidental management who we saw walking around.

The food was above average for an all inclusive resort. However, you need to set your expectations correctly. All inclusives are not typically five star dinning. The Occidental has three sit down dinner restuarants with good service, excellent food presentation, and above average service. There is one restuarant on the beach with a lunch buffet. Good selection of food on the Buffett. However, being outside there are a large number of flys.

There is a nightly outdoor show after dinner that we enjoyed. There is a disco that is open late. However, being divers we were in bed each night by 10:00 pm. If your objective is to party the night away this is probably not the best resort for you.

Scuba Diving:
The resort has a contract with Dive Palancar which services both of the Occidental resorts (Grand and Allegro). We are very picky about who we dive with and check into service levels, safety, and dive profiles of each operator prior to selecting one.

Dive Palancar is a well run operation. The staff dive shop staff is attentive, flexible, and willing to help. Being close to the reef they are able to offer a flexible dive schedule with a deep and shallow dive each morning and afternoon. Safety: The boats are well maintained, the dive master who leads your dive uses a safety sausage on a dive reel to alert boats during ascents (PS: We would not dive with an operator who does not follow this procedure). We were disappointed that the boats do not do a formal roll call prior to entering the water and when everyone is back on the boat. Therefore; we always made sure that another person on the boat who was in a different dive group, knew who we were - and we agreed to check for each other prior to returning to the resort. If you are a beginner diver or an intermediate level diver with average air consumption we would recommend Dive Palancar. If you are an experienced diver who dives with a computer and likes long bottom times we recommend you dive with another outfit. Dive Palancar's dive profiles are based on standard air tables. That means if you go to 80 feet then you can expect a dive in the 30 - 40 minute range. For perspective, as a nitrox diver using a computer earlier in the week, with a different outfit, our dives with similar profiles were about 1 hour. As an experienced diver its frustrating getting back on the boat with 2,000 PSI still in the tank. For this part of our trip we had our 13 year old son diving with us. Dive Palancar's profiles were perfect for him and made me comfortable that we would not exceed his capabilities and air consumption rates. Also by having shorter dives everyone will typically come up together with the divemaster. Also we decided to invest in an underwater video of our experience. For about $250 you can have your own private dive master and a digital underwater video of a your two tank dive. While this may sound expensive, we highly recommend it. The video is a first class production with excellent clarity and sound. It is produced by UW productions - thank you Yuri. Having a private dive master we picked our sites recommended by our dive master - thanks Juan.

We hope our review helps with your selection process.