There is a pungent sewer/sulfur odor that permeates rooms along the entire front of the hotel, due to local construction. When we asked to be moved to another room, the manager was unapologetic and said we would have to pay double the rate to switch.

Further:
*The place was overrun with children and people looking for a Girls Gone Wild experience.
*The service staff was generally unknowledgeable and unhelpful, except for when it came to trying to sell time shares, their true moneymaker -- the hotel itself is more like a front for the timeshare industry.
*We got calls every morning [early] asking us to come down and pick up a "welcome packet" of information and "gold card" for local discounts. Yet, when we stopped by to pickup the packet later they wouldn't give it to us unless we went through the timeshare orientation. We made it clear we were not interested however, despite these conversations, the early phone calls persisted.
*One afternoon we were asked to clear the pool area at 2pm in order for hotel staff to set up for a private party later that night. In the afternoons, the pool is plagued by loud DJ blasting music, bingo and trivia games.
*The television in our room had a persistent buzz, as if the speakers had been blown out -- but that didn't matter much because there were only a few channels and there was no pay per view. *The food was poor quality and over priced.
*The beach is small and filled with local vendors and tourists getting henna tattoos and their "name on a grain of rice."
*The rooms were bad down to the detail; the bedding was not clean or fresh, and one of our beds didn't have a bed spread.

I travel frequently for work and am happy 99.9 percent of the time. No hotel is perfect, but in the spirit of vacation, the shortcomings are usually easy to overlook, especially in a clean room.

We disliked the Villa del Palmar so much we splurged and went to another hotel for a night, despite the fact that we had already paid for our room, just to escape the smell. I wish I could say one nice thing about the place but the truth is staying at the Villa del Palmar added stress to our vacation. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

The Villa del Palmar hotel is a nice hotel, and the staff is very nice and helpful. The beach and pool were a bit crowded, so my sisters and I would make our way over to the Villa del Arco, owned by the same company, and use their pool, which we loved. The food at Tortuga's wasn't very great, but Baja's was. We participated in the Mexican fiesta which was loads of fun! Through the time share breakfast we sat through, we got a gold card giving us discounts on activities and free tickets for the water taxi to El Arco. My biggest complaint would be regarding the phone system. I was using the Hello cards they have at the hotel, which cost 10 dollars for 22 minutes. It stopped functioning one day, and the only other option was to make credit card phone calls, which ended up costing me over a hundred dollars. There seemed to be no way to make international calls at a decent rate without buying a Ladatel card and making calls in the city itself. Other than that, everything we needed was within in the hotel complex, and this vacation was probably one of the best we'd been on, partly because of the hotel and beaches as well as Cabo being such a nice place. Culturally, not much to do there, its very westernized compared to other parts of Mexico. But it was fun nonetheless!

We stayed for a week and had the worst room ever. We did not get the room size we had reserved and was put in a smaller room next to the maid area. The room stunk and had green mold growing all over the walls, pictures, lamp shade, refrigerator etc. We immediately complained and were told that this is the way all rooms were in Cabo because of the humidity. I told them that is not true becasue I have never stayed in a room like that in Cabo ( or anywhere else in the world). I requested a new room and was told none were available. We stayed that night (it was 9:00 pm already and had been traveling for 18 hours) and my wife started to got sick from the smell. Again in the morning I complained and again they did not have a room to move to. They did send a maid who took the pictures off the wall, the lampshades and cleaned the refrigerator. She also brought a dehumidifier. The situation did not get better. The next morning we went to check out to move to another hotel and amazingly they had another room available. We moved and stayed the week. So this was not the service we expected from a 4 star hotel.

My family and I just returned from the Villa Del Palmar and understand fully how people are writing negative reviews. The accomodations at VDP were by far the worst we have experienced. First, the bedroom (or the cave is what we called it) has no windows which is a bummer on vacations. Next the bed was as hard as a rock and the living room pull out bed was extremely uncomfortable for the girls. But the worst thing about the room by far was the horrible smell of SEWAGE!!! We woke up in the middle of the night numerous times to a horrible stench that prevented us from falling back asleep. We did eventually walk into town to get air freshner (none available in the VDP store) but that only helped minimally. There really isn't anything that can overcome dealing with a horrible odor but I will say that the view from our room was pretty.
As for the staff at the hotel, they were overall pretty friendly but not always too prompt with special requests like blankets and pillows. They work all thru the night so we were awakend many times by loud banging noises and the voices of workers cleaning up after events. Believe it or not, we could hear people in the room above us going to the bathroom and flushing the toilet!!! As for the whole timeshare tour bit, how ANNOYING! We were so irritated by those people that we didn't care if we missed out on saving a million dollars...we didn't care about their "gold card " and I am proud to say we didn't do it! FYI-I heard those tours last most of the morning..not an hour.
Lastly, the vendors on the beach can be sort of annoying but that is part of the Mexico experience so I won't complain about them. I will complain about the people at the airport who literally drag you to a counter and act like you are suppose to be there...you aren't!!.
We will probably go back to Cabo some day but we will definitely not go back to the VDP. The only people who I would recommend this hotel to are college kids with little funds and who will be drinking so much they won't be bothered by the smell!