I’m conflicted about this review. I would return, renting from one of the remaining private condominium owners. But I would not stay again through Oasis Tulum or Grand Oasis Tulum. The condominiums are ocean view and within steps of the beach, pool, etc. and well kept if still privately owned. They have kitchenettes which have been removed when purchased by Oasis Tulum owner. The private owners we met were very welcoming and helpful, making our stay much nicer. The majority of the staff were very pleasant. The problem is there is an extremely small staff so the service is limited at best.
My primary complaint was with the food. Reservations must be made for the Mexican and Italian restaurants which fill rapidly and can only be made 24 hrs in advance. The food at the buffet was too repetitive and very unimpressive compared to other resorts we have visited. I expected much better and was very disappointed. When we go to Mexico, we expect to have Mexican food choices which were extremely limited if available and frankly substandard. I could do better any day of the week which is just plain wrong.
If you are an early riser and require coffee you are SOL. It is usually hard to find until after 7:30am. If you like to stay up all night drinking you are also SOL. This is NOT a 24 hr. resort like many others.
We vacationed with 6 other couples. Several had issues with not having hot water or water at all. Some had problems with their toilets. The stench of raw sewage was overwhelming at times and extremely unpleasant. They need to make the investment to fix this problem once and for all since it appears to be a chronic problem.
Bottled water is available but they are stingy about giving it out. Tap beer was part of the all inclusive. However, you had to buy bottled beer of any other brand and it was extremely expensive even, by U.S. standards.
On a positive point, this resort is located in an area secluded by rocky areas on each end so there is no ‘beach traffic’ or local sellers walking the beach. There are numerous cenotes and things to do in close by compared to Playa del Carmen. It felt more private and safe with easy access to off resort activities.

We recently just got back from a 10 day stay at this resort, from February 8th thru to Feb 17th 2013. I had read several (maybe too many ) reviews prior to this vacation and even contacted Apple Vacations and printed some of those emails to have as evidence of what was promised versus what the reviews were saying that was not being delivered. We arrived early (1 PM) and started to check-in at the Oasis Tulum but were immediately upgraded to the Grand Oasis Without asking or without cost) so we walked acroos the lot to the Grand to check-in, our room was not ready and the front desk very unorganized. We finally got a room at 5:30 (the reason the room was not available until then was because it was being remodled... new beds, TV phone,etc. It would have been nice if they told us that.
This is a small resort and it is very close to the ocean and has the nicest beach that I have been to in 5 years. A short walk will get you from your room to the lobby, to the bars to the buffet and ocean.

This resort is about 1 1/2 hrs away from the Cancun airport. Our bus was going to make 4 stops and we were the last (2 hours) It would have made more sense to drive to the furthest stop first so they could make all right hand turns and save overall time by at least a half hour.

Rooms- The room was large with a nice balcony. Bathroom was nice, good water pressure. We had brand new beds, so no complqaints there. There are no elevators so there are stairs to climb if on the 2nd or 3rd floor. Rooms are clean and decorated nicely with a large closet and large dresser and 40" flat screen TV. Safe is in the closet (extra cost). Room was cleaned and beds made daily, the better the tip the better the the towel animals.

Pools- There are two pools at the Grand and two at Oasis (Oasis pools were more fun because they had the swimup bars...) You can't see the ocean from the pool so we spent limited time there as we prefer the beach. Yes, like everyone elses reviews state... there are NOT enough chairs by the beach or pools. I do not care for the reserving of chairs especially when some are reserved and not used the entire day. but it is what it is so get up early and get your spot.

Food- (very good) Buffet is not a very big but it's not a huge resort either. Depending on when you go you may have to wait a few minutes but this was no big deal. For breakfast, the omelette station was the place to go, I am not sure if the omlettes were special or if was just Mariana (she is a very nice lady)

By the pool they had a sit down snack place called the Happy chicken. This is a shadedarea where you can sit and have hamburgs,hotdogs,chicken wings, fries,coleslaw etc. (made fresh) The chicken wings and hamburgers were excellant.

There are two (free) a-la-carte restaurants where you reserve in the lobby the morning of when you wish to go. They have a mexican and Italian restaurant. My preferance was the Mexican.(went to this one twice) Itialian was average.

SportsBar- Whimpy's You can walk or there is a shuttle that will take you to the sports bar as it's about a 5 minute walk up the road. Several TV's and one very large screen TV all inside. You can sit and get waited on for drinks and snacks. All very good. Outside there are tables to drink or eat at as well as a nice pool with loungers (plenty of them here- unlike the beach). There is also a large area outside where every night they show a movie (against a wall... nice picture though) but if there is not a breeze the mosquito's can be an issue. This is the most active sports bar I have seen.

Misc
They need more bathrooms.
Theatre is enclosed and gets very hot in a hurry. Some shows very good other not so much.
Excursions: Highly recommend the Mayan Extreme (Zip lines, repelling, cenotes and Tulum Ruins) Groups of 12.

This resort is a work in progress as I went from upset to very happy. These reviews of Oasis Tulum will get better every week as they are slowly getting it together.

My husband and I stayed at Oasis Tulum (not the Grand side) from 2/16-2/21 after having spent 5 nights at the Krystal in Cancun. Like most others, I was skeptical after reading so many negative reviews, but we got a good deal so I decided to go with and hope for the best. I completely understand why people are upset about false advertising and I think that if I went there without reading reviews and knowing exactly what I had access too I would have been disappointed. This is an issue that the resort really needs to fix and I was sure to mention it on my comment card when we left. I'll try to give as many details of our experience in hopes of helping others so bear with me if this gets lengthy.
Check in and Room:
When we arrived at the front desk the staff was pleasant. I asked for a free upgrade since I had read several people were upgraded to the grand. I was told that there weren't any upgrades today, but if I came back tomorrow morning I might be able to get one. She told us our rooms weren't ready, she gave us our purple wrist bands, pointed the way to the buffet and asked us to come back at 3. I will say that the communication is lacking a bit...we were never told what we had access to at the front desk and I never did find out what the difference between purple and orange bands were...although it could be that the orange are the ocean front rooms...not sure. We were told where the restaurants were but they didn't tell us that we needed to make a reservation. It was about 1:30 and we were hungry so we went right to the buffet. We were very happy with the food there, especially when compared to the Krystal. Beer was cold and they had both Sol and Dos Equis depending on where you went. After our lunch we walked down the beach and out to the pier. Soon enough it was time to go to our room. We were in room 3132 on the first floor of the Ek Balam building out back behind the pool. The room was clean and comfortable (pillow top mattress) and we were happy to have a patio with our own palapa and lounge chairs and thrilled we didn't need to go up and down stairs to get to our room. We decided not to ask for an upgrade the next day because we were very content with what we had and would rather not move. We planned on visiting the Tulum Ruins, Playa del Carmen, and Xel-ha so we didn't exactly plan on being at the resort enough to fully take advantage of the Grand perks anyways. Our room was always well cleaned and we did have a towel animal one day in our room. Be careful getting in and out of the shower since the tub it very high. I stubbed my toe the first time I got out :( We had two or three bottles of water each day and plenty of towels. There is a small fridge in the room but it is not stocked with anything. That didn't bother us though because we were happy to have someplace to keep our bottled water cold! Also note that there isn't room service, but we don't usually take advantage of that anyway so it wasn't a concern. One of our biggest concerns from reading reviews on trip advisor was the safe issue. Before we even arrived my husband and I decided that we wouldn't pay extra for the safe since we had heard of so many people saying they had items stolen from it. We opted to lock our valuables in one of our suitcases instead and we never had a problem. We never had any staff members knock on our door or enter unannounced as some others mentioned. The walls are very thing...we could hear the girl next door singing one night and it sounded like she was in our room it was so loud! For the most part our neighbors were quiet and respectful so it wasn't a problem. The AC worked a little too well...we were almost always too cold in our room! Better than being too hot though :) We turned off the AC all together at some points or would open the sliding door to try to warm the room up a bit. Yes, there are lots of cats around the property. They were harmless but we found them sleeping on lounge chairs on peoples patios. If you're allergic to cats this might be something to consider.
Beach, Towels, Chairs, Pools:
After checking into our room we went to sit on the beach for a bit and had no problem getting two chairs under a palapa and it was about 3:30pm. I noticed that there were plenty of towels so even though we weren't swimming and didn't need them we took two just incase we couldn't get one later on. If you are worried about towels I would strongly suggest just picking them up day before you plan on using them. Every time we were at the beach in the afternoon there were plenty of towels, but in the mornings it was hit or miss. We only attempted to go to the beach "early" (around 9 rather than after lunch) and it's true that there weren't any chairs or towels on that one occasion. Instead of finding a spot in the sand we decided to walk south a little ways and collected sea glass on a quiet part of the beach just before the GBP's palapas. There is a really great spot there and we collected lots and lots of sea glass through out our trip. We were always able to get beach chairs under a palapa after about 12:30. I think that there were plenty of chairs given the space on the beach and if there were any more chairs than they already had, there wouldn't be any sandy spots left. The beach is stunning and the snorkeling was fantastic. Lots of beautiful fish just a few feet into the water. There's a shallow pool on the beach as well. The service at the beach bar was great but there isn't drink service on the beach itself so you need to go up and get your own drinks. The main pool looked nice but we never used it because we would rather be at the beach. I think they could have used a few more beach chairs by the pool. We saw water aerobics, salsa lessons, and yoga going on in the pool area. There were two swim up bars, one with a sushi bar, and the Happy Chicken for lunch.
Food:
For dinner on the first night we attempted to go to the Mexican restaurant, Sarape, but we asked for a ticket and then told that we needed to make reservations between 9am-5pm at the Oasis Plus desk in the lobby. Rebecca at the desk was very friendly and helpful. We also made reservations for Dos Lunas for our last night and she remembered us and asked how our dinner at Sarape was. The Mexican bread soup at Sarape was delicious and my husband and I both enjoyed our fajitas at Sarape. The mariachi band was a nice touch too. Service was decent but nothing spectacular. Dos Lunas was good too but I am pretty picky and just got pizza. I found both restaurants to have very limited menus and I was a bit disappointed with the choices although the food was good and it was nice to have dinner in a different atmosphere. As I mentioned before, we were very happy with the food at the buffet. The breakfast buffet was great and we never had to wait to get a table but on a few occasions the service was a little slow. Someone walked past our table 4 times and never came to offer us coffee. This problem might have been resolved by just having a coffee station at the buffet rather than having to rely on a server to come and bring it to us. A few times we had to wait to be seated for dinner. The buffet opens at 6:30 for dinner so when we arrived at 6:45 one day all of the tables were taken and we had to wait until about 7:15 to be seated. More tables or an earlier dinner start time might have alleviated the problem. Once we figured this out, we just adjusted our dinner time and it wasn't a bit deal.
Entertainment, Staff, and Shopping:
We attended three shows in the theater and we very pleased with all three. The Circus show was our favorite. The male acrobats were unbelievable!!! We also enjoyed the dancing around the world show...which was really more of a fire dancing show. Their tricks were amazing. The lights show was fun too. The entertainment staff around the resort were really friendly. Always with a smile and encouraging people to participate but with no pressure. As mentioned before we saw water aerobics, yoga, and dance lessons along with beach volleyball and minigolf. All staff that we encountered were incredibly friendly and accommodating. We didn't feel like there were any language barriers and we don't speak much Spanish. Every time we passed a staff member they always greeted us with a smile. The store at Oasis Tulum is teeny tiny. We had already done lots of shopping in Cancun and did a bit more at Playa del Carmen on a day trip so we didn't feel the need to shop at the hotel. They do have vendors outside between the store and the buffet and we found it to be a little annoying to have to tell people no thank you as we were trying to get from our room to the beach or to eat. However, on our last day there were more vendors than usual and we found a man named Arthur painting on tiles. His paintings caught our eye and we were very interested in them but figured they'd be out of our budget since it was the end of our trip and we were almost out of cash. We stayed and watched him for a while. He started painting and talking to us and before we knew it he had finished a beautiful night scene of Chichen Itza. He also had paintings of villages and beaches. He told us that his tiles were $25-$30 depending on how much detail/time he put into it. He said that he doesn't have a shop, he just goes around to resorts and paints and sells his paintings. He also said that he could paint a customized picture with whatever we wanted in it. We were able to watch him as he painted and add details as he went along. He painted us a picture of a sunrise over a beach with a palapa, snorkeling gear, and an iguana. It's absolutely stunning and such an amazing souvenier. He drew quite the crowd and although we were his first personalized painting of the night, I'm guessing he had a long line of others waiting to have their own paintings done. He was amazing and incredibly friendly. Believe it or not, this ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. Even if you just stay and watch him paint for a bit, you will be thoroughly entertained.
Location:
We absolutely loved the location of the Oasis Tulum resort! We could easily catch a colectivo across the street and get anywhere we wanted. There's so much to do in the area that we didn't have enough time to go everywhere we wanted. The colectivo to Tulum Ruins and Playa del Carmen was 30 pesos and the trip to Xel-ha was 25 pesos. Playa was the longest ride and took about 35 minutes.
Overall we had a lovely time at Oasis Tulum and would definitely return again. Given the awesome deal that we got we felt that it was an excellent value for our money. No, it's not a luxury hotel and it's true that unless you are grand, you only have access to two restaurants and the buffet. For our trip it met our needs just fine and we didn't miss having access to the roof top bar or extra restaurants. We actually had a bit of fun making a joke about how we were at the bottom of the ladder. I didn't feel like we were treated any differently because of the color of our band. As long as you have realistic expectations for the resort and you go into it with an open mind you will have a wonderful vacation. I hope this is helpful and you enjoy your stay as much as we did!

We recently just got back from a two week stay at this resort, from February 4th thru to Feb 14th 2013. We were worried about all the negitive reviews we read on this site from other travellers about maybe making a mistake about going here. My wife and I were pleasantly pleased. this resort is fine depending on what type of vacation you enjoy. If your someone who loves the nightlife and partying then you will probably be disappointed.

This is a small resort, nothing like the Bahia Principe properties next door (coba,tulum,ackumel etc) where the property is so huge you need to take shuttles to get around or have very long walks. A two minute walk will get you everywhere from your room to the lobby, to the bars to the buffet and ocean. I will try to make comments about each area. We have stayed in Mexico several times and have stayed at differant resorts so I feel we can give an hones assessment.

Check-in- This resort is about 1 1/2 hrs away from the Cancun airport. Depending on traffic it could be quicker and also depends on how many stops they have to make dropping people off at other resorts along the way. Myself I don't mind the stops as I am curious about what other resorts look like. The check-in was fine with no problems. We arrived early so were told we have about an hour wait for our rooms, they gave us the arm bands so we went to the bar for drinks while waiting. As promised the room was ready on time.

Rooms- The room was not large but large enough that we were not disappointed. Bathroom was large. Some rooms had king beds, some queen some two doubles. Beside the bed there was a small table with two chairs and either a patio (grnd floor) or balcony (2nd or 3rd floor) There are no elevators so there are stairs to climb if on the 2nd or 3rd floor. Rooms are clean and decorated nicely with a large closet and large dresser. Safe is in the closet. Rooms are cleaned and beds made daily, like other resorts they make the towel animals most of the time.

Pools- There is two pools one being seperated from the other with a wall and waterfall. There is a pool bar with stools in each section. You can't see the ocean from the pool. We had no problems with this area and spent most of out time in this area. One problem as compared to other resorts is depending on what you drink somedays they have it some days they don't. For example I like Bacardi rum, some days they had barcardi other days they had rum but the mexican brand. Some days they had clamato for ceasers and some days they ran out and had no clamato. It was no big deal for me but some might find it a negitive. There are lounge chairs and several posts with the straw tops for shade. You will read from others that there are not enough chairs at the pools and the ocean. We did put towels on our chairs to reserve them around 7 in the morning on our way to coffee and breakfast. If you are one to sleep in then I suppose you might find trouble finding a lounge chair or have to move some, but this is typical of ALL resorts. I have stayed at 6 star resorts and the problem is the same. No resort has enough chairs to accomodate every single person at one time. Same for the Ocean, it's a beautiful beach with chairs, but if most of the resort decide to head there for sitting, unless you get there early or reserve with towels you won't get a lounger.

Food- Like other all-inclusives they have a buffet for breakfast,lunch and dinner. It's not a huge room but again it's not a huge resort. Depending on when you go you may have to wait 5 or 10 minutes for a table. But I have had to wait for a table going to the Keg or Red Lobster etc here at home so this was no big deal. The food was very good, always had pork,beef,chicken and fish every night. The ladies loved the salad bar and the deserts were very good. For breakfast they had an omelette station where they make them fresh in front of you, or you could have scrambled eggs,pancakes,waffels etc.

By the pool they had a sit down snack place called the Happy chicken. There you can sit in your bathing suit and have hamburgs,hotdogs,chicken wings, fries,coleslaw etc. It is made fresh for you, not made an hour before hand where it gets cold and the flies are all over it. Went here daily. The chicken wings and hamburgers were excellant.

There is two a-la-carte restaurants where you reserve in the lobby the morning of when you wish to go. They have a mexican and Italian restaurant. My preferance was the Italian but the Mexican wasn't bad. If you still happen to be hungry after the sit down meal there you can always walk down the hall to the buffet and eat more. Beleive me you won't go to bed hungry.

SportsBar- You can walk or there is a shuttle that will take you to the sports bar as it's about a 5 minute walk up the road. It's probably the best kept secret here as many I talked too didn't know they had such a place. It is a large modern building with several TV's and one very large screen TV all inside. Normally at night they show an NHL hockey game. You can sit and get waited on for drinks and snacks. The snack bar is called Whimpy's which again makes the food to order so nice and hot when you get it. They have nachoes,burgers,fries, clubhouses etc. All very good. Outside there is more tables to drink or eat as well as a nice pool with loungers to sit and relax. You can actually have a good time just staying here all day and drink,eat and swim. There is also a large area outside where every night they show a movie. This is the nicest sports bar by far from any resort we have ever stayed at.

Now some things they can improve on. They could use one more bathroom. The walk isn't far to get to one but would be more convenient if they had one more as the ones they have are not large. Often there is a few women waiting to use the bathroom.
There is not enough tables at the bar areas for people to sit and have a cocktail. This is especially a concern at night. I would suggest they take away the mexican restaurant and make it into a lounge with tables and entertainment. (band at night like some other resorts I have stayed at and enjoy at night) They have a mexican mariachi every night but it seems like they know 6 songs and you hear the same six every night.

This is a resort to relax at. If you are into the nightlife this resort isn't for you, There is a theate where the animation crew do shows every night. I can't comment on them as we didn't go to any. I have stayed at enough resorts and have seen them so many times that I didn't need to see any more lol.

Some people from other reviews complained that the resort next door (Oasis Grand) actually attached the the tulum in one area has more privaledges, which they do. The room top bar for example is for them only. You get what you pay for. If you want those rooms and those privaledges then go to the front desk and pay for an upgrade. Those people paid more then the Tulum people so should get something "extra" for the added expense. My opinion is it's not worth it as they eat in the same buffet as we did, and they would often come and use our pools.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to email me.