If you are in the hospitality business, your business should centre on your guests. The “dream” in Rio Bec Dreams is that the guests will conform to the owners needs, rather than the other way around! The business seems to centre around the owner’s needs, rather than the needs of the guests.
There were some things I liked about my stay, but other things that made me sorry I stayed there at all.
THE GOOD: Great food, and great social environment. Before eating the great food, you can hang out at the bar and meet other guests. As this area is not frequented by your regular tourists, meeting other guests is a good and fun thing.
THE BAD: On their website, they say that they are in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, that they own 50 hectares of jungle, and that you get to stay in “jungalows”. All this is true, but it is misleading.
The actual accommodation is in a sort of garden which is nothing like a jungle, although it does have trees (one species only) that do grow in the jungle.
The rooms are very close to the highway. I fell asleep to the sound of trucks passing by, and woke up with the feeling that I had heard trucks passing by all night – not constantly, but enough to disturb my sleep.
Ultimately, I pay for a good night’s sleep. I woke up feeling tired and not entirely relaxed.
Rick is hospitable, and Diane pretends to be. But at dinner she will say something like “no one wants to eat breakfast before 8:30, do they. Anyhow, I won’t be up by then”. This attitude is not hospitable, it is not compatible with running a hotel and restaurant. I was unimpressed. The toilet block has the faint smell of sewage. Not nice. The jungalows are OK, but I’d not want to be in one in a driving rain storm. They have screens, but no windows you can close.
When I arrived, Diane asked me why I had not made a reservation. When I told her I had in fact sent an email she told me she had been too busy to respond to emails lately! She has another business on the side, and guests are supposed to accept that as an excuse for bad service. I met another couple who had sent numerous emails and left phone messages that were not returned, so this was not an isolated incident. (They stayed else where).
I ordered a packed lunch. I must say, it was nicely packaged and presented, including a frozen water bottle to keep it fresh. It was tasty. However, it did not meet my requirements: it was not filling. It was not what we had discussed the night before. It was Diane’s idea of what it should be, not what I wanted.
I had wanted to stay at another place for a different experience (a real jungle camp about 50km away). I made the mistake of telling them this the night before. By neglect or by intent, they wasted my whole morning with slow service. Because of this alone, I am tempted to give them the lowest rating, but that would be unfair – the hotel does have positive points as I have mentioned.
They say they give lots of information. This is true to some extent, but the tour they suggest for Calakmul is silly – they suggest you go around the park in the opposite direction to what the park suggests. There is no advantage to this. It is just confusing because the maps and arrows in the park are designed to go the other way around.
In summary: I recommend eating dinner there (the food is great, show up early for a drink and meet some of the guests). I do not recommend their packed lunch although it might work for some. I honestly think there are better places to spend the night, and can’t recommend that you stay here.