We've just finished our week at the Oasis Sens so I'll offer some comments to prospective visitors.
Overall we were delighted with our vacation and would repeat the experience in a heartbeat. Service was friendly and efficient. The staff were welcoming and very willing to please.
The beach was amazing - lots of sand, no rocks, bar service every few minutes and plenty of loungers. The hotel was clean and the housekeeping faultless. Not specific to the Sens, I would take all of the Cancun hotel star ratings with a pinch of salt. If it claims five, figure on about three and a half.
We arrived by way of an "upgrade" from the Grand Oasis. We considered it more of a lateral move: the Sens is smaller, more adult oriented and quieter perhaps but we felt was a tad behind the Grand in terms of dining choice and food quality. The basic room at the Sens was certainly better and didn't suffer from zero soundproofing between adjacent rooms.
The room furnishings were a bit sparse and the main room light comprised a wavy neon tube mounted behind the bed. The default setting seemed to be to have the lamp strobe on and off which got old fast, but a judicious press of the pause button on the high-tech control panel allows you to stop the action with the lamp on (or less usefully, off). A glitter ball was not provided. The funky lighting approach extended to the common areas at night with the Sunset bar being notably subdued. I believe that a Jazz trio was playing there but I unfortunately left my night vision goggles back at home so I couldn’t confirm.
They don’t seem to stock the room fridge with water/beer until after they make up the room on the second day. OK, but strange.
The AC unit even on low sounded like a Harrier jump jet at take-off and this masked noise from neighboring rooms effectively. It seemed like a second hidden thermostat didn't allow an ambient temperature below 21C to be achieved, which was OK at this time of year. Bedding was correspondingly light. The bed was 'hard' by my assessment, and I would have liked something softer to recover from the effects of the sun loungers.
The outdoor party games have very sensibly been consigned to the pool on the Lagoon side of the property. That's good as the energetic Spanglish-speaking host with the public address system thus can't be heard on the beach side of the hotel. If your room faces that area then you may get sound intrusion until 5pm when they pull the plug on the PA system.
Internet WiFi coverage was good. Figure on $15 a day for service. PC workstations were also available for rent at $15/hour also. Access and throughput were good I thought by Mexican standards. Note that the users of the access point are not firewalled from eachother, so make sure that you have your OS's firewall turned on.
We never go to Mexico for a gastronomic experience anyway so our food expectations are set accordingly. Breakfast buffet was however excellent and for lunch we were happy with a snack from the burger or rotisserie chicken joints. In the evening the choice is a bit limited. The buffets didn't appeal to us as we were eating at 8.30pm by which time some of the offerings seemed beyond their prime. Although getting something cooked to order at one of the buffet cook stations resulted in a simple but tasty dish. Most evenings we eat in the Italian restaurant which offers table service with self-serve appetizer and dessert.
If you're an adventurous eater, try the Gourmet dinner that you can booked ahead of time. It seemed fully booked for 5 days ahead so if your stay is 4 nights or less then you may be SOL... Definitely worth getting a reservation if you can.
The all inclusive deal that we were one included standard mid-range spirits (so Beefeater Gin and Bacardi Rum yes, but Bombay Sapphire no) but not much in the way of digestifs or liqueurs. We didn't feel that there was any holding back on the supply of beverages in a volume sense.
In the event that I were made King, here's what I would change at the Sens
1. Kill the music on the beach. It's supposed [I think] to be a tranquil adult resort. I don't need Mexican Techno at high volume to drown out the sound of the waves that I've paid $$$ to experience. Figure that we can afford our own mp3 player if want to listen to some toe-tappin' tunes while on the sand.
2. Have a smoking policy. Or better, a no-smoking policy. Leaving aside the health issues for your employees, I think that it's unacceptable that you can't sit in the hotel lobby in the evening without having to smoke passively someone else's cigarettes. Also I'd like to be able to eat my dinner on the terrace without someone else's ash blowing into my food. I appreciate that this may be the Mexican way, but if you want to appeal to North American clientele then you need to get in line with the other hotels that we've stayed at in Cancun and respect people's right enjoy to clean air.
3. Have whoever is responsible for procuring the sun loungers lie on one for a day. They'll beg for mercy after an hour.
4. Have whoever selects the house wine actually drink a glass of it. It seemed strange that I could drink Beefeater branded Gin all day/night if I wanted, but one glass of red wine with dinner that wasn't mixed with two parts paint stripper was off limits.
5. Decide if this is an all inclusive hotel or not. To me it seems that if you list the hotel as all inclusive then half the employees shouldn't be putting out a jar for tips. We do tip at hotels such as this and would/will do so anyway. At least in our case having the tips bowls everywhere just cheapens the experience, without changing behavior.
I got the impression from the employees that the Sens is a bit work in progress within the Oasis group and the positioning may change as the season progresses. I hope that they can move towards slightly more custom food prep in the evening which would I think add to the experience and might become a key benefit of this smaller more intimate hotel.
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