we spent the weekend there and find or central place, clean, simple but tastefully. the price is right and the people very friendly and helpful

We stayed 4 nights at playa del karma and it was great to be away from the noises of the main street, but close enough to walk to it if we wanted. Restaurants and shops a few streets away. Our room was clean and beautifully decorated when we checked in, no tv, but you dont need it with so much to do in PDC. Great value, great price we will reccomend! Ps the pool is very cute.. But you have the caribbean sea a few block away so no need to
Swim in it! :-)

We booked this hotel for 2 nights based on excellent reviews on TripAdvisor but were quite disappointed. The hotel was pretty cheap and seemed in a fairly good location (on 10th Avenue, only 2 roads back from the beach) so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised that the room facilities were pretty basic. No TV, no iron, no kettle, no breakfast, awful tacky bathroom with missing lights, a rickety noisy old air-con (which at least worked, thank god), an air of mustiness and a tiny "pool" that was more a breeding ground for the mosquitoes infesting our room. On the positive side, the staff seemed fairly friendly, and at least it gave us an excuse to avoid going back to the room, and spending more time relaxing on the beach! Sadly, would not stay here again. (PS. Tip for visitors to Playa del Carmen: The acrobatic and cabaret show at Coco Bongo club around the corner is awesome and well worth the 55 dollars - go see it!)

It's taken me a while to write this review, only because it ruins my mood to remember our time at this hotel. I will try to keep it as short as possible... let's just say, we learned some spanish while staying at Playa del Karma. Beechus (bugs), in our kama (bed), and Manchas (stains) on our Sabanas (sheets)!

We stayed here towards the end of Dec. Peak season in PDC so most hotels were fully booked. As it was our first time in Mexico, we shrugged off the initial bites on day one, assuming they were from the pesky mosquitoes. But by midnight on Day 2, we realized we were literally being bitten alive by tiny bugs in our bed. Realizing we hadn't been bitten once during the day, but only at night, we inspected the sheets and discovered tiny bugs at the bottom of the mattress (which had a rip in it). After alerting the front desk the next morning, we were promised a new mattress and that things would get better. We decided to hope for the best and tried to enjoy the rest of our stay. Day 3 - with much trepidation, we head to bed. For a honeymooning couple, it's sad that the bed was the last place we wanted to be!! By 4am we were itching and scratching our poor ankles again, and this time we decided to take pictures of everything. From the ant nests on the walls, in the bathrooms and the bedroom, to the little white ants crawling all over the sink and the bedside tables!! We inspected the mattress, and as we had suspected, they hadn't changed it as promised, but simply flipped it so we would think it was a new one. The rip was still there. By day 4 - we were getting desperate. The Manager was never seen or heard from. We were promised another room, if/when it would become available. FINALLY we got one. A much nicer one, with no beechus. But this time, I had to inspect the sheets as we had become experts after reading bed bug forums on my hubby's iPhone at 5am!! *Yikes* tiny blood stains - indication of tiny bugs that have died there. Pulled the covers back further - and there was a MASSIVE yellow stain. I could keep going on and on, but finally we got the sheets changed and had our FIRST full night's rest.

Luckily, the days were super and PDC did not disappoint in any other way. We were also able to find another hotel closeby (Mosquito Beach - ironic?) that we fell in love with and were able to book a last minute room on Expedia for the remainder of our stay.

Looking back, all would have been well if we hadn't gotten Room 14! The hotel itself is in an awesome location. Close to Avenue 5 + local haunts and activities. It's been done really nicely, with lots of palm trees and greenery. There's a little pool, full of bugs floating in it, which adds more ambiance than encouragement to swim! Luckily they have free passes to use Mamitas, which we thought was fantastic (despite having to fight for beach chairs and umbrellas if you get down there past 10am) until we tried the Mosquito Beach club! Little did we know such luxury could exist just a block down the beach!!! *sigh* My mistake for booking a more rustic hotel, rather than a luxury one for our honeymoon.

Everything would have been fine, had the Management actually been around to handle things. Poor Mario did his best. But it just wasn't good enough. The lady Manager was extremely rude and refused to believe us, until we showed her our documented proof in photos and videos we had taken over the past 4 days of hell. Despite all this, she took no responsibility and never apologized for ruining our vacation. Just barked at us asking - "well what do you want?" - like a discount could make things better. I was sad to have to leave on a sour note. We refused to pay for the nights we were in Rm 14 and luckily we had not prepaid on our first day because their credit card machine had been down. There;s no way she would have ever refunded us our money!! Believe me, this is shorter than everything else I would like to add, but I hope no one goes through what we did. It seems like all the other rooms were fine. Just make sure you don't prepay until you've seen the room & checked the sheets. Good Luck!