My husband and I took a last-minute trip to Tulum for our one-year anniversary in mid-November. Since we booked so last minute, we were glad to find a room at Casa Violeta, and although it wasn’t beach-front, for the price we were happy to get a room at all.
We arrived late at night and were shown directly to our room. Since the power is only on during certain hours, we were shown where the candles were in the room. Our room Iris, like all the bungalows, is a stand-alone cement building with cement floors and a palapa roof. The décor is rustic but attractive, with nice candles, wall decorations, and my husband’s favorite, the “romantic mosquito netting” (which really is kind of romantic). The bed was extremely firm, which is par for the course in Mexico, although I’m not sure if our bed was different than the beds in the other rooms, since other reviewers raved about their beds. We went straight to sleep.
The next morning we were awakened early by the sunlight streaming into our bungalow. There are four dormers in the roof which have screens to keep out birds and bugs, but the sunlight fills the whole room starting at 6:00am. Shortly after that, several men started doing construction directly outside our room, which sounded like it was inside our room. We checked it out and found out that they have a workshop right there outside our room, where they were fixing beach chairs.
The room rate includes a continental breakfast, which is served in the picturesque restaurant with a spectacular view of the beach. The breakfast was pretty light, but on the third day we discovered that you could order a la carte items in addition to the free cereal, bread, and fruit.
One of the great things about Casa Violeta is that is has a gorgeous beach, and that each bungalow has its own lounge chairs, umbrella and table, so you always have your place reserved for you. The lounge chairs were really nice compared to the other hotels along that strip of beach – they were stained wood with tan-colored fabric cushions. The beach is Tulum always feels deserted, which is exactly what we were looking for. The water is crystal clear and very calm. You can walk out quite a ways into the water before it gets deep.
We ordered some lunch from the restaurant. The restaurant is lovely but definitely underused – at no point during our entire stay did anyone from the restaurant ever approach us on the beach to offer us drinks or food. We had to go into the restaurant to order the food, which they brought out to us on the beach (it’s like 30 feet away). Once the food arrived, they never came back to check on us, clear the plates or get us refills.
Even though we did not come to Tulum to spend a lot of time in the room, it became apparent that even if we wanted to spend time in the room we really couldn’t. The natural sunlight wasn’t enough to read by, and the candles and light bulbs were also insufficient for the job. My main complaint with the room however was the showerhead. It was about eight feet off the ground, completely calcified and with little pressure. I understand that we’re in an eco-resort with little water pressure, but there’s no excuse for not buying a $5 showerhead so the little water there is sprays in a straight line and not all over the shower. Also the hot water took a full 10 minutes each day to reach our bungalow, which didn’t seem very eco-friendly to me to have the water running that long before even getting in. I couldn’t really get clean until I got back home. If I were paying $50 a night for an eco-cabaña then I wouldn’t have cause for complaint. But at $140 a night with no ocean view I was expecting more.
One more thing that the hotel could do to really improve my perception is to offer the guests flashlights for their use during their stay. We brought our own and thank goodness because getting from the car to the room after the power has gone out would be very difficult without any illumination whatsoever.
The check-out process was, shall we say, computerless, which doesn’t mean fast. We were shown to the tiny and obviously unused office where we waited for the appropriate person to come and dig through a mountain of paper receipts to figure out how much we had paid on PayPal and what our restaurant receipts were (one of which was never found), then using a calculator tabbed up how much we owed. Luckily they took a credit card.
Overall the hotel was cute and comfortable, but there are a lot of rough edges. I feel that for the price we paid I was expecting more, namely a functioning shower and decent service. For a lower price I wouldn’t have been complaining but I feel that for the price we paid, the value was not really there at Casa Violeta. We will definitely return to Tulum, which is gorgeous and peaceful, but will try somewhere else.
PROS:
* Gorgeous beach with lovely beach chairs and umbrella
* Beautiful restaurant with tasty food
* Laid-back beach bum vibe
CONS:
* Shower was practically unusable
* The sun disappears off the beach at 3:30 and the lights go out at 10:00, between those times there is nothing to do on-property.
* Construction workers right outside room every morning
* No illumination whatsoever (even for safety) along walkways after 10:00pm
* Price is high for what you get
Room Tip: Get an ocean view room.
See more room tips
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
