"Inconsistent" is the best way to describe Secrets Moxche. Everything is a coin flip. Will they beautifully clean your room, or toss the pillows in a heap on the couch? Will the food at the same restaurant be delicious and mouthwatering, or under-seasoned and poorly prepared? Will they go above and beyond to help, or will they shrug and say "I don't know" and walk away to something as simple as asking what time it is. The whole trip was a whiplash of good and bad experiences, I've never been to a more inconsistent resort in my life.
I have thoughts on the good, the bad, and the base structural issues.
The good:
-The pools, especially the main "grotto" in the middle, are excellent. Beautifully made, well kept, great temperature. The Preferred club on the 9th floor has a gorgeous view with an infinity pool. The attached bars are quick and heavy with the pour. The attendants (when they're there - weird scheduling) are quick to help.
-The "not fancy" food, IE their Preferred club breakfast, the lunch places, taco stand, etc was generally very tasty and satisfying
The bad (other than the inconsistency mentioned above):
-Dinner at both their French and Italian places were super underwhelming. Except for a great pea/lemon spaghetti, everything felt bland, generically made, poorly prepared. Ambiance is fine, but they don't have the food down for a nicer dinner.
-They don't air condition a lot of the indoor areas either at all, or enough. It's weird to step out of your cool room into a 90 degree hallway
-You need to ask for everything physical. Key card? Need to download an app, they don't mention a physical key is an option unless you ask. Menus? QR codes for most places, again unless you think ask for a physical copy. It would be one thing if they offered both options, but no, they imply everything must be done on your phone
-Related, there's a second app you have to download at check in to do any reservation, see times, etc. They don't give you a map or an overview of the property, they just say "there's a map in the app", but the app is a real 5/10.
-Small thing, but one day there was no staff other than lifeguard at the large pool for the full first hour? It was weird seeing each group (in addition to us) awkwardly look around, see no one to help, then try setting up the very heavy and often times duck taped together / partially cracked umbrellas.
-Bizarre policies that are super frustrating.
A) I checked in advance to book the French restaurant for my wife's birthday, the first day of the trip. They said I couldn't book anything until I got there. So then we get there, and the moment I'm allowed to I try booking it. No reservations available that night. I talked to the staff and explained the situation, we're literally here celebrating her birthday, and they said "sorry, there's nothing we can do" and advised we eat at other restaurants with spots still available.
B) We left our lockbox open on accident when we left the room, and the cleaning staff apparently has to close and LOCK the safe, and call front desk for the code. So we do, and they say "well actually we just have to send someone in there to unlock it". So then we have to wait 20 minutes for a staff to come in and unlock the safe, that we didn't want to be locked! It's security theater. If staff already had access to our jewelry / cash, then locking it after they're done cleaning does absolutely nothing for the safety of our belongings, the "risky" part already happened.
Systemic: Fundamentally, this place is the definition of "looks nice, made cheap"
-Lots of little things are just broken everywhere. Not "won't work" broken, but it just feels like no one is going around and really maintaining this place, it's just a policy of "only fix it if we absolutely have to".
-Tiny elevators, not air conditioned, with flaking or improperly applied wood paneling, and some buttons not responsive. There's minimal staff elevators, so literally 1/3 of my elevator rides were with some cleaning cart taking up 70% of the space (again, SMALL elevators). Why would you make a luxury resort with such tiny elevators, especially if you're intending for cleaning carts to use them constantly?
-The Hyatt app they force you to download is just not very helpful. Inconsistently shows hours of operation of areas, kicks you out once a day on average, doesn't let you sort restaurants by "open now" or by time of day meals, etc. Just really would have loved a single piece of paper with a property map on one side, and hours of operation of everything on the other side.
-It seems like their staff hospitality training is very minimal? Not saying people weren't nice, they all were, but a lot of the staff members didn't know basic info about the hotel, didn't refer us to someone who could help when they didn't know, didn't close the loop on communication, etc. It just felt like a real game of chance on whether we would get a super capable staff member or one who felt like a new hire.
-This is fully subjective, but we really did not like the very aesthetic of the hotel proper (again, pool areas great). It's big and black and sun-sucking, it feels like they wanted to look fancy more than they wanted to be relaxing / peaceful. There is so much big black tile and dark woods and low light bathrooms everywhere, it just doesn't make you feel relaxed, it feels outright foreboding.
So with all the downsides, why is this a 3/5? Because the pools, drinks, and non dinner foods were all very nice, and that's a huge part of a resort vacation. So we got the core part of what we wanted in a trip, but all the other nice things about going to a resort were lacking. Didn't hate it, but absolutely would not go back, for this kind of price you can do better.
