Hotel Riu Latino - Stout Magical Vacations

Hotel Riu Latino in Cancun, Mexico

Hotel Riu Latino is an adults-only all-inclusive resort that opened in October of 2022. It’s pretty standard as far as all-inclusives go. There are many places to eat, drink, swim, and it’s near the beach (it’s “on” the beach, but set back, so a little bit of a walk compared to others I’ve stayed at). The water isn’t safe to drink, so they provide bottles of water in your room for drinking and brushing teeth.

The following is a tips-and-tricks review based on my five-night visit in October of 2023.

Arrival at Cancun Airport

If you are a group of adults and are U.S. citizens. When you enter the immigration area, go all the way to the left. This is usually a MUCH shorter line. One by one, you scan your passport, go into these little pods, and it scans your face. Then the doors open and you’re ready to go! You do need an e-passport, which will have a little icon on the front that looks like a rectangle with a circle in the middle. The United States started issuing e-passports in 2006, so yours is almost certainly one.
Just before you exit the pod, it will print a paper ticket. This has instructions for paying the tourist tax. It says they will ask for proof you’ve paid it before leaving Mexico, but many people (including myself) have never been asked for proof. But you know, don’t break the law in a foreign country so you should probably pay it when you have some downtime.
After you have gone through immigration, there will be a hallway with many rental car agencies, tour operators, and people trying to sell you things. They rent space from the airport to do this. Some of them are trying to sell timeshares and some are trying to trick you by asking what transfer you’re looking for. When you tell them, they’ll say “OH they called me and said they wouldn’t be able to pick you up and I should get you instead.” Do not fall for this! Walk straight through this area. If you’ve already booked a transfer, the transfer will be waiting for you outside. There are legitimate people here who will help you find your transfer as it is extremely crowded. The Riu transfer was way at the back.

Hotel

We arrived about noon, so of course we weren’t expecting our room to be ready yet. There is a bell services where we could leave our bags, but it was just a big cluster of bags sitting next to where people are arriving and departing. The lobby is open-air, and when the sun is at a certain angle, some of the bags are in the sun. They do have an attendant, but obviously if he’s helping someone else then he can’t really watch the bags that are just…sitting there in the open, and I didn’t want my makeup to melt, so we chose not to leave our bags with them.
We stayed in an oceanfront room (link takes you to a video with your view – stunning). Everything was perfectly clean and beds were comfortable. Everywhere in the resort was clean, beautifully landscaped. Also want to throw out that we felt perfectly safe the entire time we were here (I know this can be a big concern for people visiting Mexico, but it was NEVER a concern while we were there).
A huge perk of this resort for us was that the ENTIRE place is adults only. Many of these resorts are split, where there’s a family side and an adults side. The adults side tends to have more space in the pools, so you get entitled parents bringing their kids onto that side, so then YOU have to be the jerk and complain to a staff member to make them leave. Obviously that is not an issue at Riu Latino.
BRING BUG SPRAY. Even compared to other resorts in Cancun, this place is overrun with mosquitos in the evening and early morning. The Steakhouse is entirely outside. Mosquitos were so bad that we got up in the middle of dinner and left.
This resort does have swim-out rooms, but very few of them. Book early early early if you want one or be flexible with your dates. You can see them in the resort map against the building on the left side. They have dividers between them, so they are not connected. But they also are very visible to everyone walking by, so they are not at all private.
The rooms all have mini fridges which are stocked with some kind of alcohol, some mixers, and they also have four full-size bottles of alcohol set up as dispensers in your room! And yes, they actually work, not just for show! What is stocked in your fridge seems to change occasionally, but usually includes Dos Equis, club soda, and tonic water.
Bring earplugs. When they play music on the stage, it can be LOUD and it goes late into the night. This only happened one night during our visit….but it was a late night.

Pools

There are five pools to choose from, plus the water park
All of the slides in the water park are fully enclosed (I’m not shooting down an enclosed dark space with water!) but others in our group tried them and liked them. We never saw a line here. The water park is not open on Mondays.
The main pool in the middle was usually busy and this is where events like the Foam party happen. There’s also a bar here. Check out that link for a video of Pikachu twerking and grinding on a guy at the beginning of the foam party.
We spent most of our time by the pool on the left side with the swim-up bar. Tends to not get too crowded until early afternoon. Lots of places to sit in the pool and surfaces to set your drink on. The other side of the swim-up bar is a normal bar with covered seating area and there are bathrooms right here. I have a tiny bladder, so I spent ALL my pool time here!
The pool just behind it (so closer to the hotel) usually had a volley ball net set up and is designed for sports, not relaxing with a drink. So this one tended to be empty. These two pools share the same deck and we never had trouble finding a place to sit. Lots of shade, too.

Food

This was the one area we were disappointed in.

There’s a main buffet, where you can get breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The food here was….usually edible. I specify “usually” because someone in our group opened a pack of crackers and bugs came crawling out (disclaimer that I didn’t see this personally, but several in our group did). The hamburgers were clearly frozen and re-heated in hot water. You can find something to keep you alive, but I just ate enough here to get me to my next meal.
Pepe’s Food is the other lunch option, which is closer to the pools. It’s a “grill”, and while I’m certain they’re serving the same “grilled” items that are in the buffet, they DO seem to actually throw them on a grill to heat them up here. So the burgers at least had some flavor.
For dinner, they open multiple restaurants that are all clustered together near the buffet. They have limited seating and do not take reservations. Because we were here for a wedding with multiple dinner events, we only tried two of them. Steakhouse and Geisha, both of which were quite good!
Just off the lobby is a 24/7 sports bar, which has some microwavable foods (the photo at the beginning of this section) for when you wake up at 2 AM and need a snack. Hint: The sports bar has a coffee machine! They’ll make you a great espresso or chocolate martini if the lobby bar, Velvet, is closed or too busy.
NO ROOM SERVICE. This was probably our biggest disappointment. On our arrival day, both of us got splitting headaches about dinner time. There was no room service, so we just had sleep for dinner.

Weddings

This hotel hosts weddings. We were visiting for one, which was meant to be on the beach. We had perfect weather the entire trip except the ~2 hour period right around when the wedding was supposed to happen. Of course. It threatened to rain, so we were moved into Mariachi, which is a covered outdoor bar area. And it was absolutely lovely! Honestly I think the guests preferred this over the original beach plan because of the shade. There was a large ring of flowers they were married in front of and they were real flowers. Directly after, they hosted a cocktail hour while the wedding party was taking photos, which had some hors d’oeuvres and special drinks.

After that was the reception in a room down the hall from the Steakhouse, with a Mexican food buffet, which was also quite delicious. The photo above is of the reception space. (I used this photo while prep was still going on because it’s the only one in which you can’t see the faces of any of the guests or wedding party and I want to respect their privacy). Beautiful, isn’t it? The buffet was set up just past those doors. The bride & groom sit at that small table by the door. Behind me was the DJ. They offer different packages and provide their own photographers. I’ve gotten to see some of the photos and they were GREAT!

From what I understand from the bride & groom’s family, working with the wedding coordinator at Riu Latino was very easy and they were happy to have chosen an all-inclusive for their wedding – one check!

Contact me if you have any questions, or would like a quote for Riu Latino or any other travel needs.