Almost 10 years ago during our Travel is Free days, Drew and I thought it would be valuable research to walk the entire Cancun beach so we could determine which of the many beachside resorts had the best portion of beach. Despite spending the entire day doing this, we quickly realized that it all kind of looks the same.
That’s still sort of my bias of Cancun today, so when we used our Frontier GoWild! All-You-Can-Fly-Pass to hop down to Mexico recently, I thought of Cancun purely as a transit hub to go onward by bus to Merida. However, I have to admit it was nice to have an overnight at the InterContinental Presidente Cancun Resort before flying back, just for a quick chance to hang out on the beach.
InterContinental Presidente Cancun Resort Bottom Line Review
As far as Cancun resorts go, the InterContinental Presidente Cancun Resort is a fine experience. The property is very nice and the beach is great, but the food is just ok.
- Price: The cash rate for our Friday night room would have been $299 after taxes and fees. The weekday prices are about $20 lower.
- Point Price: We used 42,000 IHG points to book this room.
- Location: Great, beach front spot.
- Resort/Destination Fee: 220 Mexican Pesos – equivalent to about $12 at the time of our stay.
- Diamond Benefits:
- Free breakfast: We had the option of having a buffet breakfast in either the lounge or the beachside restaurant El Caribeño.
- Lounge access: This is a 40 night milestone reward. The usual lounge space was being used for a private event, so the Café Urbano was being used as the club lounge.
- Ambassador Benefits
- Special check-in and check-out area
- Guaranteed upgrade (or 10K points if unavailable): We were upgraded from a standard King room to an ocean view King room.
- 600 points welcome amenity
- $20 food and beverage credit: This can’t be used for minibar or room service, but any other food and drinks.
- 4pm checkout
- Would I stay again? Sure, if I had another transit night in Cancun, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to stay here.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Good price for a beachside property
- Great spaces to relax on the beach
- Nice gym
- Comfortable room (and a nice upgrade to a room with a great view of the ocean)
Cons
- Latin American club lounges have a reputation for having lame food offerings. Compared to that expectation, the food in the lounge was pretty good, but without that expectation in mind, it was just ok.
- The breakfast buffet was pretty underwhelming.
Image Gallery
Lobby
King Room with Ocean View
Beach/Property
Le Cap Beach Club
Pool and Gym
Club Lounge (booked for private event)
Club Lounge (in Cafe Urbano)
Breakfast (in the lounge)
Breakfast (in the El Caribeño beachside restaurant)
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Like Lars below, the location is really great – not only in a position to avoid seaweed, but because it’s one of the last hotels in the hotel zone, the beach is very quiet (and wide). We really like the IC for this reason – it’s a bit of a hike to the airport (not as close as other hotel zone properties), but always very quiet with plenty of loungers and good service. Several decent restaurants and a super nice grocery store are in walking distance. Pre-covid, the lounge offerings were fantastic (evening food could probably replace dinner), post-COVID the food is more samplers/small bites individually served to you. Having the lounge moved during your stay may have been a blessing.
It seems to me that a massive, but undiscussed benefit of this hotel’s location is that it is positioned on a cove/bight with its beachfront facing north and slightly west. This allows for the beachfront to be spared the massive sargassum/seaweed problems that often afflict the eastward facing beaches (which is the majority of the Cancun Hotel zone). The eastward facing beaches catch the incoming seaweed from the south sargasso sea head-on, while the IC Presidente’s NNW facing beach allows for the seaweed to continue drifting by at some distance from shore. Not to suggest that seaweed never shows up at this beach, as wind conditions can certainly make it happen. But under typical conditions, it seems this beach is a safe bet to be spared the seaweed plague that you so often hear about down there. To me, that’s a tremendous value in itself.
Re: the raptor at breakfast, I’ve stayed at the IC Cozumel (which I believe is under the same ownership) and they did the same thing there. I asked the guy what was going on and he said the hotel hires them to come in and walk around with the raptor, and apparently it deters the presence of smaller birds (gulls, grackels, sparrows, etc.) from harassing guests, easting leftovers at tables, etc. I at first also assumed it was for guest entertainment, but from my conversation with the handler it was made quite clear that he wasn’t being paid for that and had no interest in providing education about the raptor on a voluntary basis :).
would love to hear your experience with frontier go wild pass! i hold frontier status from a status match. wonder if its worth it
We hop to this hotel if we are escaping Chicago winters for a long weekend. Can usually get use of a 40k certificate. Before Diamond one of us would get the full breakfast buffet and the other ala carte and share a bit. It’s a solid just sleep on the beach spot. If you land in the evening, it’s a great one night before an all inclusive. So you can maximize your time at the AI.
I would love to read a review of your experience using the Frontier All You Can Fly Pass.
Nice review. Will you be going into details on your trip to Merida? My wife and I went there in Fall 2022, staying at the Hyatt (superb value for Globalists) and would love to hear about what you saw and did as well as your choice of place to stay.
The hawk guy may be there for entertainment, but I think their main job is to scare seagulls around the property.
Actually, these are Eaglets, and indeed they are there to keep pesky birds away, Multiple hotels use their services as an unobtrusive, humane way to reduce the avian harassment.
The pictures look super nice but im surprised it’s worth 42k IHG points for one night. That seems pretty steep. Would only be worth considering if you stay 4 nights and get 4th night free. Other than that, probs can find a better deal. Good to keep on radar when IHG has those 100% bonus sales!
I stayed here a couple weeks ago for a night before heading to the Hyatt Ziva for 5 nights. The beach is great, but the rooms need renovating. The biggest issue was the place seemed infested with mosquitos. I got more bites here in one night than our entire stay at the Ziva which is less than a mile down the road.
May I ask you how you transfer from IC to Hyatt Ziva?
IC called me a taxi but regular taxis are super overpriced in the hotel zone (~$20 USD). I later found out they have Uber in the area which would’ve been much cheaper.
Could also walk if weather permits. 15-20 min walk.
Thank you!