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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