The main pool at Fairmont Mayakoba, loungers and a parasol on the limestone terrace with palms behind

BANYAN TREE MAYAKOBA vs. FAIRMONT MAYAKOBA · 4 MIN READ

Banyan Tree or Fairmont Mayakoba: the Retreat and the Resort

Four hotels share one jungle estate on the Riviera Maya. Two of them are the real decision — and one of them is not a resort at all. It is a retreat.

By J.C. Mercer

Verified stays·paid in full

	Banyan Tree	Fairmont
Stayed	April 2022	March 2026
Room booked	Oceanfront Pool Villa	Signature Casita, king
How it was booked	Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts, public rate	Accor ALL, public rate
What the channel bought	Upgrade to pool villa	Nothing beyond standard.
Value verdict	Worth it. Beachfront villa excellent.	Worth it as the value play to access Mayakoba — with children, a group or a longer stay. It is good, not great.
When to go	Anytime. Book Banyan Tree	Spring Break. Book Fairmont

Both stays booked the way any other guest would book them.

The question

Mayakoba is not a hotel. It is a gated stretch of jungle about forty minutes south of Cancún airport, threaded with canals cut out of the limestone and fed by the rivers running underneath the Yucatán. Four luxury hotels sit inside it, with a golf course and a shared village square, and guests move between them by golf cart, bike or boat. Which means the location argument, which usually decides these comparisons, does not exist here. Same jungle, same beach, same drive, same course. What is left is the hotel itself — and the two ask very different levels of commitment for it, with Banyan Tree the bigger ask on any comparable dates.

Guests boarding a boat at the Mayakoba arrival dock — The arrival dock. The same boats serve both hotels; the estate is one address.

I have written each up on its own: Banyan Tree, beachfront or jungle goes through the villa categories, and Fairmont, the one that got here first covers the oldest hotel on the estate. This piece assumes you have narrowed it to these two and want to know which way to jump.

The short version. Banyan Tree is all villas, every one with its own heated pool, wrapped in Southeast-Asian design and anchored by a Thai-heritage spa; it is the quieter, more design-led property, the one built around wellness, and the one that makes you feel you have left the resort world entirely — a retreat rather than a resort, and it commits from the kerb. Fairmont is rooms, casitas and suites, five pools including one with a waterslide, a kids’ club and a teens’ club, eight restaurants and an optional all-inclusive plan; it is the better-value property and the more practical one for a family. Both share the same canals and the same beach. Neither shares the same temperament.

What the table cannot hold is the Banyan highlight: the Zen that settles on you somewhere between leaving the cab and leaving the resort, and never once breaks. A surprising amount of it arrives through the nose. The scent of the place is exceptional and pervasive — a keen aromatherapy that follows you from the lobby to the spa to your own villa, until you catch yourself breathing on purpose.

An infinity pool running towards the sea past a thatched palapa — An infinity pool running to the sea past a thatched palapa. Which hotel? That is the question.

Side by side

What	Banyan Tree	Fairmont
Entry accommodation	A villa with a private heated pool; living space and bedroom open onto a terrace and your own water	A room or casita, large and bright, deep marble tub; comfortable rather than memorable
Design	Southeast-Asian, softened with Mexican materials	Resort-standard; plain for the standing, and the walls are thin
Pools	Better beach front club pool, private plunge pool.	Numerous on site and by ocean. Including a family pool with a slide and an adults-only infinity pool over the lagoon
Spa	The Banyan Tree Spa in private villas, and The Rainforest hydrothermal circuit — a reason on its own to visit	Very good, without a wellness brand behind it
Eating	Saffron, the Thai room, is the standout on the estate. Steakhouse at the beach is excellent.	Average food throughout
Children	Welcomed, no kids’ club	Built for them: kids’ club, teens’ club, waterslide, connecting rooms
Service	The strongest on the estate; fewer guests, more attention per villa	Good for the size
Best for	Couples, wellness, the villa	Families, groups, golf, longer stays

A Banyan Tree villa bedroom opening onto its private pool and the sea — Banyan Tree: the villa bedroom opening onto its own pool.

A stone bathroom with a glass shower and the garden beyond — Fairmont: the stone bathroom, the garden beyond.

Noted

Observed on both stays, not measured.

What	Banyan Tree	Fairmont
Wi-Fi	Fast, steady across the villa	Adequate, weak on the terrace
Noise	Birds and insects; no neighbours audible	Neighbouring room audible through the wall
Bed	King, medium-firm, excellent linen	King, medium, good linen
Water pressure	Strong; hot almost at once	Strong; a little slower to run hot
Private pool	Heated, cleaned daily	Not in this category
Time to the beach	On the beach.	Ten minutes with the buggy
Loungers gone by	Never an issue	Never an issue
Sargassum	Present, barriers in place, cleared each morning	Present, barriers in place, cleared each morning
Mosquitoes at dusk	Noticeable on the lagoon	Noticeable in the gardens

Where Banyan Tree wins

The villa. A private heated pool on every terrace changes how the whole resort feels; the shared water is quieter than the guest count suggests because half the guests are in their own. One tip worth having: the garden and lagoon villas, screened by jungle, sit lower on the ladder and often feel more private rather than less.

The spa. Thai-influenced treatments in private therapy villas, and The Rainforest, a circuit of steam, ice, heat and sensation pools that you build a slow afternoon around. It is a reason to choose this side on its own. And the service, which is the best on the estate for the plainest reason: fewer guests, and staff who are not stretched across four hundred keys.

Saffron. The Thai room is the one restaurant on the whole estate worth crossing the water for, and Fairmont guests can — the ferry runs between the hotels. Which is the most useful thing I can tell you about eating at the Fairmont.

A whole fish plated at dinner — A whole fish at dinner, at the villa. The kitchen will grill at your pool.

Where Fairmont wins

Children, and this is the one category where the gap widens rather than narrows. Kids’ club, teens’ club, waterslide, connecting rooms, and enough space that nobody minds noise. Banyan Tree will put a family in a multi-bedroom villa and arrange babysitting, and it is a couples-and-wellness property at heart. At Fairmont your children are the point. At Banyan Tree they are quietly accommodated. Fairmont is a resort to take the kids to. Banyan Tree is a retreat to recover from them.

A shaded daybed on a deck above the mangroves at Fairmont. The lagoon side is the quiet side.

The grounds, and the wildlife in them, are the luxury at the Fairmont: older trees, longer lagoon frontage, coatis and iguanas on the way to breakfast. The rooms are comfortable rather than memorable, the decor reads plain for the standing, the walls are thin, and maintenance can lag. You will not remember the room. You will remember the iguana.

A whole grilled fish on the table with guacamole, meat and tortillas around it — Whole grilled fish, guacamole, tortillas, on the plan.

A waiter spooning guacamole from a tableside trolley set with lime, onion, tomato and herbs — Guacamole made at the trolley.

And the honest part, which applies to both: this stretch of coast gets seaweed seasonally, and the offshore barriers used to manage it mean the beach does not look like the brochure. Neither hotel can fix it and both handle it about as well as anyone does. If a flawless Caribbean beach is the point of your trip, come outside seaweed season or look at the Pacific side.

Verdict by traveller type

Take Banyan Tree for a honeymoon, an anniversary, or any trip built around the villa and the spa. Take it if wellness is a reason for going, if you want a private pool off your own terrace, and if Southeast-Asian calm is the mood you have been carrying around.

Take Fairmont with children, with a group, on a golf trip, or on any stay longer than four nights where the dinners start to compound. Take the all-inclusive if you plan to eat in.

If you can stretch to it and want my answer: four nights in a Banyan Tree villa beat six in a Fairmont room. If it does not stretch, the Fairmont is not a consolation prize. You are in the same jungle, on the same beach, and you can hop the ferry to Saffron for dinner.

Book Banyan Tree if the villa is the trip. Book Fairmont if the trip is bigger than the room.

Teak daybeds and woven pod cabanas on the sand beside the beachfront infinity pool, palms and the Caribbean behind — Teak daybeds and woven cabanas on the sand at Banyan Tree. Both hotels front the same beach.

Bottom line

Banyan Tree if the villa is the trip, Fairmont if the trip is bigger than the room. Take the oceanfront upgrade at one, the all-inclusive plan at the other, and eat at Saffron either way.

See the full set: Banyan Tree, Mayakoba — in frames and Fairmont, Mayakoba — in frames. More Mayakoba: the Mayakoba set.

Book Banyan Tree if the villa is the trip. Book Fairmont if the trip is bigger than the room.

The Mayakoba galleries

Every photo on this site is my own, shot on the stays. Slide through →

Hotel terraces hung with bougainvillea above a pool and rows of loungers

A sand path crossing a palm lawn towards the beach

A deer standing among trees on a mown lawn in the grounds

A chef carving the steak at the table beside a glass of wine

A two-storey casita of pale stucco and wooden balconies standing directly above the green lagoon

MAYAKOBA, MEXICO · VERIFIED STAY · 6 MIN READ

Fairmont Mayakoba: The One That Got Here First

The resort that opened Mayakoba is the biggest of the four, the least precious about it, and the only one that will sell you the whole stay all-inclusive.

By J.C. Mercer

Verified stay·paid in full

Stayed March 2026
Room booked Deluxe Casita, lagoon side
How it was booked Accor ALL, public rate
What the channel bought Nothing beyond standard.
Value verdict Worth it as the value play to access Mayakoba; a lagoon casita for two is the version that earns it.
When to go Spring Break. Book this stay

Booked the way any other guest would book it.

Arrival

Mayakoba is four resorts sharing one address, a private community of clear-water canals cut through mangrove on the Riviera Maya, and Fairmont got here first — before the canals had a reputation and before Rosewood, Banyan Tree and Andaz arrived to give the place its luxury shorthand. That head start explains most of what the resort is now.

It is the largest of the four and the one that behaves least like a boutique hotel: two kids’ clubs, a main pool you could lose a family in, and an optional all-inclusive package, three things nobody would write about Rosewood next door. Whether that reads as a warning or a relief depends almost entirely on who is travelling with you.

A wide green canal curving past a two-storey resort building and a low stone bridge under a clear sky — The canal system is the spine of the whole community. Buildings sit on it rather than beside it, and boats pass under low stone bridges between resorts.

The single most underrated advantage of arriving first is that your trees are older than everyone else’s. The fan palms lean across the paths rather than standing politely beside them, the planting runs to dark red croton and heliconia thick enough to hide the edging, and the canal banks are properly overgrown. It does not look landscaped. It looks kept.

The other thing the head start bought is scale. Rosewood and Banyan Tree are villa properties. Fairmont is a resort in the older and more literal sense: buildings, corridors, a lobby with a florist’s arrangement the length of a console table, and a golf course running through the back of it, so that one garden path has a fairway sitting open and green just off the left shoulder. The paths are flat, shaded and long enough that the bicycles are not a novelty.

A brick-paved path curving between fan palms and dark red planting with the golf course beyond — Paths like this one are the property’s circulation. Flat, shaded, and long enough that the bicycles are not a novelty.

The room

The building block is the casita: two-storey blocks of a handful of rooms each, dropped into the mangrove along the lagoon or set back from the beach. I had a Deluxe Casita on the lagoon side, and the terrace is the room: a round cushioned daybed, a hardwood railing, and nothing beyond it but mangrove about two metres away, with birds in it. There is no view in the postcard sense. There is a wall of trees, and it is the argument for this side of the property in one frame.

A round cushioned daybed and wicker chair on a casita terrace looking straight into the mangrove — A lagoon-side terrace. The railing is about two metres from the mangrove, which is the argument for this side of the property in one frame.

Inside, the finish is warm rather than fashionable — travertine floors, dark timber, a stone-topped double vanity, a deep tub set against a window that looks straight into planting. It is not the pale, stripped-back palette the newer Mayakoba properties use, and it will read to some people as dated. It also means nothing in the room is trying very hard, which after four days is not a complaint. It is a recommendation.

A blue floral robe on the daybed, mid-afternoon — Robe weather.

A long arrangement of anthurium, ginger and orchids on a curved console — Anthurium, ginger and orchids on the console.

Eating

The list is long for one property: Mexican over the water at La Laguna, a steakhouse, an Italian, a thatch-roofed beach hut, a lobby bar, two more bars, and the five outlets at the beach club. The best room of the lot is the lagoon deck: a shingle-roofed pavilion on pilings with red-painted chairs, woven pendant lamps and festoon lights strung over a hardwood terrace that ends in green water, with a boat going past. It is the only dining room on the property that could not be anywhere else.

A wooden restaurant deck over the canal set with red chairs and festoon lights, a boat passing behind — The over-water deck at the lagoon restaurant, laid up before service, with a boat going past on the canal.

The service style is old-school in the way Fairmont still does well: a guacamole trolley wheeled to the table and made in front of you, with lime, tomato, cheese, coriander and a dish of chapulines beside it for anyone who wants them. Whole fish comes off the grill and onto the table more or less as it left it. The kitchens lean local and simple, which suits the setting.

Then there is the all-inclusive question. Fairmont sells an optional package covering meals and drinks by the glass at the participating restaurants, with premium dishes, bottled wine and breakfast at some rooms outside it. A five-diamond resort with an all-inclusive tick-box is an unusual animal, and it is the clearest signal of how this property differs from its neighbours. It cuts both ways: the room around you changes, because a package with unlimited drinks does not attract the same guest as an à la carte one. Only one of the two versions lets you spend an evening eating at Rosewood.

The lagoon, the pools, and the beach club

The canals are dug, not natural, but they connect to the limestone that riddles this coast, and what they attract is not decorative: two turtles hauled out on a rock ledge under an overhang a few metres from a guest path, a full-grown iguana holding a footpath in the sun, a bank of limestone undercut by green water with jungle growing straight out of the top of it. The resort runs eco boat tours through the mangrove, and there are cenotes inside the community. Fairmont’s lagoon frontage is longer than its neighbours’ and more of it is public: docks, stair landings, decks that end over the water, all walkable rather than attached to somebody’s villa.

The main pool is a linked series of sections stepping down across limestone terraces and lawn, with a stone swim-up bar under a shingled pyramid roof at one end and enough loungers and canvas umbrellas that the towel-on-the-chair economy never gets going. It is a family pool, unambiguously, and it is very good at being one.

Two turtles hauled out on a limestone ledge beneath an overhanging rock at the water's edge — Turtles on a ledge by the path.

A large grey iguana sunning on a stamped-concrete path beside palm planting — You walk around these, not the other way about.

The bigger change is Maykana, the beach club, which brought five places to eat and drink onto the sand at once, including an adults-only rooftop bar over the Caribbean, along with a beachfront pool, cabanas and sunken fire pits. Before it, the beach was the weakest part of a resort whose best material was inland. It is now a reason to book. The beach itself is wide, white, and thoroughly furnished: rows of thatch palapas with sling loungers, a marked swimming area, and enough space between the rows that it does not feel like a lido. The spa is a freestanding building with hydrotherapy pools and a serious gym.

Service moments

The guacamole trolley, made at the table by someone who has made it ten thousand times and still asks how hot you want it. The buggy that appeared at the casita before I had finished the call. The eco-boat guide who cut the engine for the turtles without being asked.

The over-water restaurant seen across the lagoon, its deck mirrored in still water — The lagoon restaurant from across the water.

Twenty years in, the Fairmont’s advantage is not novelty. It is the trees.

Who it is for, and who it is not

Come with a family or a group, for a longer stay, or for the golf, and take the beach side: immediate sand, some casitas with their own stair, closer to Maykana and the main pool. Come as a couple and take the lagoon: mangrove at the railing, constant wildlife, quiet, and you choose when to look at the sea.

Pack repellent whichever side you land on, because the mangrove is the whole point and the mangrove has mosquitoes. Do the eco boat tour early in the day. Book the rooftop bar for sunset before you arrive. Walk the canal paths at dusk, when the turtles and the iguanas are still out and the light is on the water. And if the all-inclusive package is on the table, weigh both versions before you commit.

Look elsewhere if you booked Mayakoba for silence: this is not a hideaway, the lobby is a lobby, there are corridors, and at peak season the main pool has children in it, which is the correct outcome for a resort with two kids’ clubs and the wrong one for you. The Banyan Tree next door is the villa version, and I have set the two side by side.

Palapas and rows of loungers on the beach at dusk with the moon over the Caribbean — The beach at dusk. Thatch palapas, sling loungers, and a swimming line marked out beyond them.

Bottom line

Twenty years in, the Fairmont’s advantage is the trees, and the lagoon does the rest. Take a lagoon casita as a couple, the beach side with children, and walk the canal paths at dusk either way. It is good, not great, so check your Banyans.

See the full set: Fairmont, Mayakoba — in frames. More Mayakoba: the Mayakoba set.

The Fairmont Mayakoba gallery

Every photo on this site is my own, shot on the stay. Slide through →

The thatched pool bar with towels stacked on its counter

Two loungers under a timber palapa looking out to the lawn and pool

Tag: Fairmont