Kempinski Hotel Cancún

Cancún is not short of hotels, but few behave like a European grand hotel, and that is precisely the Kempinski’s point. The building stands directly on the white sand, its rooms and suites facing the Caribbean, and inside the manners are old-world: proper restaurants, a jazz supper club, a spa named in Mayan for renewal.

Evenings are where the address shows its hand. Fantino is the formal dining room, The Club Grill keeps a jazz supper club, and Casitas moves dinner onto the beach itself, Mexican cooking served in shoreside casitas under the stars from seven. The sea, that particular turquoise, does not change from one day to the next; the hotel’s trick is to give each day a different way of looking at it.

A grand hotel on the sand

Most beach hotels aim for ease; this one aims for standards, and the combination turns out to be the luxury. The building meets the beach directly, so the white sand and the Caribbean begin where the terrace ends, and the pale interiors keep the colour of the water as the only ornament that matters. Service carries the Kempinski habit of formality without stiffness: a name remembered, a table held, a chair moved into the shade. It suits the traveller who wants the Caribbean without surrendering the rituals of a proper hotel.

Rooms facing the Caribbean

The rooms and suites look at the sea, which in Cancún means a colour photographs refuse to believe. The palette inside stays quiet so the window does the work, and the suites add the space for a stay measured in weeks rather than nights. Mornings begin with the curtains opened onto that blue; afternoons return to it, after the beach, for the hour when the light is best and the room is coolest. It is a simple proposition, well executed, which is a fair description of the whole hotel.

Casitas, Fantino and the Kayantá Spa

Casitas is the dinner people come back for: a table inside a shoreside casita, the sand a step away, Mexican cooking built on seafood and the grill, and the sea audible a few metres off. It serves only in the evening, from seven, which keeps it an occasion. Fantino is the formal room, The Club Grill doubles as a jazz supper club, and El Café Mexicano and The Caribe Bar and Grill take the daylight hours. The Kayantá Spa draws its name from a Mayan phrase meaning renewal and its treatments from indigenous ingredients, a rare thing on this coast.