Seven Nights at Four Seasons Punta Mita

Still the best-run hotel on Banderas Bay, and the premium is real, but you're paying it for the service and the beach, not for the room.

Property: Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita Location: Punta de Mita, Nayarit, Mexico Booked: Sufi Ocean View Occupied: Sufi Ocean View, casita 22, ground floor with plunge pool. Upgraded at check-in from a first-floor unit we hadn't seen. Party: Two adults Occasion: None Rate basis: $1,340 per night, room only, plus 19% in tax and service Benefits through the booking channel: Daily breakfast for two, $100 property credit, upgrade at check-in, 4pm checkout, welcome amenity. We were told to expect the credit and the breakfast. The upgrade and the late checkout were not promised and both turned up. Conditions: High season. The resort read close to full every day. Water clear all week, one grey afternoon. Previous stays: Second visit. First was 2019, before Naviva existed.

We wanted a week, not a reset. That sounds like a small distinction and it decided the whole thing. We looked hard at Naviva, which everyone we know has been telling us to do, and at One&Only Mandarina, and at the St. Regis because it's cheaper and the beach is the same water.

Naviva is four nights maximum for us. It's built for intensity and we've done that trip. Mandarina is up the coast and the beach there is dramatic rather than swimmable, which is fine for three days and wrong for seven. What tipped it back to the Four Seasons was boring and correct: it's the only one of the four where you can swim off the beach every morning without thinking about it, and where there are enough places to eat that we didn't need a car.

What I expected walking in was that it would feel older than the new properties around it. I'd seen photos of the 2019 rooms and assumed they hadn't moved. That expectation was half right and I'll get to it.

Puerto Vallarta to the gate is quoted at 45 minutes. On a Sunday afternoon it took us 68, most of that lost between the airport and the highway. Private transfer was $180 each way, arranged through the hotel. A taxi is roughly $90 and I'd take the taxi next time, because the transfer wasn't better in any way I could identify.

There's a security gate for the whole Punta Mita development, then a second one for the resort, and the approach is unremarkable until the last thirty seconds when the drive opens onto the bay. No lobby check-in. Somebody meets you with a cart and you do the paperwork sitting in your own room with a drink, which took nine minutes and is the single best operational decision this hotel makes.

Casita 22 is one of eight ground-floor Sufi units with a plunge pool, and the pool is the reason to want a ground floor here. You come through a low entry, the room opens right, and the whole ocean side is glass onto a terrace with two loungers, a table for two, and a plunge pool about three metres long. It's not a swimming pool. It's a place to sit in water and read, and it's used constantly.

The room itself has been redone and it's good without being interesting. Warm woods, a lot of cream, one wall in a woven texture that hides the fingerprints. The bed is firm, close to a medium-firm hotel standard, and I slept properly six nights out of seven. Linen is good and they changed it on day four without being asked.

Bathroom has a double vanity with actual counter space, a deep tub nobody used, an indoor shower and an outdoor one. Water pressure is strong in both. The outdoor shower takes about four minutes to run hot in the morning, which is worth knowing before you're standing in it. Lighting at the vanity is even and unforgiving, which is what you want. Storage is generous. Two people's luggage fits with room left.

Noise is the honest problem. The surf on this stretch is loud, genuinely loud, and casitas closest to the point get it hardest. I liked it. My husband stopped hearing it on night three and not before. There's also a landscaping crew that starts around 7am and works the paths, which you hear on a ground floor and don't on a first floor. Air conditioning is quiet and holds whatever you set it to. Four usable sockets by the bed, two at the desk. Wi-Fi ran between 70 and 90 Mbps all week and held on a video call.

The room I'd book next time: the same category, ground floor, casitas 18 through 24. Those sit close to the beach path without being under the walkway to the Bahía pool. I'd avoid anything directly above that walkway, which is the noisiest thing on the property that isn't the sea.

On the second morning I mentioned to the man setting up our loungers that I drink my coffee black and the beach service brings it with cream. Every morning after that it arrived black, and on the fourth day it arrived black at a table we hadn't sat at yet, because he'd seen us walking down. His name is Alejandro and he runs the north end of the beach. Ask for that section.

The failure was room service, twice, on the same night. We ordered at 9pm, the wrong dish came at 9:40, the right one came at 10:15 and was cold. What happened next is the part that matters. The manager on duty came to the room himself, didn't offer a speech, took the whole night off the bill including the drinks we'd had at the bar earlier, and sent up something the next evening we hadn't ordered. I'd rather they'd got it right the first time. But the recovery was fast and it wasn't negotiated.

We never asked for the same thing twice, with one exception noted below. People knew our names by the second day, which is standard at this level, and knew what we drank by the third, which isn't.

Breakfast is at Bahía and it's a hybrid: a small buffet of fruit, pastry and cold things, plus a full à la carte menu. The chilaquiles are the order, verdes over rojas, and the eggs are cooked by somebody who cares. Coffee is decent, not remarkable. Juice is fresh and they'll make combinations that aren't on the card. If you're paying for it, budget about $52 per person once tax and service land, which makes the included breakfast worth roughly $730 across our week. That single line changes the arithmetic of this hotel more than anything else on the bill.

We ate at Aramara twice, which is the Asian room and the best food on property by a distance. Mains run $38 to $62. Dos Catrinas is the Mexican restaurant and it's good rather than exciting; go once. Ketsi is the beach club and does the best lunch, a whole fish for two at $78 that we ordered on three separate days. Tail of the Whale is out at the golf course and we skipped it after hearing nothing good.

Guacamole is $24, which is the kind of number that annoys people and shouldn't, because the portion is large. A bottle of decent Mexican white runs $60 to $90. You can get a proper coffee at Ketsi until 5pm and nowhere after that except room service. There are enough options here to eat in all week without resentment, which is not true of every resort on this coast.

Three pools. The adult pool at the north end is the good one, shaded on one side by late afternoon, and the loungers there are gone by about 9:30 in high season. Nobody polices towel-saving and I watched two chairs sit empty from 8am to noon on two different days. The family pool is large and loud in the right way. The third, by the beach, is the one to use at 4pm when everyone's gone in.

Spa is Apuane and the treatment rooms are fine. The temazcal is free, runs twice a week, and is the thing to do here. Book it on arrival because it fills. Our first spa booking, made at check-in, was not in the system when we turned up, which is the one time we had to ask for something twice. They fit us in forty minutes later.

Gym is real: full Technogym line, free weights to 40kg, two bikes, three treadmills, and it's air conditioned properly. Bikes to ride around the development are free. Kayaks and paddleboards are free. Beach cabanas are $250 a day and not worth it because the standard loungers have shade.

Nothing is walkable. Punta Mita town is about ten minutes by taxi and worth one evening for fish tacos. Sayulita is 35 minutes and San Pancho is 45, and both are better than they sound if you go on a weekday morning. Whale watching runs January to March and we saw them from the beach on four days without a boat.

This is a place you base yourself and mostly don't leave. If you want to leave often, the St. Regis is closer to the gate and cheaper.

Couples and families in roughly even measure, and the property is big enough that the two groups barely intersect. Children are genuinely welcome, not tolerated. It's quiet by 9:30 in the evening, which is either the point or the problem depending on you. Dress code is stated as resort casual and observed as exactly that; I saw one jacket all week and it looked like a mistake.

Three things. The room service night, described above. The lost spa booking. And on day five, Ketsi was closed from noon for a private event, which we found out by walking down to it with a book and a hat. Nobody had told us, and there was no notice at the concierge desk that morning. Lunch moved to Bahía, which was fine, but the walk back up the hill in February at midday is not nothing and we'd have planned around it.

The pattern in all three is communication rather than capability. When something reaches a person here it gets fixed quickly and generously. What doesn't happen reliably is the message getting to you before you've wasted the morning. If you're the sort of person who plans a day, ask at breakfast what's closed.

The rate covered the room and nothing else. Everything on top of it: food, drinks, spa, the transfer. Our all-in for seven nights came to just under $16,400, of which the room and tax was $11,160. So about $5,200 in food, drink, spa and transport for two people over a week, and we weren't careful.

Where they're generous: bikes, kayaks, paddleboards, the temazcal, the gym classes, and the fact that nobody charges you for the second coffee. Where they nickel you: the cabanas, the transfer, and a $9 bottle of water that appears on the bill if you drink the wrong one of the two on the counter.

Was it good value at what we paid? Yes, and I don't say that easily about a four-figure nightly rate. Would it have been at 20% more? No. At $1,600 a night I'd be at the St. Regis eating at the Four Seasons twice, and I'd be telling you that was the smarter trip.

Would you return? Yes, and probably for a week again rather than a long weekend. Who should stay here: people who want to swim every day, families who want the children absorbed rather than accommodated, and anyone who has been burned by a resort with two restaurants and seven nights. Who shouldn't: anyone chasing the newest thing, anyone who wants design to be the story, and anyone doing three nights, who should be at Naviva. What I'd do differently: ground floor, casitas 18 to 24, taxi instead of the transfer, book the temazcal at check-in, and ask every morning what's closed.

Against Naviva. Naviva is the better piece of design and the better four days. Everything is included, the tents are extraordinary, and the food is more ambitious. It is also a fixed programme, and by night five I'd want a menu and a choice. If you have three or four nights and no children, go to Naviva. If you have a week, this.

Against One&Only Mandarina. Mandarina wins on drama and loses on water. The treehouses are the most photographed rooms in Mexico for a reason and the beach is a shore break you look at rather than swim in. It's also forty minutes further from the airport, which reads as nothing and isn't. Mandarina for a honeymoon, Punta Mita for a holiday.

I'd tell a friend one click from booking: get the ground floor or don't bother with the Sufi category at all.