If you’re headed to the Oaxaca Coast resort area of Huatulco and you’re a luxury traveler, we’re going to make it easy for you. There are only two places to pick from, plus an honorable mention if you’re really craving an all-inclusive stay. Here are details on the two best Huatulco luxury hotels, plus some background on what else is around.

Huatulco beach Oaxaca coast

Huatulco is on the radar of many Canadians as it’s one of those expat enclaves where a few people move to and then word gets around. There are actually more flights from Canada to Huatulco in the winter months than there are from the USA.

Most of the flights are domestic ones, however, because while this beach are is not very famous north of the Rio Grande, it’s super popular with Mexican families when they’re considering where to go over a holiday period. Around Christmas and Easter, every room and villa is full.

In the months where American vacationers dominate, however, Huatulco isn’t nearly as crowded as the Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta, or Los Cabos. It’s not even as crowded as Mazatlan, which has a similar demographic and limited air connections, but is better known by Americans. A few cruise ships do stop in Huatulco, however, so that’s spreading the word a little among the masses.

If you do buck the trend and come here on vacation, here are the two best hotels in Huatulco.

Casa Bocana Boutique Hotel

The development of Huatulco was a government-funded project of they “build it and they will come” variety, a plan that exceeded the wildest expectations in Cancun but was less successful in other spots, such as Ixtapa. Huatulco was somewhere in between, with major resorts coming in and a lot of Mexican tourists visiting by the planeload.

From the start, however, the focus was a strange combination of nature and mass tourism. Until recently, the area didn’t have a single boutique hotel that would appeal to high-end travelers. That changed with the opening of Casa Bocana, a beautifully designed and eco-friendly property at the far north end of the Huatulco region. Come take a look around here:

There’s not much else around, but that’s kind of the point: the beautiful beach here is usually deserted except for a few surfers and at the far end of it is a natural nature reserve where a river meets the sea. It’s usually full of sea birds like spoonbills, egrets, and herons.

You probably won’t miss the minimal restaurant choices in the area though because the one at Casa Bocana is terrific, one of the best in the whole area.

Check out our full review of Casa Bocana Boutique Hotel in Bahias de Huatulco.

Quinta Real Huatulco

The Quinta Real Brand is the luxury arm of mid-range Mexican chain Camino Real and probably 90% or more of its business is from domestic travelers, not foreigners. They rarely interface with U.S. or Canadian travel writers and never seem quite sure what to do with us when we reach out. Most of their marketing is through Mexican magazines and TV channels.

Thankfully I had a meeting with the president of the Huatulco Hotel Association while I was at a conference in town and she set me up with an intro. So I at least got to take a spin through the place to get new photos and update our review.

See it here: Quinta Real Huatulco review.

Huatulco luxury hotels

This really is a fine hotel, one of those rare places where it looks like it would have 200 rooms by the amount of land it has, but there are really only 28. So you get all the amenities and service you can expect from an upscale chain hotel, but you get the feel of staying in a boutique hotel, with good personal service. You’re surrounded by trees and likely to see some birds while walking around.

What About Secrets Huatulco?

We do have a third property listed for this area, just a bit down the coast from Quinta Real, but unfortunately, nobody from Secrets Huatulco ever called back or wrote back when we repeatedly tried to contact them. Plus the U.S. PR agency’s job seems to be to keep these brands that Hyatt acquired out of the press unless except for trade publications for travel agents.

Secrets is not the high-end brand it was when we launched Luxury Latin America in the late ’00s. It changed owners several times and went more mainstream when Apple Vacations bought them years ago. So now they mostly rely on tour packages sold by travel agencies and the likes of Expedia to fill rooms, not bothering to cater to upscale independent travelers that read this publication.

We’re keeping the old review on our site, but just be aware that we haven’t been inside the gates for years and based on what we’re seeing at other Secrets resorts, you’re better off elsewhere unless you’re really craving a decadent all-inclusive experience with the masses. (We just updated the Secrets Puerto Vallarta one here, where we did hear back from local management.)

Dreams and Secrets are now basically the same, with the former serving families and the latter serving adults. Both brands are located here in Huatulco. Check the reviews on a site like Booking.com where only guests who booked and stayed there can comment. Secrets scores an 8.5 out of 10 there, which is not bad, but not great either. When I’m paying myself on vacation, I try to pick a hotel that rates 9 or above.

I always treat guest reviews like they’re from a panel of Olympic diving judges: ignore the top and bottom scores and see where the middle lands. That way you eliminate the outliers. When you do that for Secrets Huatulco, you see plenty of comments about the food not being so great, maintenance issues with the building and pools, and lots of service/cleaning lapses. Everyone loves the views though.

My guess is that they’re used to serving less demanding domestic guests and with all the management changes over the years, just don’t really have a solid direction and staff training program like they did when the place opened, when owner AMR Resorts was a family-run company. If you’ve stayed there recently, hit us up in the comments to tell us what you found.

Slim Luxury Resort Pickings on the Oaxaca Coast

I was hoping to add more properties from the coast of Oaxaca while I was in the area for a week and a half, but unfortunately I came up empty. We have a review of Hotel Escondido outside of Puerto Escondido, and we’d still recommend that place as a laid-back getaway on a near-empty beach. It’s the most expensive hotel on the coast and mainly marketed to wealthy Mexico City vacationers, but well-designed and chic.

Otherwise, there are a few places billing themselves as luxury boutique hotels, but they’re really not there yet in terms of service or consistency. Even just trying to get a reply from a human by e-mail or WhatsApp is like asking for a huge favor, with most messages just ignored. Most of them in Puerto Escondido, Mazunte, or Zipolite have problems with their websites, like broken links and non-working e-mail addresses. I’m guessing there’s some absentee owner involved with most of them, someone who isn’t really minding the details.

We have been in touch with one new place opening up near Mazunte that looks professionally run and well-designed, so once the doors are open there we’ll hopefully return for an update.

Zipolite Oaxaca coast

Instead of researching on this last trip as planned, we just kicked back at a hotel in Zipolite and made a vacation out of it. That certainly wasn’t a bad development.

My conclusion from all of this is that you have two great choices for Huatulco luxury hotels and one questionable one if you’re a luxury traveler, and one option outside of Puerto Escondido. Otherwise, you’re better off renting a high-end villa that’s serviced instead.