Iberostar Waves Paraiso del Mar
Iberostar Waves Paraíso del Mar is one of five Iberostar hotels clustered at Km 309 on Playa Paraíso, and knowing exactly what your wristband opens is the whole trick to booking here. The real inclusion is this hotel plus the adjoining Iberostar Waves Paraíso Beach: you can eat and swim at both, which is how one mid-sized hotel ends up with seven specialty restaurants and four pool areas in play. What the wristband does not open is the water park, wave pool and lazy river at the Selection hotels next door. The beach is the headline either way, a Blue Flag stretch of white sand that most travelers rate the best thing about the stay, and the grounds behave more like a garden with iguanas in it than a hotel zone. The hotel also carries the Waves name now, having traded until recently as plain Iberostar Paraíso del Mar.
Traveler Insights
Pros
- +Sits directly on Playa Paraíso, a Blue Flag certified stretch of white sand with direct beach access from the grounds and calm Caribbean water for most of the year
- +Seven specialty restaurants plus buffets, named on the hotel's own dining list: Hashiru teppanyaki, La Hacienda Mexican, El Colonial French, Smoke House, El Rodizio Brazilian, La Dorada Mediterranean and Trattoria El Faro, which is enough variety for a full week without repeating
- +Four large pool areas laced through the gardens, so even at full occupancy there is usually a quiet corner away from the swim-up bar and the activity team's music
- +Guests here get access to the facilities and restaurants at the adjoining Iberostar Waves Paraíso Beach, which is an official inclusion rather than a favor, and effectively doubles the dining list
- +An hour a day of non-motorized water sports is included (kayaks, Hobie Cats, windsurfing and snorkeling), and there is a PADI certified dive center on site for anyone wanting to go further, with course and tank fees charged separately
- +Jungle-style grounds with iguanas and tropical birds, plus in-resort electric transport that takes the sting out of the longer walks between buildings
- +About 30 minutes from Cancun airport, 15 minutes from Playa del Carmen and roughly an hour from Tulum, which makes this one of the easier Riviera Maya bases for day trips
Cons
- −Vacation club sales approaches are the most consistent complaint on traveler forums: an invitation to a complimentary breakfast, a resort tour or a brief meeting is a presentation, and staff will ask more than once
- −The water park, wave pool and lazy river that show up in photos of the Paraíso complex belong to the Selection hotels, Paraíso Lindo and Paraíso Maya Suites. They are not in this hotel's all-inclusive, so a family booking here for the slides is booking the wrong hotel in the complex
- −The hotel theater is closed for renovation work with no reopening date published as of October 2026, so the nightly show program is running without its main indoor venue
- −Sargassum hit the Riviera Maya hard in 2026: Quintana Roo had collected 106,848 tons by mid-August, with 52 of 140 monitored beaches recording excessive landings and only five clean. The state's floating barriers, 11 kilometers deployed of 16 bought and an expansion toward roughly 50 kilometers announced, sit off Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Mahahual, and no barrier is published for this stretch of Playa Paraíso
- −Specialty restaurant reservations go quickly at this guest count, so booking the week's dinners at check-in rather than day by day is the difference between eating where you want and eating at the buffet
- −Del Mar sits at the north end of the Paraíso hotels, which means a real walk to some of the shared venues, and the sections closest to the beach book out first for that reason
- −Spa treatments, golf, dive courses and babysitting are all charged on top of the all-inclusive rate, as is anything booked through the tour desk, which tends to run well above the same excursion bought in Playa del Carmen
- −Rooms are the weakest part of the product. Iberostar publishes no recent guest-room renovation here, and travelers keep flagging dated furnishings and bathrooms in the older blocks even while rating the grounds and beach highly
Practically, this is a big, busy, mid-tier all-inclusive that rewards a little planning. Book the week's specialty dinners at check-in, because this hotel's guests plus the Paraíso Beach guests chase the same tables. Expect to walk, or to flag down the electric shuttles that run inside the resort, since Del Mar sits at the north end of the cluster. The included water sports hour covers kayaks, Hobie Cats, windsurfing and snorkeling, and the PADI dive center handles anything more serious for a fee, as do the spa and the golf course. The entertainment program is working around a closed theater as of October 2026 with no reopening date announced. Rooms are where the age shows: the gardens, pools and beach get strong marks and the older guest-room blocks get shrugs. And Quintana Roo's environmental sanitation fee, charged per night at check-in and in force since 2019, is not part of the all-inclusive rate.
This suits families and couples who want a genuinely good beach, a large dining roster and a short airport transfer, and who will not be rattled by being asked about a membership presentation more than once. It is priced and positioned against Grand Palladium White Sand and Barcelo Maya Grand Resort, both of which are also multi-hotel complexes with shared facilities, and the honest differentiator here is Playa Paraíso itself rather than the rooms or the waterslides. Anyone whose trip hinges on slides and a lazy river should book Paraíso Lindo or Paraíso Maya Suites in the same complex instead, and anyone who mostly wants the beach, the reef snorkeling and quick access to Playa del Carmen is in the right place.
Common Questions
What is the difference between Iberostar Waves Paraíso del Mar and Paraíso Beach?
Can I use the water park and lazy river at the Iberostar Paraíso complex?
How do I avoid the vacation club sales presentations?
How bad is the sargassum here?
Is Iberostar Waves Paraíso del Mar good for families?
What extra costs should I budget beyond the all-inclusive rate?
Restaurants (12)
| Type | Restaurants |
|---|---|
| Buffet | La Plaza Buffet, El Mercado Buffet, El Puerto Buffet Restaurant, El Faro buffet |
| Mexican | La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant |
| Italian | Trattoria El Faro |
| Teppanyaki / hibachi | Hashiru Teppanyaki |
| French | El Colonial French Restaurant |
| Mediterranean & Spanish | La Dorada Mediterranean Restaurant |
| Brazilian churrascaria | El Rodizio Brazilian restaurant |
| American & grill | Smoke House, Burger Box |
From the resort's own dining pages. Only restaurants the resort lists are shown. All are covered by the all-inclusive rate, per the resort.
What's nearby
30 min drive · 19 mi
25 min drive · 15 mi
Playa Mamitas25 min drive · 14 mi
25 min drive · 18 mi
20 min drive · 9.5 mi
Xcalacoco Beach20 min drive · 11 mi
More things to do (20)
- Xenses · adventure park30 min drive · 18 mi
- Xoxi Cancún · adventure park30 min drive · 19 mi
- Croco Cun Zoo · wildlife13 min drive · 9.8 mi
- Playa 88 · beach20 min drive · 13 mi
- Punta Esmeralda Beach · beach25 min drive · 12 mi
- Iberostar Playa Paraíso Golf Club · golf9 min drive · 1.3 mi
- Playa Maroma · beach13 min drive · 4.3 mi
- Puerto Morelos Botanical Garden · nature15 min drive · 7.8 mi
- Dr. Alfredo Barrera Marín Botanical Garden · nature15 min drive · 7.8 mi
- El Camaleón Golf Course · golf20 min drive · 9.0 mi
- Puerto Morelos Town Square and Malecón · town20 min drive · 9.5 mi
- Leaning Lighthouse of Puerto Morelos · historic site20 min drive · 9.5 mi
- Museo del Chocolate · museum20 min drive · 14 mi
- Parque La Ceiba · nature25 min drive · 14 mi
- Frida Kahlo Museum Playa del Carmen · museum25 min drive · 14 mi
- Playa del Carmen Fifth Avenue · town25 min drive · 14 mi
- Voladores de Papantla (Parque Fundadores) · historic site25 min drive · 14 mi
- Xplor · adventure park30 min drive · 18 mi
- Cenote Chaak Tun · cenote30 min drive · 16 mi
- Delphinus Riviera Maya · adventure park35 min drive · 19 mi
Amenities
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Style & Rooms
Atmosphere
Room upgrades
Seaweed & sargassum
Playa del Carmen gets sargassum, typically worst May through August.See the month-by-month guide →Google Reviews★ 4.8 · 11,410 reviews
“Our family visit to Iberostar Waves Paraiso Del Mar has been fantastic. The service is impeccable. As soon as we arrived, Carolina was part of the team that greeted us (she was welcoming and chatted with the teenagers while we checked in) and she,...”
“This is a good all inclusive resort. The kids loved the various pools. They are exceedingly fantastic catering for guests with food allergies. The restaurants quality of food was mixed. Must get a reservation at the Japanese restaurant - not just goo...”
“I came here to meet my best friend and celebrate my birthday! This was the biggest resort I've been to. The location is close to the cancun airport, 35min. Everything was great, the views, room, food, service you name it. We only ate at the buffet...”
