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How do you turn a big beach resort with 299 rooms into a high-service luxury hotel? You make a hotel within a hotel. For the JW Marriott Los Cabos, that means one section called The Griffin Club that’s more exclusive and comes with more perks.
The JW Marriott Los Cabos Beach Resort and Spa opened the year before last, but there’s been such a flurry of new resort openings in the region at the bottom of the Baja Peninsula that we’ve had to visit three times in the past year in order to keep up. One of those slated new openings, Ritz-Carlton Reserve Los Cabos, keeps getting pushed back, but its sister JW Marriott next door is going strong.
This is already a terrific beach hotel, even putting the Griffin Club aside, but if you’re a picky luxury traveler that wants a higher level of service and the feeling you’re not in a mega-resort, this sectioned-off area with its own lounge and pool gives you the best of both worlds. You get all the normal restaurants, bars, and activities every guest has access to, but a lot on top that they don’t. First though, let’s take a tour of the whole place, with a little about the hotel within a hotel at the end.
As you can see from that, this JW Marriott is not a predictable business hotel and the architectural design is striking. Plus while it feels large in scale, it seldom feels crowded. This is thanks in part to the huge beach it faces that can make you feel like a little ant, especially when big whales are moving by between December and April.
Also though, there are multiple swimming pools with lounge chairs scattered throughout the property, from two facing the ocean (one for adults, one not) and several cascading down the different levels from the top to the bottom. Then there are another two pools in the spa: one for laps, one for hydrotherapy.
On top of that though, the Griffin Club guests at this JW Marriott have their own large swimming pool and hot tub. This requires a wave of the embossed black card to get in. There you find double the attendants of the regular pools, all ready to snatch a drink that’s included. Some of those are available all day, after an included breakfast in the private lounge. Then throughout the day different snacks are set out. Toward the end of the day a variety of white whine, red wine, and rosé comes out, along with quality bottles of liquor for ordering a cocktail.
You also have a butler on call to help with what you need, there’s a separate quiet lounge one level up with a Nespresso machine and coffee table books, plus there’s a game room with pool tables in this section. Another big perk is that Griffin Club guests get full access to the spa to enjoy the sauna, steam room, cold plunge, and whirlpool, plus the hydrotherapy circuit outside. Regular guests have to book a treatment to enjoy this access.
Sure, you’re going to pay an upgrade premium for all this, but rates at this JW Marriott won’t make you gasp in disbelief like some of the other Los Cabos luxury resorts will. Even the excellent Cafe des Artistes restaurant—one of the best in the whole region—has a final tab on par with Los Angeles instead of menu prices that will make you think everything should be covered in gold leaf.
The resort is rather hush-hush about this upgrade option, so you have to pull up a designated room category online or call to ask how much the difference is. If you are the kind that likes to splurge to feel special, but doesn’t want to sell off a BMW to do it though, this resort inside a resort is a great choice.
Source: luxurylatinamerica.com
