Maroma, A Belmond Hotel

Seventy-two rooms designed by Tara Bernerd on a private stretch of Riviera Maya beach, built in the 1970s as a beachside restaurant and expanded into a resort over time — making it one of the oldest and most intimate properties on the coast. Maroma predates the mega-resorts, and it shows — in the unhurried service, the hand-painted tiles, the sense that this beach belongs to the jungle, not the other way around. The spa is Maroma Spa by Guerlain, the first Guerlain spa in Latin America, drawing on Mayan tradition and the sacred Melipona bee.