Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita

Cancun and the international airport are less than 20-minutes’ drive away, yet this opulent hotel on a quiet, secluded white-sand beach feels a world away.

Most Riviera Maya hotels are big blocky resorts or toes-in-the-sand casitas. But with its stately terracotta Paraiso feels like a millionaire’s hacienda. Long open-sided corridors are decked out with antiques collected from Asia and the Americas, including a panoply of Balinese stone lions and temple carvings from India.

Suites are plush and vast and divided into a bedroom, sitting area, a terrace with a beautiful ocean view and a bathroom with a plunge pool-sized square stone tub, filled by a tap in the shape of a lion’s head, carved from a single rock. The pool is huge, the Thalasso spa is superb and the hotel has a choice of great restaurants.