Las Brisas Resort, Acapulco: A Hotel with Glitz, Glam, and Resilience

The moment I walked into my room at the Hotel Las Brisas in Acapulco, Mexico, my jaw hit the floor. In general, we live in a world that isn’t suitable for six foot six people such as myself, but everything about this hotel felt like it was built just for someone like me.

Private Pool? Oh YES!!!

The hotel itself consists of a number of little pink and white casitas strung up a mountainside. The resort spreads out so much that you can’t walk to your room from the lobby unless you have one of the rooms toward the bottom of the hill. If you don’t have a car, no stress. The hotel has a number of small jeeps, each named after a celebrity who has stayed on the property before, that will cart you around wherever you need to go on the premises.

Greeted with a pink frozen margarita to match the hotel’s coloration, we hopped onto Denzel Washington. The increasingly expansive view of Acapulco captured our attention as we rode up the hill on the mountain.

Acapulco has a long horseshoe bay that lets you see the bulk of what it has to offer in the downtown area. Though some of the view from Las Brisas itself may face you south of the town and looking more toward Puerto Marques.

In my room, a little care package sat on the bed to welcome me, complete with a Las Brisas sun hat. That hat that has come in handy several times in the short amount of time I’ve had it.

I was here on invite from the Cross Border Xpress via Volaris to attend the Tianguis Turistico 2024 event, so I was among a group who was sponsored to be there.

Las Brisas Amenities

Sponsored or not, each casita comes with a personalized hand-painted sign outside to declare/remind you which one is yours. Within the room, a nice king bed rested in the middle and promised to fit me with no qualms.

In the bathroom, the stone shower had a rain shower head and a jacuzzi-sized bathtub. The open feel inside of it with the glass ceiling to add extra brightness officially made it the best shower I’ve ever had in my life.

Besides the amenities inside the room, the bulk of the casitas — mine included — have their own private pool. Just perfect during a hot and humid day in this tropical paradise. There’s nothing quite like popping a cold beer, getting into your personal pool on the top of a mountainside, and overlooking an ocean that meets a city at the bottom of the mountain’s ridge.

At the bottom of the hill, there is also a swimming lagoon and a community pool for the whole hotel that can be reached by jeep and shuttle services from the hotel. And, of course, the Resort offers relaxing spa services and treatments to rejuvenate you during your stay.

Hurricane Otis

For the most part, Las Brisas is actually one of the lucky ones when it comes to the destruction caused by Hurricane Otis at the end of 2023. In case you’re unfamiliar, Otis hit Acapulco at 1:25 a.m. on October 25 as a Category 5 storm with upward of 165 mph winds. 

The Night of the Hurricane

According to Ricardo Suarez, the General Manager of Las Brisas, the city was told about the hurricane in advance but didn’t have time to prepare for what it ultimately became. On October 24, at 11 a.m., the authorities classified Otis as a tropical storm. It had become a Category 3 by the afternoon. By 5 p.m., a Category 4. As one of the fastest-intensifying hurricanes on record that gained 105 mph speeds within 12 hours, no one was fully prepared for the mass chaos that ensued once it hit.

As for the guests at Las Brisas at the time, Suarez told me they gave everybody extra pillows and blankets and told them to stay in their bathrooms and avoid any windows. The crew had fortunately cleaned out all of the coconuts from the palm trees prior to the hurricane being a blip on the radar, which helped avoid the flying bullets they would have become had they still been there. Once all of the guests were safe and taken care of, the staff gathered together in the kitchen and waited.

“It was two hours of hell,” Suarez said of the event. “Once it hit, it just kept going. There was no eye, just two hours of chaos with the wind and we could hear the windows breaking, the roof getting torn off, everything.”

Since the hurricane happened overnight and there was no power to see anything, they waited until just after 6 a.m. before they emerged, trusting that the hours that had passed proved it was actually over. What it left in its wake was a skeleton of the city. Still to this day, some of the towering skyscrapers have no windows, dangling balconies, and unsafe infrastructure. Homes are destroyed, trees are still knocked over, and with 95% of the city impacted by the storm, they have a lot of work to do before they return it to its former glory.

A Community Rebuilds Together

That said, the city came together to get things cleaned up in a shining story of the power of community. For Las Brisas, the owner of the hotel and subsequent hotel chain decided their insurance money wasn’t enough and fronted the bill to make sure everything in every room was brand new. They had to replace all of the windows and the roofing, repaint, and essentially rebuild from the ground up.

Fortunately, no one on the Las Brisas staff payed too much attention to the usual “roles” as far as management goes and put equal heart and effort into bringing it back to life. With their combined efforts, they were able to reopen the hotel within 58 days of the destruction. During that time, they housed staff members who had lost their homes. Immediately following the hurricane, officials in the city prioritized hotels first so people could have a place to say, as well as restaurants and grocery stores so people could have places to eat.

Apart from the carcasses of the destroyed buildings that still act as a reminder of what happened, for the most part, you wouldn’t have any idea that such an insane natural disaster occurred on the property of the Hotel Las Brisas. It is amazing how fast it has gotten itself back up and running.

Eating and Drinking at Las Brisas

If you stay here, there are plenty of things for you to do outside of lounging in your pool. There’s the Bellavista restaurant on site that offers a buffet for breakfast and a sit-down dinner in the evening. At the bar you can sip cocktails and enjoy the twinkling lights from the city below you.

For the best views, check out the Sunset Bar, one of the most stunning spots on the property. It is open daily for three hours around sunset. The views over the Pacific Ocean seem endless, and the sunsets are always a tad more special with a cocktail in hand, right?

There’s also the La Concha Restaurant for those looking for afternoon and lunch options. It also offers a panoramic scope of Acapulco. There’s also access to a secluded beach, though it takes a bit of work to get yourself down there.

In the morning, if you want to eat without all the fuss of getting a jeep to get down to the restaurant, you simply call down to the lobby and request your complimentary breakfast to be delivered up to your room. This is just a continental option that comes with some pastries, fruit, and your own pot of coffee.

The best part is the delivery, though. There is a little “Drop Box” that you can access from the outside and the inside, so the delivery staff just drops it off, and you can grab your breakfast whenever you need it. That way, you can get ready in the morning without disruption by room service.

Final Verdict

Regardless of what you do, the Hotel Las Brisas should be at the top of your list when you consider places to stay in Acapulco. Even if you’re not usually a fan of resorts, this will be one of the rare occasions where you’ll hardly want to leave your hotel. Book your stay here>>

Andrew J. Stillman wrote this review for San Diego Explorer. As customary in travel writing, the resort provided the stay and experiences free of charge. This has not influenced their opinion and the content of this article.

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