If you are shopping the upper end of the Riviera Maya, Mayakoba and Kanai will probably both end up on your list. We’ve stayed at both, and while they look similar on paper, they create very different trips.
Mayakoba feels established, expansive, and mature. Kanai feels newer, more architectural, and more concentrated. Both let you move beyond your own hotel for dinner or other experiences, but that movement feels different in practice.
At Mayakoba, the development itself is part of the vacation. At Kanai, the individual hotel still shapes the stay more strongly, even though the resorts are physically closer and surprisingly easy to move between.
- Mayakoba: Established, lush, and built around a mature resort ecosystem. Four distinct hotels, canals, boats, golf, trails, restaurants, and enough shared infrastructure that Mayakoba itself becomes part of the trip.
- Kanai: Newer, more architectural, and still growing. The resorts sit closer together, and in our experience it is easier to move between them by coordinated golf cart for dining or other experiences. The individual hotel identity matters more.
- The real difference: Mayakoba asks which version of Mayakoba you want. Kanai asks which hotel personality fits you.
What each development actually is
Mayakoba
Mayakoba has had time to become itself. The vegetation is mature, the canals and lagoons define how you move through the development, and the shared dining, golf, bikes, boats, and resort infrastructure make it feel like a destination rather than simply an address shared by several hotels.
The four properties are Rosewood Mayakoba, Banyan Tree Mayakoba, Fairmont Mayakoba, and Alila Mayakoba. They are meaningfully different from one another, but they all participate in a larger Mayakoba ecosystem.
Kanai
Kanai is still the newer name in this comparison. It does not yet have Mayakoba’s decades of name recognition, but that is changing quickly.
The development is newer, more visibly architectural, and much more concentrated. St. Regis, EDITION, and Etéreo sit close enough that moving between them for dinner is easy, with golf-cart transportation coordinated between the properties.
Kanai describes itself as a 680-acre masterplan with only about nine percent of the land given over to buildings and roads, with the rest kept as jungle and protected mangrove. That ratio is the point. There is far more open space and greenery here than the hotel count would suggest.
The mangroves are protected, and they are red mangrove, which leaches tannins into the water and turns it a deep rust colour. First-time guests sometimes assume something is wrong with it. Nothing is. That is what a healthy red mangrove system looks like, and it is one of the more genuinely distinctive things about staying here.
Kanai is also still growing: Mandarin Oriental Kanai, Riviera Maya is planned for 2028 and will add another luxury resort along with branded residences.
The three Kanai hotels: EDITION, St. Regis and Etéreo
This is the part most comparisons skip, and it is the part that actually decides your trip. The three Kanai properties are not variations on a theme. They are three different holidays.
St. Regis Kanai
Best for: families. The most natural family fit at Kanai. A kids club, a family pool, connecting-room options, and St. Regis’s more structured service model, including butler service across room categories.
It is also the most traditional of the three. St. Regis keeps its brand rituals here, afternoon tea and the evening sabrage, the ceremonial opening of a champagne bottle with a sabre. If that sounds charming to you, it is. If it sounds like a lot, that tells you something too.
If we were choosing Kanai with children, St. Regis would be our first look.
The Riviera Maya EDITION at Kanai
Best for: singles, couples, and a definite baecation. This is the sexier, more social Kanai choice. Design is a much bigger part of the identity, with a dramatic pool, beach club, bars, restaurants, and a contemporary, minimalist feel throughout.
It is EDITION’s first property in the Caribbean and its first in Mexico. Architecture is by Edmonds International, with interiors from the Ian Schrager Company working with Rockwell Group, and the buildings sit on stilts above a mangrove forest so water can still move underneath. It also holds what the hotel bills as the largest hotel penthouse in North America, a rooftop villa the property puts at 27,000 square feet.
The minimalism is offset by plants, and we mean a lot of them. There are well over a thousand pots placed around the property. Both the sunrise and the sunset are worth getting up or staying out for.
This is the one we’d choose for a baecation, an adults’ getaway, or a trip where the hotel itself should feel a little sexy.
Etéreo, Auberge Resorts Collection
Best for: couples, intimacy, wellness, and design. Etéreo feels smaller, quieter, and more intimate than the other two.
Etéreo is the Kanai choice when you want the trip to feel intimate, design-forward, and more inward-looking than social.
Side by side
Moving around is more different than you think
Mayakoba looks more interconnected on paper because the development is famous for its boats, canals, bikes, and shared infrastructure. It absolutely is interconnected. But it is also large.
Kanai surprised us in the opposite direction. The resorts are physically closer, and moving from one property to another for dinner can be as simple as having a golf cart coordinated between hotels. That makes cross-property dining feel unusually easy for a multi-resort development.
Who each development is actually for
Choose Mayakoba if
You want the larger development to be part of the vacation. You like the idea of boats, bikes, golf, and exploring beyond your hotel. You want the widest range of hotel styles and family configurations. Or this is a first luxury Riviera Maya trip and you want a very established ecosystem.
Choose Kanai if
You are choosing primarily based on the personality of the hotel. Contemporary design matters to you. You like being able to dine at neighboring luxury properties without a complicated transfer. Or you want something newer or less familiar than Mayakoba.
And within Kanai: EDITION, St. Regis or Etéreo
Families, St. Regis. Baecation, singles, and couples who want a social hotel, EDITION. Intimate couples, wellness, and design, Etéreo. We go through all three in detail, including room counts, kids clubs and what each one gets wrong, in a piece coming shortly.
What we’d actually book
Book dinner ahead. At both developments, reservations are strongly recommended, and that goes double if you plan to eat at a property other than your own.
The beach can be a walk. At both, your room may be farther from the sand than the photos suggest. Worth asking about placement before you book rather than after you arrive.
Check seaweed before you go. Conditions vary enormously by week and by beach. The Quintana Roo monitoring reports are the fastest way to see what is actually happening, and and our Riviera Maya seaweed season guide explains how the calendar has shifted. For how the wider coast compares, see where to stay in the Riviera Maya. We have also now stayed at and reviewed Banyan Tree Mayakoba, one of the four Mayakoba hotels.
The bottom line
Mayakoba is the easier choice if you want an established luxury destination where the larger development becomes part of the vacation. Kanai is the more interesting choice if you care deeply about the personality of the individual hotel and want something newer, more architectural, and still evolving.
And if you are choosing Kanai, the real decision is not simply Kanai versus Mayakoba. It is St. Regis versus EDITION versus Etéreo, because those three hotels create three very different trips.