If, like me, you are somewhat sceptical of beach resorts as a concept of travel, then you will also find yourself completely moved on arrival at Maroma along Mexico’s Riviera Maya in Yucatan. This is no ordinary beach resort, rather an elegant, white-painted, stucco-fronted hacienda deep through the jungle on a prime patch of the Caribbean Sea. It feels well loved and lived in, like a family home shared for generations, and peels back its layers as you meander through the entrance and into the candlelit gardens that unravel around a perfect swimming pool with glimpses of the turquoise sea beyond, gently breaking onto the sugary sand.
The story here dates back to the 1970s, when the Mexican architect Jose Luis Moreno found the virgin beach 25 miles south of Cancun, which was then empty of the resorts that now line its shores and only backed by coconut plantations. He was so taken by the mesmerising blues, he decided to build a small house for his family and friends here, until visitors outgrew beds and the idea to upsize into a hotel became apparent just over a decade later. Fast-forward to 2002, when the owner of Belmond, then Orient-Express Hotels, was so captivated by its beauty he decided to take it under his wings.
Having largely been left as it had been found, for Maroma’s reincarnation and their biggest undertaking since being acquired by LVMH in 2018, Belmond brought in the interior designer Tara Bernerd to update the interiors with her contemporary flair, while keeping the bones of the buildings intact. ‘When I first visited in 2016, I was so enchanted by the place – I felt I walked into the most beautiful home,’ Tara says. ‘It has a rather seductive and glamorous past, yet its style and scale allows it not to be over daunting.’
It is apparent that Moreno’s influence still breathes through the walls. Continuing his work with local Mayan craftspeople, Tara and her team have called upon ceramicists, weavers, wood carvers and artists from Guadelejara to Merida for the symphony of designs that delight at every turn. Despite largely being referred to, so the designer herself puts it, as ‘bold, handsome and confident’ in her approach, Maroma tempted a softer side than the schemes she creates for big players such as Four Seasons and Rosewood Hotels: ‘This brought out a very pretty side in me where I was able to flirt and play with so much pattern.’
Indeed, the interiors are not shy of this, drawing upon shapes, symbols, colours and motifs typical of Mayans, who have inhabited the Yucatan for over two millennia. Most immediate to the eye are the jovial hand-painted tiles that cover the walls and floors across the rooms and two dining spaces – about 700,000 of them, in fact, designed by Tara’s studio and made over the course of three years in Guadalajara by Cerámica Suro. Headed by Jose Noe Suro, who has put his family business on the map since taking the helm, its collaborations with artists around the world have landed their designs in the likes of the Guggenheim and public art installations in Los Angeles, New York and Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa.
The same goes for the rich mosaic of pattern on the upholstery, subtly referencing Mayan temples nearby, and in the greens, blues and yellows of the Yucatan’s jungles and cenotes. ‘But I didn’t want this to feel themed,’ Tara is quick to make clear. ‘We are pulling on Mayan culture, we are looking at the traditional clothes of the ladies and the richness of colour and use of embroidery, but I didn’t want to be faux.’
This subtlety and care manifests itself on the hand-carved beach and pool loungers made from Tzalam wood in Guadalajara by Luis Ernesto Morales and his team at Tables & More. The beading on a cluster of pendant lights from Merida in Woodend, a grill by Michelin-starred chef Curtis Stone – the international counterpart to the Mexican restaurant Casa Mayor. The hand-painted oversize ceramic vases at the foot of a curved staircase to bedrooms by Cermica Suro, colour tested time and again to perfect their soft, brushed finish. It is these details that exude the feeling that everything has lived here and been used well for a time.
Even the particular murky green-blue hue of the pool has been considered to resemble that of local cenotes – an underground network of over 6,000 swimmable sinkholes connected by hundreds of cave systems. ‘On that first arrival, seeing that vista of the pool through to the sea, we knew we had to make an oasis of it,’ Tara says. It is this first impression that enthrals as you come to realise you’ve found somewhere special, in a sea of blues above and below, away from all the noise. belmond.com
