There are plenty of options to get from the Cancun airport to the hotel zone – bus, taxi, rental car, shared shuttle, private transfer. We wanted to book private transportation ahead of time and there was no shortage of companies available. Nothing screams US tourist like booking with a company called USA Transfers, but they had well over 6,000 five star google reviews so we went ahead and booked them despite the name.
It was really easy to make a reservation online through their website. I just entered our hotel, travel dates and times, the number of passengers, and selected a Private Regular Van. The cost was $95 roundtrip.
The communication was good – I immediately got a confirmation, receipt, and instructions. I will say that I continued to get more emails from them trying to upsell their services. First it was just basic options like drink packages and/or a stop at a grocery store. Then it started to get a little silly: Tequila Van, Mexican Van, Romantic Van. But it was easy enough to ignore the emails and they never pressured for us to upgrade in person.
They gave clear instructions in an email about how to find their driver. We had to leave the airport through the Tour Operator – Hotel Shuttle exit and find their staff members in the company uniform and baseball cap. For security reasons they do not hold up a sign with your name, and they warned us not to fall for scams of people claiming to be our driver or stating that USA Transfers isn’t there but they can take us instead. We did hear a few people try similar strategies on older travelers but nobody approached us. The company representative was easy to identify.
We found the representative and gave him our name. He said our shuttle would be there in 5-10 minutes. Apparently they just have a constantly running fleet of vans arriving at the airport and as soon as a passenger arrives, they call the next one to come pick them up. There were two groups who had arrived ahead of us so it was more like 15 minutes before a van pulled up for us but it wasn’t too bad of a wait. I was initially surprised that we hadn’t been assigned a specific driver and van who was waiting for us since we provided all of our arrival details, but the airport does not have an area where drivers can park and wait so their system seems to work well enough.
The van was large, newer, and clean. The driver was friendly. The trip was quick too, at only about 20 minutes to the Hilton Cancun Mar Caribe.
The return was even easier, as pickup from the hotel is a pre-assigned driver and van. By luck of the draw, we had an upgraded van on the way back to the airport, which was nice but not something I would have paid extra for since the regular van was quite nice. In any event, he showed up on time, was friendly, and got us to the airport quickly. (I actually think their suggested pickup time was too early because we had a lot of time to kill in the airport, but I understand that there is a good amount of construction near the airport which can sometimes make the trip much longer. Better safe than sorry!)
We would definitely recommend USA Transfers. They were easy to book, reasonably priced, and had clean, comfortable vans and friendly drivers.
