OpenTable Names 5 Quintana Roo Restaurants Among Mexico’s Top 25 Hotel Dining Spots

CANCÚN, Quintana Roo — Five hotel restaurants in Quintana Roo have been named to OpenTable’s 2026 list of the Top 25 Hotel Restaurants in Mexico, underscoring how much dining has become part of the travel decision for visitors choosing where to stay.

The selected Quintana Roo restaurants are Gustino Italian Grill at JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa, Ha’ at Hotel Xcaret México, KENGAI at Conrad Tulum Riviera Maya, María Dolores at ATELIER Playa Mujeres and Toro at The St. Regis Kanai Resort, Riviera Maya. OpenTable said the list highlights hotel restaurants around which travelers may choose to build an itinerary, rather than treating dining as an afterthought once a room is booked.

The platform’s consumer research found that 59 percent of Mexican travelers say restaurants or local gastronomy influence the destination they choose for a summer trip, while 66 percent have booked a hotel specifically because of its restaurant. The survey was conducted among 1,000 Mexico residents who had dined at a hotel restaurant within the previous five years, according to OpenTable’s methodology.

The recognition is especially relevant for Quintana Roo, where hotels have long competed on beaches, pools, spas and all-inclusive packages. Increasingly, they are also competing on restaurants capable of attracting not only guests, but outside diners, food-focused travelers and locals looking for a special occasion meal.

OpenTable’s Mexico list includes hotel restaurants across Baja California, Los Cabos, Mexico City, Jalisco and Quintana Roo. For the Mexican Caribbean, the five selections reflect a range of resort dining concepts, from fine dining and contemporary Mexican cuisine to Italian, Japanese and Latin American cooking.

Quintana Roo Restaurants on the List

Gustino Italian Grill, at JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa, represents Cancún’s Hotel Zone on the list. The restaurant is part of the JW Marriott’s dining program and is known as the property’s Italian dining venue. Marriott’s Cancún restaurant guide lists Gustino among the dining options serving guests at the resort complex.

Ha’, at Hotel Xcaret México, is one of the region’s most recognized fine-dining restaurants. The Michelin Guide describes Ha’ as a restaurant with a French influence shaped by chef Carlos Gaytán’s training, while still making confident use of Mexican flavors and ingredients. Hotel Xcaret identifies Ha’ as a signature restaurant by Gaytán, the first Mexican chef to earn a Michelin star.

KENGAI, at Conrad Tulum Riviera Maya, gives the list a Tulum-area entry focused on Japanese cuisine. Conrad Tulum describes its restaurants as drawing from a wide range of global influences, including elevated interpretations of Japanese bar food, North African flavors and Mexican coastal cooking.

María Dolores, at ATELIER Playa Mujeres, is led by chef Edgar Núñez and focuses on contemporary seasonal Mexican cuisine. The restaurant’s own description emphasizes endemic Mexican ingredients, while the Michelin Guide describes the menu as contemporary Mexican, with à la carte offerings and a signature tasting menu.

Toro, at The St. Regis Kanai Resort, Riviera Maya, is led by chef Richard Sandoval. The restaurant describes itself as an elevated but approachable expression of Latin cooking without borders, while St. Regis and Kanai dining materials identify it as a venue focused on Mexico and broader Latin American flavors.

Why Hotel Restaurants Matter More Now

For years, hotel restaurants were often treated as convenient but secondary, the place guests ate when they did not want to leave the property. That has changed, especially in resort destinations where travelers may plan an entire evening around a chef, tasting menu, wine pairing or hard-to-book reservation.

OpenTable’s numbers suggest that dining has become part of the hotel-selection process itself. Instead of booking the room first and deciding where to eat later, a growing number of travelers are reversing the order: choosing a restaurant experience, then selecting the hotel around it.

That trend fits the Riviera Maya particularly well. Many high-end resorts now use signature restaurants as part of their identity, bringing in well-known chefs, building destination dining rooms and promoting tasting menus, wine pairings and regional ingredients alongside beach access and spa offerings.

It also gives hotels another way to reach people who may not be staying overnight. Some fine-dining venues inside resort properties accept outside reservations, turning a hotel restaurant into a stand-alone culinary destination.

OpenTable Pushes AI Dining Discovery

OpenTable also used the announcement to promote the evolution of Concierge, its AI-powered dining assistant. The tool is designed to help users ask questions about restaurants and move from discovery to booking, using restaurant data such as menus, reviews and descriptions.

The company says it works with more than 65,000 restaurants worldwide and helps fill approximately 1.9 billion seats annually, giving it significant influence over how diners discover restaurants and how restaurants reach travelers.

For destinations like Cancún, Playa Mujeres, Tulum and the Riviera Maya, that kind of visibility matters. A restaurant’s presence on booking platforms, AI tools, travel guides and curated lists can help shape where visitors decide to eat, and in some cases, where they decide to stay.

The OpenTable list is not the same as a critic’s award or a Michelin ranking. It is a platform-driven guide based on dining trends, reservations, consumer behavior and hotel-restaurant positioning. Still, for Quintana Roo, the result is another sign that the region’s resort dining scene has moved well beyond buffet lines and beach snacks.

For travelers, it means the hotel restaurant may now be one of the main reasons to book the trip. For local resorts, it means the dinner table has become one more front in the competition for high-value visitors.