Barceló Maya Grand Resort

Single-swim admission is not available to members of the general public, unless registered as guests at the hotel.

Registered guests: Free.

We've heard of one intrepid swimmer who was able to get 2,500 meters in before 8 AM every morning for two weeks. As with any resort, however, being able to swim in its pools is often a crap-shoot. If you can schedule your vacation between school holidays, you'll probably be safe.

Pools 2, 3, and 4 are spread across the property and are, indeed competition-style, in pure rectangular shape, with lane lines painted on the bottom, but no floating lane ropes (that we could see in the photographs).

This is a collection of six, separate, Barceló branded hotels with about fifteen large pools on one enormous property. We don't know whether access to all the pools is free to all guests registered at all six hotels but we can't see how cross-swimming could be controlled. Pool 1 is located at the adults-only Barceló Maya Riviera, so that might make invasion by kids difficult but, for adults, all of the pools are probably accessible to guests at all the hotels.