There are a million reasons to visit a particular place in the world. One time I visited a New Mexico hotel simply because it once inspired the American novelist Willa Cather, and I drank a pint in an Oxford pub since it was mentioned in Jude the Obscure. But I’m a little less proud of the fact that I ended up at Playa Escondida, a hotel on Mexico’s Nayarit coast, because it was on a Bachelor reality show.

When the hotel opened in 2007 just outside of Sayulita, that town was best known to surfers looking for quiet reprieve from busy Puerto Vallarta. By the time the producers of Bachelor in Paradise chose Playa Escondida for its second season in 2014—it’s the noncompetitive hookup spinoff to The Bachelor—local tourism had begun to swell.

Last summer, I searched for a last-minute hotel around Sayulita, lured by a cheap plane fare. Stymied by online choice, I scrolled Reddit until I saw repeated recommendations for a place that hadn’t popped up on Expedia or Airbnb—just an independent hotel with 32 rooms and a lot of TV exposure.

I’d never seen Bachelor in Paradise, but a friend assured me that behind all the drunken revelry onscreen the location always looked gorgeous. Initially braced for something tacky, I was texting the word “amazing” to my group chat within minutes of arriving.

The name, meaning “hidden beach,” suits Playa Escondida well. Despite being about a mile outside of one of Mexico’s biggest Pacific Coast destinations, it has few sight lines to other structures. Natural rock formations and savvy construction mean that a visitor’s eye catches little other than crashing waves, thick vegetation, and the resort’s few beach cabanas.

Buildings are set into the hillside above a sandy beach, thatched roofs giving them a touch of kitsch. Curved walls and tiny staircases suggest treehouse shapes even though nothing is that far off the ground. Owner Diego Luna (not that Diego Luna) says construction was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright (which was not particularly apparent), and Antoni Gaudí, whose famed Barcelona designs have the same curvature.

Luna says he declined to meet with the Bachelor team when he was first approached in 2014, but he was eventually persuaded. For eight seasons, more than 300 camera operators, producers, and assistants would descend on Playa Escondida for up to two months in the rainy offseason, when crabs scurry across the short beach.

Contestants in bathing suits fought, kissed, and sobbed through confessional speeches while perched on the beachside loungers. In 2017, production screeched to a halt when one cast member was accused of on-set sexual assault. In short, a lot went down in this small cluster of rooms.

Every other guest I met in three days at Playa Escondida, from Canadian couples to a trio of American women, had been drawn by the Bachelor fame. In conversations at the central infinity pool, one said she wanted to meet a bartender who had been featured on the show. Everyone spoke of the show with self-deprecating laughter and eye rolls.

The property was quiet in June. While pedal pubs rolled down the streets of Sayulita past roving bachelorette parties and karaoke tunes spilled from open windows, the hotel itself was again sleepy. The only things that stirred late at night were the coatimundi, raccoon-like animals prone to scavenging for food.

Luna says that he was the one to ask the show to find a new filming location. Production moved to Costa Rica for 2025’s season 10, reportedly to a property with more air-conditioning. In 2024 Luna told The New York Times that the show’s hookup vibes weren’t anything like the hotel’s “concept.”

What remains feels like the platonic ideal of an adult’s vacation hotel. Nothing corporate or cookie-cutter, no loyalty club memberships or scuffles over lounge chairs. Despite some nods to Indigenous culture in room names and art pieces, the hotel’s whole effect tends toward the Disneyesque, as if the Enchanted Tiki Room matured into a honeymoon destination. The hotel limits children on property—too many steep drop-offs and grown-ups seeking escape. But in the pool, I did see one adult guest attempting handstands underwater, his feet framed by palm fronds.

One quiet day at the beach, the hotel’s lifeguard swam out among the surf to look for rock lobsters while his chocolate-brown bulldog waddled down the sand. He pawed at a boogie board bobbing in the waves, which crashed loud enough to cover the music from the empty beachside bar. Playa Escondida is firmly in its post-fame era, and it turns out that reality reliably beats reality television.