Hotel Basico has a brave concept consists of modeling the entire aesthetic on the industrial oil rigs of 1950 in Mexico. The structure is situated on Playa del Carmen‘s exclusive Fifth Avenue shopping and restaurant strip. The hotel offers rooms looking out onto a central mess hall-like restaurant area (best fish tacos in the ‘hood).

Above is a rooftop cocktail bar that includes luxurious cabanas made from the back of old trucks with inbuilt mattresses, two concrete petroleum tanks that serve as swimming pools. From the pools you can sip old-school margaritas and look down on the crowds below and out to the Caribbean. Breezy lounge music and handsome hotel staff waft the building.

Each room has exposed pipes with fire hydrant-style taps run along the walls. An industrial-strength bath and the king-sized, multi-purpose bed (perched on an elevated palate) sit in the middle of the room. Everything is exposed and raw; the toilet is the only thing in the room concealed. There are rubber curtains on the floor-to-ceiling window and pulley chain detailing throughout. The signage around the hotel references the typography of Mexican taxis from the 1950s. Superbly construction-worker chic!

Be sure to borrow the hotel snorkeling gear and visit the surrounding cenotes (underwater caverns teaming with colorful fish).