The main beach (Playa Caribe, p. 126) is looking much better–deeper sand, fewer rocks. But I would still advise against staying directly on the beach, except for a couple of specific hotels. With the real estate situation in Playa so feverish, it appears that many older beach hotels are letting maintenance slide while waiting for some great buyout deal to come along. No matter how slick a website a hotel has, the reality can be pretty stark.
Also, condo construction is continuing apace–not even the north side of town (north of C 20 or so) is particularly quiet anymore, and in fact this is where a lot of new buildings are going up. And no sign of it dying down, so be prepared for noise from all this as well.
