Barcelo Bavaro Palace Deluxe - All Inclusive

We booked this hotel at the last minute through an online representative. We had not stayed at a Barcelo before but have experienced "all-inclusives" before. Hotel is in a great location and is the first "drop off" from the airport. We upgraded to the "Club Premium" upon registration to get ocean view rooms and were not disappointed. Hotel is huge and even with high occupancy does not feel crowded. There is no scramble for chairs/lounges at the beach or pool in the morning. The decor and fixtures have a "European" feel to it but there are a few signs of aging as well. Staff is friendly but you have to know a bit of Spanish to communicate anything complex. Buffet food is very good and is the best I have had so far among "all-inclusives". My wife was very pleased with their Spa services too. Among negatives, expect a few wailing kids at beach/buffet. The "adults-only" section did not look very promising. Parts of the beach are unusable as there is too much "seaweed" underneath. Wi-Fi is spotty and unusable in most instances.

Great days with my wife. We experienced all the amenities. The multiple choices of good food and entertaining were more than enough to cut off the daily stress.

I had one of the best trips ever, aside from the food quality that needs a little improvement, it was aces in my book, I will recommend upgrading to the club premuim, you pay $30 and you get a $45 bottle of Rum and a $30 free dinner at the French restaurant, great place!!!!!

The club premium staff were very professional and friendly. However i was not pleased with the photographer who took us to saona island. I purchased the video and photos, CD AND DVD but i didnt see any of the pictures we took at the beach. Benson, our tour guide was fantastic, he did a great job. Room service was not punctual, i missed my breakfast twice because they took too long, 45 to an hour wait time. That was unacceptable for a five star resort. But overall, the resort is beyond greatness. Andy, the rep from cheap tickets was fantastic.

My wife and I stayed here for 8 days in 12/2012. Overall the hotel is great, the beach is perfect and clean, the nightly entertainment is good, the food is average for an all-inclusive. Hotel: The hotel/resort is huge. The best part is that the resort is setup so that it is spread out wide so that you are always close to the beach, rather than stretching inland. The grounds were incredibly clean our entire stay, which was surprising knowing how busy the hotel was. The art and architecture are modern, the landscaping is fantastic and makes you feel like you're on a tropical vacation even when you can't see the beach. There are multiple pools and tons of chairs around them. There are also multiple bars both in the lobby and at the beach/pool area. My one and only complaint is that 90% of the staff speaks absolutely no English at all. Beach: The beach is great. The water is calm even when the weather was very windy. The water is clear, clean and many people were snorkeling right off of the shoreline. The resort has kayaks,paddleboats and windsurfing equipment setup right on the beach for guests. The beach stretches forever and we never had any problem finding open chairs at any time of the day. The beach was very clean also, and the grounds crew came through at least once every day to clean up any seaweed that washed up. There are a lot of palm trees on this beach which offer retreat from the sun, but they also tended to impede our efforts to be in the sun once afternoon hit. Food: Let me start this off by saying that my wife and I are pretty simple people, and by no means food snobs. The buffet is pretty good, but it does not change. The buffet had the same items on it for the entire 8 days we were there. This probably wouldn't have been an issue but the restaurants were not good. We went to the Japanese restaurant first, and it was OK. It's a hibachi style restaurant like Benihana's. The food was decent, but everything was overcooked and kind of bland. Next we went to the steakhouse, which was not good. The steaks were greasy and tough and the sides were cold. Next we tried the seafood restaurant. Our appetizer soups (clam chowder and lobster stew) were kind of a joke, pretty sure they were condensed soup from a can, the kind you add water to. Neither soup had anything in it except watery, slightly grittty broth. Both of our meals were fish which was overcooked by about a day, and completely unseasoned. We actually walked out of that meal after one bite of our entrees. We decided to give the Italian restaurant a shot on our last night there. Same results. So overall, we ate the buffet a lot because a few of the restaurants were inedible. Entertainment: The hotel has nightly shows at 10 pm in than open air amphitheater. The amphitheater and the shows are great. Both levels of the theater have bars and wait staff that do an excellent job. Our favorite show was the Michael Jackson concert. The casino is great also, had 2 TX hold-em poker tables running, slots, blackjack, roulette. There is also a nightclub that we didn't go to but was very busy every night. There is plenty of shopping at the hotel and an 18 hole golf course that looked to be in immaculate condition. If it weren't for the poor experiences we had at the restaurants, this would easily have been a 5-star review. Aside from that negative, we loved this hotel and had an excellent vacation.

Hotel was nice enough. Pretty big . Food quality was terrible even ala carte restaurants wasnt that great. Stuff was nice and very helpfull. Rooms are little tight and bugs around. Especially if u forget something sweet outside u get ants right away.

The ameneties are great, the location good, the beach is nice, but they need to expand their staff people attending the Buffets during the rush hours,for example we expended a lot of time trying to get coffee, napkins and cutlery from the waiters that's not good. On the other hand the room was nice and clean but had a lot of ants at the bathroom. I can give 4 stars to this hotel but in my next travel to Punta Cana I'll give a chance to Hard Rock Cafe.

Lets start with the PROs: Great location, beautiful beaches, great amenities (pool, water sports, decor) and clean tap water. CONs: At check in the front desk staff was rude and disorganized. We pre-reqested a handicapped accessible room for my 92 yo grandmother and they stuck us on the 2nd floor. When showing us to the room, the porter said "it's not too many steps." Completely inappropriate for my grandmother to ascend. They gave us a 2nd room but it was already occupied! The third room was finally a 1st floor room, not too far from the main bldg. Next, when my grandmother couldnt walk too much they refused to lend us a wheelchair... they said we needed reservations- my husband waited for almost 45 min, when there were a line of 30 empty wheelchairs sitting there! then they said, thats $30/day! what discrimination! And the towel person would only give us 2 towels, even through we were 3 people and argued about how mnany people were in our room... the restaurant reservations were hard to get and the lines were incredibly long- only two reps for dozens of people trying to arrange their meals... And the food left much to be desired anyway. The restaurants were duplicates of the buffets with less choices (except for the Japanese, which was the hardest to get into).The italian restaurant wait staff were vaccomodating. The night before we were scheduled to leave, I tried to call the taxi svc to confirm pre-paid reservations and the front desk would not even make the local phone call for me. A 5 min endeavor took almost an hour of arguing and finally escalating to a manager! Overall, in this all-inclusive the staff just didnt seem to care since you were already captive. We travel abroad 2X/yr and wouldnt go back- there are many beautiful places on the coast of the DR> Try somewhere else!

Clean and comfortable. Not really able to use any of the resort credits because of the added expense in using them. A very large resort; making it a little difficult to get around depending on where your room is located on the property. Food was in abundance but average in a large buffet setting. Drinks were good and bartenders friendly. Make sure you bring money for tips. You will be tipping a lot. Overall, it was a very nice resort, especially if you like to golf. I guess if I had to do it again, I would probably look for a little smaller resort facility.

The hotel itself is very good. Beach and pools are fantastic. You always can find a bench along the beach or beside the pools. Swimming-up bar is very nice. Room is big enough for 2 of us. Basically, the room is clean and comfortable. A/C works very well. Ask for more towels or bottles of water, sent within reasonable time. Food is so so, just so so. Lots of choice in the buffet, but tastes are not good. Fine dinner is not better than buffet. Seafood is too old. Beef in Japanese restaurant is also very old. Steakhouse is ok. Italian restaurant is better than average. The best is Hoyo 19 in golf course area and you don't need reservation. The stuff is the worst part of this hotel. In restaurant, they don't serve you promptly, you have to call several times to bring their attention. The service is very slow in fine dinning restaurant. We have to wait 2 hours to finish a 3-course dinner. We did tip in every restaurant and every morning in the room. It didn't help a lot. Anyway, this is a good resort. It worth the money.