Barcelo Dominican Beach - All Inclusive

People spoke english only when they felt like it. Roof was under construction in main lobby and they didnt notify anyone. Staff unfriendly if you dont speak spanish. This hotel really needs a marketing person. Everything is all spread out on the resort which makes it large however the map is horrible and you cant find anything. You need reservations for almost everything, which you will find out when you try to eat anywhere but the buffet....and never pay what they ask for excursions. They will rip you off on the resort!

I traveled to Punta Cana with a friend in May 2009. We had a wonderful, relaxing time. This Barcelo resort is not located next to all the other Barcelo resorts (which appear to be a little nicer). It is about 5 miles down the road. We are both professionals in our 20s, and we had low expectations going into the trip, so the Barcelo Dominican Beach exceeded our expectations. If you are looking for a luxury resort, this would not meet your expectations. If you are looking for a cheap vacation with sun and fruity drinks, then this is your place. The resort was very well kept. The grass, trees, and flowers were gorgeous. The beach was clean and good to walk up and down. It was sunny every day, and rained almost every night, but that was no real problem. Make sure to put on a lot of sunscreen!!! Both of us applied sunscreen twice a day and still got sunburnt. The pool and swim-up bar were our favorite places at the resort. We tended to stay there all day. The drinks are fun. I recommend trying as many different ones as possible. If you get to know the bartenders, they are really cool and will make you lots of different drinks. We didn't do too many activities, but there were a lot going on and people looked like they were having fun. The food was just ok, but we weren't expecting it to be great. The buffet was fine. The Japanese and Italian restaurants were quite good, but the Spanish restaurant was not impressive. The staff is very friendly and helpful. After a few days, they will recognize and remember you. A caution to females, the male employees will be very friendly, but that just appears to be their nature.

This resort can not be beat for the price. The food is great and the daily drink of the day were very smooth.The beach and grounds are clean and pretty. It feels like being in PARIDISE. The children had activities and were not in the adults way. You could see them performed at night if you wanted to see them. The casino is small and not a lot of action, it needs some improvement. The front desk staff seemed to only be helpful if you had a tip/money for them. I wasn't too happy with them when I couldn't get help on three occassions. Other than that, all the other workers were supportive and friendly. It takes one day to learn the layout. You'll love it!

Barcelo Dominican Beach is certainly a 3 star hotel. But what it lacks in service and food, it more than makes up for with the location and quality of the beach. Being unable to speak spanish is sometimes a problem here because most people cannot speak clear enough english for you to understand. The check in clerks speak english, but sometimes they will try to charge you for things you didn't buy. The food is okay, however many things looked/tasted quite questionable and I stuck to the same courses at the buffets because I knew I could trust them. The restaurants (in the evening) were superb, especially the japanese hibatchi one. We really enjoyed that one, and overall did not have any bad dinner experiences. Overall, I'd say go to this place if you don't have the money to go somewhere better. But if you are young and don't have alot of money like myself, but are looking for a Caribbean vacation, I recommend this place. PS, we upgraded to a honeymoon suite and it was definately worth the money. It was only a little extra, but we got free internet for the week, romantic dinner on the beach, VIP status which allowed us to get any drinks (even international), and an oceanfront room with a balcony. Definately worth the extra money!

Well our first day we get to the room, after trying to communicate to the staff who could barely speak any english and were very unhelpful we get to our room and it has two very small, uncomfortable beds that looked like mountain ranges and gave me a backache the first night. shower was super cold and had no hot water. room was very dirty and unkept and even had some kind of tampon/diaper stuck in the vent. Room was either too cold or too hot. The safe was broke so we had to have a magnet carrier and bring it to the pool with us which was very inconvenient. We got switched to another room which was half way decent and at least had a bigger bed. Shower was still frequently cold and the day we were to leave the shower just stopped working and we had no running water in the room whatsoever.. Food was horrible as I could barely eat meals for the 9 day trip. To greasy, no taste, bland and often left me with stomach aches. pool was very dirty and had bugs and objects floating in it at all times. very small pools and the drinks were terrible. the staff could speak little english and did not know how to make any of the drinks I liked so I was stuck drinking flat sprite the whole time. Our Orbitz Rep seemed friendly but told us to meet in the lobby at 12 noon and be picked up for our flight but on the day of the flight no one came to pick us up and they told us the wrong time for our flight and we ended up missing the flight... WE had to pay 45 dollars in long distance calls to call someone at home to get ahold of orbitz, who was totally unhelpful and then fork out another 850 bucks to get home. This was very disheartening and upsetting when we paid the REP to make sure we were picked up and on the plane in time......we waited for hours and no one picked us up and finally after it was to late we got ahold of the rep... It was a total nightmare....

sleep, eat, beah

I visited in April with me and my three kids (17 and 16 year old girls, 10 yo boy) and made the smartest decision to pay a little bit extra for a suite. After seeing a few regular guestrooms, I cannot strongly advise enough that it's absolutely worth it to pay a little more daily for a suite (it has two gorgeous bedrooms, 2 full baths, one with an enormous jacuzzi tub, daily fruit baskets and especially great was our own dedicated concierge who helped me with evrything). About the Punta Cana airport: plan on a LONG time to check in to your flight; there are little places to wait and if you have any sensitivity to gas fumes, come up with a PLAN B. we stood outside for over 2 hours waiting to check in whilst inhaling fumes in 100 degree weather and I was violently sick waiting, as were many others. About the resort: it's lush, incredibly well-maintained and small enough to walk around the entire place in about 20 minutes. Pros and cons next. I'd like to preface this by saying that we are an American family that generally travels in more "fabulous" types of places (5 star hotels in London, NYC, Paris, Atlantis in the Bahamas, first class on airplanes, etc.) and we do like a pretty high standard of travel. Pros: beautiful, lush resort; incredibly helpful and funny staff for the most part who absolutely appreciate all efforts to speak Spanish; gorgeous beach with plenty of chairs, terrific pools; clean rooms; delicious coffee and fruits; the pizzeria by the pool had wonderful pizza; Le Cafe had great coffee drinks and cookies and pastries; Wasabi Japanese restaurant was pretty good; international family and couple-oriented crowd (we made lots of friends with super British, French and Spanish families and only met one other American family there). Cons: LOTS of smoking and topless bathing; gigantic insects everywhere; the food is borderline adequate to begin with but clearly is recycled on a daily basis (like one night there were baked potatoes for dinner, the next it was chopped potatoes and onions, then mashed potatoes then potato soup); burgers and hot dogs were horribly overcooked then left sitting in pans drying out; the food was absolutely tasteless (roughly chopped brown iceberg lettuce constituted salad), all of the buffet refrigeration was suspect; things like rice were half mushy and half burnt and hard; the desserts were all very pretty but just absolutely tasteless; at the Italian bistro we had penne arrabiata which was mushy pasta with Tabasco sauce on it...it was inedibly disgusting). Moving on: when you walk off the beach or out of the resort; you are not completely safe, period. My daughter went on a horseback ride on the beach excursion and people in the group were robbed; a friend walked off the beach at night and was told she would be put in handcuffs until she could pay the police (because she speaks native Spanish, the police let her go). DON'T leave the compound; there are security guards all around the place as well as barbed wire for a reason. At night there are just incredibly loud activities held at various venues; ask anyone who stays there and you'll discover that at least one night it's outside your room with pounding music until 2 am. Also, if there's a loud drinking crowd, they can just get pretty obnoxious screaming all night long. Lastly, there's what could be a fun native Dominican night where there's Dominican food and they bring in vendors (who just sell a lot of overpriced garbage made in China), but the vendors are creepily aggressive, grabbing our hands and saying, "Hey it's free to hold hands," and screaming at the pretty ladies to come over and look. It's creepy. A huge con about some of the staff: the beach people who do the whole enforced fun business are not only incredibly annoying and won't take no for an answer (sitting on our beach chairs and grinding in our faces...like please, go away), but they're pretty nasty to kids (even though there were no takers...

The hotel is quite used (leaks, old paint) but clean. There are few sports (just 1 winsurf and 1 catamaran for 800 rooms!)- The proximity of everything is nice and the warm turquoise water and clean white sand beach here. Thanks god! The food is terrible (unripe fruits, meals with no spice at all, even the simpliest food like rice or fish are cheap and not cooked well....) The restaurant foods are a joke (they serve the awfull buffet food and if you don't like it that's it)- The seafood restaurant which is paying served overcooked lobster, what a pitty! There were very few surrounding activities offered. We did the ATV tour, it is a tourist trap. My son's ATV collapse in a turn and his ATV flipped over him. He was lucky to come out with only bruises and cuts. Overall we do not recommend this resort, there are a lot of much better resort. It is worth paying a little more for a better resort.

This was our first visit to Dominican Republic and after reading the mixed reviews we decided to go to this resort because of the value. If you are looking for a 3 star resort, this one's for you. For a little more money, we probably should have stayed at the Barcelo complex with access to multiple resorts. We booked the honeymoon suite which was worth the extra money. Beach view and a couple of extras although I don't recall the premium alcohol that was advertised. In fact, we think the alcohol was watered down since it was impossible to get even a slight buzz. Most staff were friendly but the guest service person could have been more helpful and enthusiastic. Beach and pool areas were beautiful and clean. Food was average. Buffet good for breakfast and lunch but not dinner. Best meal was at the spanish restaurant. We ate at Bucanero grill which was included with the upgraded room. Food and service was good but our "romantic dinner on the beach" was overshadowed by the wedding party there that continued to smoke and loudly use extremely foul language. My husband and several other people we talked to became ill on the trip. After eating at Wasabi on our second night, he could not stay away from a toilet the rest of our trip. Resort activities were average; one ping pong table; okay shows; tiny casino; fun disco. Don't bother going to bigger casino outside of resort. I got a great hour massage for only $30 on the beach. I wish drinks would have been brought to us at beach and pool areas instead of having to go to the bar. We went on an excursion with Bavaro Runners. Best part of the trip and best authentic meal. Very knowledgeable tour guide. be prepared for a very bumpy ride! Overall we got what we paid for. This is our first time at an all-inlcusive and think we prefer cruises.

just returned on 03/12/09 was supposed to stay at the dominican beach but ended up at the barcelo permium/deluxe. wonderful junior suite/hot tub on private patio. great vacation. only problem - no shopping at all. no much to see off the resort property.