I remember when I first visited to the Dominican Republic 10 years ago. The ocean water was so crystal clear that I could see down 15 feet or more. This past June, my girlfriend and I were trying to figure out if we should take a short trip and she suggested we go to Punta Cana since she had never been there. Flight and Ground Transportation
We started researching and we decided on the Barceló Bavaro Palace All-Inclusive Resort. We used our American Airline miles to book two round trip coach tickets that ended up costing 80k AA miles and $225 USD total with taxes and fees. I’ll admit this wasn’t my finest miles redemption but we literally decided to go on this trip 6 days before. In fact I’m still cringing about it. I wanted to pay cash but that didn’t happen because the tickets would have cost almost $900 USD each. I researched transportation to and from the airport to the hotel and we chose the highly recommended Dominican Plus. We were able to add beers and cold waters to our minivan order and it only added a few extra dollars. Total cost came to $60.99 USD round trip for two people.
Barcelo Bavaro Palace
We chose the Barcelo Bavaro Palace all-inclusive resort costing $1270 USD for four nights stay. This included all food and drinks but didn't include any top shelf drinks. We didn’t have points to use for the Punta Cana hotel, so we booked it through Hotels.com where it earned us 4 nights and after 10 stays you get a free hotel night from Hotels.com.
When we arrived at our hotel we headed to the check-in desk to check-in and were told for an extra $50 USD a night we could get an upgraded that was closer to the beach. I said sorry, no thank you! A couple minutes later the front desk agent said $90 USD total for 4 nights to upgrade. Again, I said no thank you. The check-in agent went into the back and came out a few minutes later still not having completed our check-in and was like ok $70 USD total to upgrade. I was like okay, let's do it but for some shady reason he would only accept cash. We were at the back of the property, farther from the beach prior to the upgrade. Once we paid our extortion fee, we got upgraded to a Junior Suite. We were in building number one right next to the beach, in the adults only section.
The Room
The room looked decent but was far below the room we had on our trip to Cozumel. We were super close to the beach which was great but still a decent walk to get to the restaurants. The AC had a bad rattle to it, so bad in fact, I called to have it looked at on day two. On day three the hot water in our building stopped working. It took them 6 hours to get the water issue fixed. The King Bed was fairly comfortable but there were ink stains on the sheet and makeup on a pillow case. The shower had a glass door and was half open so every time you used the shower, water ended up all over the floor. We had a partial view of the beach from our room and the room balcony had a small whirlpool tub as well. Here's my video walk through of the room.
The Food
There were American and Dominican themed buffets where you could eat breakfast, lunch and dinner without reservations. They were both horrible in my opinion. The meats they served had a weird taste to them. We stuck to the egg station, yogurts, and bananas for breakfast and chicken or burgers for lunch. The coffee served by the waitresses was horrible as well, instead we got our coffee from the coffee machine near the beverage station. For some reason that was less watered down.
For dinner if you wanted to eat in any of the specialty restaurants you had to make reservations at the least the day before. We made three reservations the day we arrived for the next three nights. The first night we ate at the Italian restaurant, it was really bad. The pasta sauce brought back memories of eating chef Boyardee as a kid. The next night we went to the steak house, this wasn't much better. The ribeye I ordered tasted off, was on the tougher side and in my opinion wasn’t a good cut. The last night we were there we ate at the Mexican restaurant. This was the best food we had during our stay. They handmade and cooked each tortilla to order. Unfortunately, after being let down from the last two restaurants I neglected to bring my camera. If I could go back in time I would have eaten there every night.
The Beach and Pools
The resort was maintained fairly well. There were four swimming pools with one small adults only pool. We never swam in any of the pools we stuck to the beach area as it was much quieter. The pool area always had loud music playing and activities, so if that’s your thing, then you would have fun.
We stuck to the serenity of the beach areas and ocean. The first two and a half days we had decent weather and we soaked up the sun. The beach was nicely groomed and the ocean was fairly clear and swimmable.
There were a couple of storms the last two days and so much seaweed washed up on the beach that it was barely worth it to try and swim. The resort used tractors and dump trucks to clear the seaweed from the beaches. Even though the water got murky we still relaxed and enjoyed the beach as much as possible. I don’t know if it was the time of year, we were there in June, or storms or what. Ten years ago when I was here I could see 15 feet down because the water was so clear.
I caught the sun setting between this hole in the clouds between two palm trees!
In Conclusion
Some people might say to me but why are you knocking the food so much? Well, we paid over $300 a night for our room at the resort that was all-inclusive, so I guess I expected it to be at least middle of the road. Combined with the bad food and room issues, I felt let down. Overall we did enjoy our stay here, aside for a few minor problems. I continually had to remind myself, you don’t come to Punta for the food you come here for the beach. Too bad the beach was such a mess for half our stay. I do applaud the resort for doing a ton of beach maintenance. I give them credit there. I would come back to Punta Cana but I will choose a different resort next time to compare.
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