Sunscape Puerto Plata: beautiful resort

The place is beautiful,rooms are specious,furniture and bathroom are very old,need renovating . Small things were frustrating,like TV remote control and clock not working. Everywhere was very clean. Service in the restaurant was not very good. Sometimes you have to wait more than 15 min for coffee,or for the table to be set,despite of many weitres moving around. All in all it was OK for the price we paid.

Sunscape Dominican Beach: Barcelo Dominican Beach February 2015

Beautiful beach however when we stayed at the hotel they were at 106 capacity and over booked. This meant having to line up for the buffet, lines for bathrooms, not enough seats on the beach, by the pool and in the lobby in the evening. Our room had a leaky ceiling in the bathroom. Management said that they fixed the problem however the whole duration of our stay there daily was a puddle of water left from the dripping ceiling. Additionally our room had cockroaches. I would not return to this ho [... read more]tel. Few of the staff provided excellent service. The quality of the drinks being served was poor. The hotel is run down. There is no free wifi. We were provided with a hospitality room before leaving to the airport which had not been cleaned and was full of wet towels from previous guests. I will not return to Barcelo Dominican Beach.

Barcelo Maya Palace: Above Average Resort for All Tastes

What strikes one immediately when approaching the lobby of the Barcelo Palace is the sense of space and elegance. The vast lobby and grounds make it possible not to feel crowded even in the high season when we arrived to escape wintry Toronto like many other Canadians. The pools are enormous, clean and inviting and I especially like substantial but different pool areas exclusively for adults as well as for children. Although the rooms are quite a walking distance to the restaurants and the beach [... read more], the corridors and the gardens are very nicely kept and decorated with sculptures and fountains that they made the walks like a pleasant daily exercise before indulging yourselves in the restaurants. The a la carte restaurants are one of the best I have visited in all inclusive resorts. The Seafood and the French restaurants are really first class and their service equally so. The lobsters are so fresh and deliciously cooked. The disappointment both in service and quality of food is the Argentinian beef Restaurant Rodizio. Suddenly you are back down to earth in an slightly below average experience with rather negligent waiters and ordinary steaks in an uninteresting ambience. The buffet restaurants are very good in its varieties and freshness of food and all the restaurant and cafe staff maintained a high level of manners and friendliness even at the peak breakfast times. Now the down side : the customers' service and the internet. All the lobby front desk staff and customers' service are very hard pushed to serve all the visitors. There's just too few of them and they seem to be trying very hard but not given enough correct information by the management. The fact that there is no dedicated cashier desk make the queues and line ups long and laborious even when you only intended to ask the simplest of questions. One feels that the hotel and their staff do not have or want a lot to do with the staff from the Holiday firms. Hence, when I asked for help on arrival regarding my lost luggage by AirTransat and who to get in touch with, the hotel lobby staff could offer no help except a rueful smile of sympathy. The internet was bad. Bought a $45 wifi service that's supposed to work in your room and the central lobby area and it did not work at all in my room when I was really relying on it to get help to locate my lost luggage. (Remember it is a good 10 minutes walk to the lobby) . Subsequently, it is still very erratic service in the room. The bedroom themselves were very good and outside the quiet balcony we had, we could even spot a deer at night together with other some small interesting animals. All the chamber staff were excellent and friendly and the facilities clean and excellently kept. The beach is vast and gorgeous and never short of a chair to lie on. Soft sand and plenty of shallow water where you can see fishes and some even saw turtles. Also the location made it possible to have a big variety of local excursions for Mayan temples as well as cenotes and other sporty ventures. All in all , I thoroughly enjoyed my stay there and I am not easy to please !

Sunscape Puerto Plata: Just Ok

The hotel itself is nice enough, check in took close to an hour and a half. The pool has a gross thick feeling and has these weird floating things in it. The food was decent but as I type Im here sick. The highlight of my trip was the 12 waterfalls and Big Lees Beach Bar.

Barcelo Maya Colonial: Lots of activities

The resort is spotless. Staff are everywhere cleaning, serving and attending to guest needs. Lots of activities for all ages. We enjoyed the outdoor paddleball racket courts. great fun. Our favourite restaurants were the Mexican and Japanese. The Italian restaurant was disappointing at the fish main courses were previously frozen and tasted like cardboard. We travelled with our 20 something year old kids. they enjoyed the resort more than we did. they enjoyed the disco until the wee hours.

Barcelo Maya Colonial: Wonderful Vacation

Hotel was beautiful situated on lovely grounds. Beach and pool good. Staff very friendly and service good. Buffet and restaurants very good. Had a wonderful time and would return. Would recommend to friends.

Barcelo Ixtapa: Good value and pleasant

Grounds, pools, etc. were fine. Dining areas clean, tidy and well managed. Food occasionally disappointing. Great staff - very pleasant and helpful. Room quite good, showing age a bit, especially in bathroom; could have been a bit cleaner.

Barcelo Ixtapa: Outdated resort in an amazing town

We had a wonderful time at the Barcelo Ixtapa! The resort was outdated and the buffets were definitely lacking. The bars were virtually non existent. But the service was amazing, the views were gorgeous, and the area was spectacular!

Occidental Caribe: Barcelo is not what it used to be!!!!

Food was great both buffet and restaurants, service was also really good. Our room and resort was very tired looking. Our air conditioner and shower did not work, and the plaster from the ceiling was falling down onto bed when sleeping...

Occidental Caribe: Good time had by all

We stayed at the Barceló Punta Cana from Feb 6 – 13. We were a group of 13 and we all overall enjoyed our stay. It was a nice convenient 25 min ride from the airport. First of all, I’m pretty basic when it comes to vacations and don’t normally stay at high end places so if you're use to 5 star luxury resorts you may want to reconsider. The resort is older, but they manage to keep it very clean and I would always see workers cleaning/updating things daily. I only had a few minor complaint [... read more]s over the week we stayed, most of them being around customer service from the front desk. We arrived late to the resort, around 12am, so we were all tired after a long day of travelling. Check in took over 45 minutes and they would allow other guests to butt the line of people waiting to check in. I had e-mailed the resort ahead of time requesting our group be placed together and to be in building three – I kept e-mailing them until I finally got a response confirming they received my e-mail. After waiting a long time to check in, we did manage to get rooms in building three. For the most part our rooms were fairly close together. ROOMS I stayed in room 3221. It was clean and had a very nice view. We always had hot water (sometimes a little bit too much hot water). The door of the room over looked the buffet so sometimes it would get quite noisy and hot from the heat of the buffet. A few of the nights they would be doing repairs during the middle of the night with power tools etc . I thought it was strange but I was still able to sleep and didn’t care too much. Majority of the nights after 10-11 p.m. our toilet would not flush. The other five rooms of our group had the same issue. Our Air Transat rep told us it was due to some water issues they were having and it was only going to be 1 or 2 nights, but it ended up being the whole week. Everyone’s A/C worked good and the rooms have ceiling fans as well which I found helped a lot. Beds were quite comfy and the cleaning lady changed the bedding every day. We got fresh towels everyday and the mini fridge was stocked daily. We did leave small gifts and a small tip for the cleaning lady every day and she was always very happy and appreciative. We had a nice flat screen tv but found it to be quite blurry. I found majority of the channels were in Spanish but did manage to find a few decent stations. Never saw one bug or anything in our room. About half way through the week we did receive a call from the front desk or something asking if we were happy with our room…so I did appreciate the follow up, but overall I was quite happy with our room, especially since it was so close to everything. Elevators were quick and worked every single day except the last day we were there because it was raining and somehow flooded them. POOLS I found both pools to be gorgeous. Service at the time up bar was pretty good – didn’t have to wait long to get drinks. The only complaint I have about the pools is the lack of lounge chairs. People would constantly throw their towels over lounge chairs to “claim” them…at times I would never even see people that entire day come back to their chair. I just felt like we wasted so much time trying to find somewhere to lounge. Aside from that, the pools were kept very clean and maintained nicely. BEACH The beach was beautiful. They would clean the seaweed away every morning. The waves were quite intense and usually had a yellow or red flag out, so you couldn’t expect to really go swimming without being slapped by waves. FOOD I found the food to be quite good at the buffet. They would change it up every night so it wasn’t too repetitive. Breakfast was pretty much the same everyday but quite tasty. I give kudos to the guy making the omelets – from the beginning of his shift to the end he was always smiling. We did four a la cartes – the Dominican, Japenese, Italian and French. The Japanese was by far the best one we had. Food was made fresh in front of us and was an awesome show. The other a la cartes were just mediocre and the service was quite slow. Some of us would get upset stomachs afterwards. We never had any problems booking the a la cartes. The hotel actually prebooked our reservations, but we had to get them all changed and had no problem doing so. You were only allowed to book three in advance, but they would post availability daily and you could make additional reservations if you booked the day of. The pizzeria at the pool bar was good – but again service was slow. One day it took us over an hour to get our food. I do realize they were only limited to the one oven and the waiters would constantly keep bringing us drinks without even asking so it made the wait a little better. The pizzas and calzones were stone baked, fresh and delicious. At night the pool bar would serve food up until about 4-5 a.m. They had food such as hot dogs, quesadillas, chicken wings, French fries etc. NIGHT LIFE To be honest…I only made it out to one nightly show. It was one of those ones where they pick people from the audience. It was funny but felt really disorganized. Our a la carte dinners were usually late so by the time we were done dinner the entertainment would be over or else I would of checked out more shows. They would sometimes have live music playing in the lobby but that didn’t seem to go on late. The disco at night was open until 2am. It’s in the downstairs from the lobby and the sound seemed pretty well contained. I found some nights at the disco better then others…they would tend to play a lot of latin salsa type music…which fine for a few songs but they didn’t seem to mix it up very well. We would request songs and then would have to wait half an hour to hear them even if there was hardly anyone else there. It was nothing special but at least something to do at night. CHECK OUT Unfortunately we had a 10:30 p.m. flight and the bus to the airport wasn’t coming to pick us up until 7:30 p.m. Check out is at noon and they leave a note under your door the night before explaining you can request late check out for $10 an hour. We figured we would try and keep one or two rooms to shower and keep our luggage. I inquired about this service the day before we were to check out. I was told to come back the next day and they would be able to help me. About 2 hours before check out I requested the late check out and told I wasn’t able to do late check out because it was “too busy”. The maximum they could provide was until 2:00 p.m. I was however informed that they have “courtesy” rooms so people can shower etc. We decided to go this route as we wanted to enjoy the full day by the pool. Unfortunately after checking out it decided to pour rain all day long. It was just unfortunate to not have a room or have anywhere to go for an entire day due to the rain. I did decide to use the courtesy room to shower and was told we could have half an hour each. After waiting 45 minutes we had our turn and not even being in the room for 10 minutes front desk was already calling asking when we would be done. There was a pretty big line up to use it, so I recommend if you have a later flight to really push for the late check out and keep your room. The courtesy room we used was in building 5 on the bottom level…I would definitely have to say our room in building 3 was A LOT better and made me appreciate it even more. I should note that check out was really fast and easy. I hope in the future they develop a better system for check in as it was ridiculously long and disorganized. OVERALL Overall I really did have a good time. I believe most of this was due to travelling in a large group, because it’s really impossible to not have a good time. There were some minor stomach issues here and there with everyone in group due to the food…but it was nothing really consistent. I believe we all had the same opinions about the resort as we all had a good time. I can’t complain about the room we received at all. We had a birthday in the group mid-week and they put a banner on her door and had a fruit basket and bottle of champagne delivered which I thought was really nice. I also asked if they could do a cake for her birthday which they did for us at the Italian a la carte at no extra charge. We got this resort at a fairly reasonable price so overall I am happy with my choice. Wifi is available but is at an extra charge. Some people were able to get a connection in their room but I found you had to walk around to get connection. The wifi is kind of overpriced in my opinion ... $12 for 24 hours or $50 for a week. That gets you one code so you can't use it on multiple devices at one time. Not sure if I would return to this resort as I like to try new places, but I would recommend this resort if you got it for a good price. If they could work out the consistency of service between staff then this place would be awesome. For the most part I found you didn't need to tip a lot to get good service.

Barcelo Maya Palace: Excellent stay

We stayed at the Palace Deluxe and it seemed to be superior to the other 4 hotels in the complex. Of course it was the most expensiveness well. The grounds appeared more spacious and more grand.The a la carte restaurants were excellent. We did not try the restaurants in the other hotels and so I cannot say that they were definitely better. All the service staff were very friendly and attentive. My only complaint was that the front desk staff did not seem as well trained as the service staff. On  [... read more]more than one occasion I received conflicting replies to my enquiries. When I enquired about booking for the future one staff told me that the room will cost a certain amount per day, regardless of the number of people, which was of course not true. All in all we enjoyed our stay and would not hesitate to recommend it to our friends.

Barcelo Solymar: Very nice location and a very nice beach!!

One delihtful thing!! One morning a Colobri came flying to me on the 4th floor. The gardner who was watering the Plant Wall showed us the bird's nest. Every morning we had a pleasure of to find out if she was in or out!!! The best feature of this hotel is the food. so many variety and abundance. Nightly shows were very well done. It was good that we can use next door Arenas Blancas. I think that the maintenance of the building was rather poor . For example, the public toilet needed painting  [... read more]and door locks should be fixed.

Barcelo Maya Beach Resort: Barcelo Maya Beach - Overall Good Hotel!

Overall the hotel was beautiful. An older hotel that seems to be doing their best to upgrade and keep up with the times. Always well kept grounds, very clean and generally appealing. Lots for everyone to do. We had an 11 year old that enjoyed finding seashells on the beach, splashing in the big pool, playing chess, basketball, paddle tennis, bowling and billiards and watching the dolphins. The water park and wave rider were also lots of fun for him. The water park was an additional cost, but we [... read more] found it reasonable. We didn't find the bowling or arcade as reasonable. $12 US per person to bowl one game seemed expensive to us. But we still had lots of fun doing it. Rooms were clean, well stocked and comfortable. However the bathrooms don't seem to have fans which can make for a very humid room after 2 or 3 showers! Pools are huge and clean. Lots of chairs for everyone. Beach was amazing! Clean, spacious, long for walking on and full of things to see. Our only real disappointment was the food. This is our 5th time to Mexico and we usually always enjoy the food. However this resort seems to do the same foods over and over again, not really changing anything up. Need a bit more variety. Lots of walking as it is a big complex but always good after all the food or drink you consume in a day (even if its not the best!) ;) Overall we had a wonderful stay!

Barcelo Maya Beach Resort: Not a 5

Resort was beautiful and had lots of things to do. However, the food was very mediocre - buffet food was cold, several burgers tried through the week and weren't cooked fully. Selection was very repetitive for each meal. Resort was clean and staff was friendly. If food was improved, resort would be a five star in our opinion. Would not return due to the food issue.

Barcelo Maya Colonial: Very nice resort. Excellent for Families

Very nice Overall. Beds a bit too hard. Friendly and Hardworking staff. Food generally very good. Liked Pool Areas and lots of chairs, loved the Hammocks. Beach very nice, need more shade on the Beach. Very Clean Resort.

Barcelo Maya Beach Resort: Exceeds expectations - lovely holiday

A thorougly enjoyable experience; resort has depth, and many options for things to do; location is good, within easy reach of a number of off-resort activities. Beach is lovely, and snorkelling right off the beach provides rich views of tropical fish and turtles. Staffing levels are high, and staff are attentive, friendly and helpful. Highly recommended.

Barcelo Maya Beach Resort: Very Nice Resort!

The only reason I didn't give the Barcalo 5 starts is because of the travel time from Cancun after an already long day of travel. Resort was fabulous, the food was good, the pools clean and no chlorine!! Beach was excellent and the rooms just what you need.

Sunscape Dominican Beach: Dominican beach

Rooms and hot water( lack of) need improvement. Paid 30$ US for the worst WiFi ever. 2 minuet walk and got excellent wifi for FREE. The pathways are a stamped concrete and hard to walk on. The English translation at buffet needs to be reviewed by someone fluent in English / Spanish.

Sunscape Dominican Beach: Great Resort

Awesome value! Excellent service. The staff were friendly and very helpful. The resort has something for everyone. A beautiful beach, 4 pools, 2 buffets, unlimited a la carte's, 24 hour bar and snack bar.

Occidental Caribe: Great Vacation!

Overall, the hotel is very nice but is in need of continued updates which I know are taking place. I would suggest paying the extra for an upgraded room, as the older rooms are very basic and not in the 'nicer' area of the hotel. The food was great! We enjoyed the following a la carte restaurants: Japaneese, Dominican and Seafood. All were absolutely amazing; food and service! We also enjoyed the pizzaria for lunch twice, and couldn't get enough of the burgers at the pool grill...D-lish! The str [... read more]etch of beach in front of the Barcelo is one of the nicest, with enough room for lounge chairs and people to walk along the surf. The main bar opens at 8am, offering specialty coffees...with Bailey's or Kalhua and they even had clamato for Ceasars!!! Yippee!