Exceeded our expectations

Thanks for Carol Mack for her advice to book the Beachside Family Room. We were a family of 7 and booked two rooms. Our room was clean and spacious and close to the beach, main pool, splash pool, and the Rumba buffet which had a good variety for breakfast and lunch. In the evening we would take the train and go to the main lobby for supper just for a change. We didn't have any problems getting beach or pool chairs and found all of the staff very helpful. We would certainly look at returning  [... read more]to this resort

Great family resort, ideal for children

Loved that the main pool (which is very large and has a number of different areas with different water levels) is right close to the beach. We were able to secure our spot in the morning and go back and forth between the beach and the pool, keeping our "home base" that we can virtually see from either spot. The only thing that would make it nicer is if the ocean was "clear"....

Great family resort

Even if it was full house the resort is very large and provides ample space and choice of activities. the beach is exceptional as we travel extensively and certainly one of the best. Meals at a la carte were not great but we were very happy with the buffet choices and quality. the water parc is fantastic for young kids i would recomend rooms closer to the beach even if it means paying more if you dont want to walk extensively. Bring a wagon to pull the kids and your stuff, it was a great decisi [... read more]on

Relaxing

It was good, not great, but good. Pros: The staff were excellent and courteous. The rooms were comfortable. Scenery was beautiful. Food was great. Cons: Too much exclusive items that required membership or executive suite package (exclusive pool, seating areas, bar, services) made me felt like titanic lower class citizen. Various stagnant water creeks that gave off a bad smell around our hotel room. Constant harassment from locals at beach with hustling (put bird on wife’s head without  [... read more]asking, grabbed her phone and took pictures of us, then proceeded to demand $40 USD, not a chance). Overall, would still recommend. Good for family. Bringing the kids next time as they have a park and water park.

Great Resort!

In short this was the best resort we have stayed at in 10 years. We have stayed in Dominican Republic five times and this has been the best resort for food. The room was comfortable and clean. Our room from the beach was a little far but at least there was a ride on the train LOL anytime that we wanted.

Overbooked and busy

Waiting, waiting, waiting...This was the theme of the week. First started with waiting close to an hour to check in, after a busy and long travel day with 2 young kids. Finally, once the rooms were ready, we were able to check in and enjoy the warm weather. We were travelling with family members (8 people total) and it was next to impossible to make dinner reservations for our party at a normal time in one of only 3 a la carte restaurants for the entire resort, only available for 8 at 8pm or  [... read more]later. To pay 60$ US per person for the japanese restaurant is absurd, and we did not see anyone in there the entire week. The mexican restaurant was a joke, literally served cut up hot dogs on a tortilla and called it sausage tacos. The italian restaurant was much better and the torro restaurant was ok. Anticipate 2+ hours for the dinner reservations. All that was left was the buffet (1 at the main lobby area, 1 near the beach). Throughout the week, lunch and dinner buffets were annoying for several reasons. It was so busy that we could hardly get a table for 8, or even a table for 4 at the beach buffet, we have to wait for plates since they were all empty, the line up for pasta / pizza station was a mess and disorganized. The Mediterranean restaurant near the beach was reserved for Level club only. This restaurant was pretty much empty the entire week while we had to scramble to find seating for our family during lunch buffets. Safe to say that after a couple days of buffet, the food got tiring and was unimpressed with the selection. In keeping with the waiting theme, all the bars were low staffed and waited on average 10+ minutes for a drink, especially near the beach bar (little shack van serving limited drinks). Another annoying thing about this resort (and probably all others), in order to have a beach or pool lounge chair, you needed to be up at 6 am to reserve the chairs since there were so many people that all the chairs were taken at the pool and beach by 8 am. Service in general was pretty poor since most staff did not really understand English that well. Our family members had asked for extra pillows in their room since they only had 2 pillows for 2 adults and 2 kids. They called the front desk several times, the spoke the reception staff several times, to no avail. What finally ended up getting them extra pillows was leaving a note for the maid along with a tip, this after 3 days of only having 2 pillows. Despite the busyness of the resort, the disorganization of the restaurants / buffets, the poor service of resort workers, long wait times everywhere, and the annoyance of the many many solicitors / vendors on the beach (I know its like this everywhere, but literally a person comes up to you every 2 minutes), our family was still able to relax and enjoy the nice weather, the beautiful beach, the shows and activities for the kids, and the company.

Over booked - Service lacking

The hotel grounds are nice, and the room layout was idéal for a family of 4. The Check-in process was brutal and with a lot of attitude. The hotel was over booked and finding a place on the beach or beside the pool was impossible unless you arrived at 5:30am. The service was poor due to the amount of people present. The food was “ok” but very bland and monotonous. We had to fight for plates and cutlery every meal. The table service took 30 minutes before receiving a drink. It took guest services [... read more] 3 days, 8 phone calls, and 3 complaints before giving us pillows for our children. They slept on t-shirts filled with towels for the first 3 days. The “a la cart” restaurants were “ok”, except for Mexican… that was disappointing. Needless to say, we will NOT be returning to this hotel chain in the future.

Not great

The resort is very tired its staff along with it , very disappointed nothing worked including are phone in room we would never recommend this resort to anyone it says 4 1/2 star I would give it a 3 and no more . If we could have come home a week in to our two week vacation we would have .

Great Resort

The grounds and the beach were beautiful. The room was well located in building 39 ( Deluxe but not Level) and was well maintained except for a short glitch where the AC started dripping water over the front door, but it was fixed as soon as we brought it up with Reception. The food was plentiful and good at the buffet and the Italian restaurants. We were not impressed with the Mexican and even less so with the Grill restaurants. Even though the resort is large we were always able to catc [... read more]h one of it's trains or a ride with a buggy. Were always able to find chairs at the beach or pool if came early (before 8). A couple of complaints - they play loud music at shows (that's why we stayed away from them), in the main restaurant, at the pool and on the beach - they should take the volume down. Also, they use way too much salt (for us older folks) on all meat - really unnecessary and unhealthy.

Not great

Front desk staff were rude and unwilling to help with basic requests, resort staff made us constantly feel they were greasing us for tips, and were often rude as-well. Cleaning lady cleaned out room 2 times in 7 days, and would knock on our door asking to clean in the evenings when we wanted privacy. We all got food poisoning. Our mattress was upside down and had springs digging into our backs - sleep was difficult, if we weren’t awake vomiting. Not fun. The air Canada representative at the reso [... read more]rt refused to give us our return bus timing, so we had to pay for a taxi. This was my first resort experience, I won’t be doing it again.

Good family resort

Buildings and grounds well maintained, clean, modern. Pool was amazing - huge, spacious, lots of different areas for young kids and adults. Hotel room had several issues during the week. Food was mediocre, but expected for Punta Cana. A la cartes were full and no availability during our entire trip, so book early if you can.

Amazing resort

Amazing beach ?☀️Spa centre YHI thank you Yahaira and Yolanda we hope to come again soon , it was beautiful experience,service very good and rooms very clean,food is amazing you can eat whatever you want all day long never mind if you are vegeterien the choice Is excelent

11 Person Family Trip

Beautiful property with several ponds, stocked with koi and turtles. Peacocks and other interesting birds on site. Large pool, well-maintained. Amazing splash pad for the kids. Service was bad. 6 hours to check in. 90% of staff were ambivalent. Tables were constantly dirty, cluttered, had to beg for the floors to be swept, had to use paper cups for hot drinks in the dining room. Ran out of plates. Bowls, spoons. No orange juice left after 8:30 am. We had a six hour wait for baby crib. Showed f [... read more]or reservation for dinner with four adults and 2 infants(1 in stroller, 1 needs high chair), made us wait 45 mins because we reserved for 4. Out of towels at pool. Beds not always made, no towels, cloths in room twice, no batteries in remote(asked twice, waited all week-never came), spent $700 on tips, couldn’t get anyone to care about anything. Beautiful place but needs massive overhaul to service. Beach was lovely, but dirty. Water was cloudy all week. They did 2 tractor passes per day for algae, but garbage was in the sand everywhere and many lounge chairs were damaged. BEWARE: hotel has something called, ‘Level’, which gives guests private dining, adult pools, preferred check-in, private beach, private off-limits grounds. We missed it in the fine print and regretted it.

Horrible

Well first of all the room we had on the 2nd floor flooded the first 2 nights we were there and all our clothing and suitcases got soaked, staff didn’t seem to care, the patio door didn’t close 100% reason for the flood and the mosquitoes in our room, another night we got back to our room with no towels, we called thankfully they delivered fast. Staff and I mean all staff are rude and not helpful at all, there was 12 in my party and the 12 of us would never visit this resort again and I’m not su [... read more]re if we’ve visit this country for that matter and we’ve travelled several times and never witnessed this kind of service ever Also the beach and ocean was filled with seaweed

Exceptional trip dimmed by subpar trip advisor

Our stay at Melia Caribe was truly remarkable, characterized by stunning views. However, our experience with Trip Central fell short of expectations. Despite booking our accommodations for our wedding group through their platform, there were significant issues with hotel bookings and a lack of support following a flight delay. This forced our group members to take on the responsibility of securing compensation for Trip Central’s oversights (Nicolle Kirk). Unfortunately, based on our experien [... read more]ce, we cannot recommend Trip Central to fellow travelers. Their lack of precision and assistance during crucial moments of our trip left us feeling frustrated and inconvenienced. It was disheartening to rely on others to rectify the situation instead of receiving the support we expected from Trip Central. Despite these challenges, we recommend Melia Caribe Beach Resort. The resort's commitment to excellence, coupled with its breathtaking surroundings, made our stay truly unforgettable. While our experience with Trip Central may have been disappointing, our time at Melia Caribe was nothing short of exceptional.

Disappointed

The check in experience was horrible, they could not find our booking, we arrived at 1030 and didn't get a room until 4am and they insisted we pay again because they could not find our booking even though we had all the proof to show we booked. We do not advise booking with trip central, we emailed in advance because we were worried , the resort could not find our booking, we were asking for something special for an anniversary, spoke to our travel agent and she assured us everything would be fi [... read more]ne, which it in fact was not. So that was frustrating because we tried to resolve this before arriving and the travel agent didn't intervene. Resort was way too big, the food was ok, my partner and i both got food poisoning. Overall disappointing

Booking nightmare

The grounds and resort is very pretty, extremely large and a long walk from lobby to room and room to beaches and pools like 20 to 30 minutes long. We were a group of 30 for a wedding 3 couples didn't have rooms /booking not found by resort , we waited/ fought for 5 hours then we had to put the rooms on our visa and fight with our agent to confirm our booking. The people at lobby for bookings have NO idea who are in rooms. They gave us rooms that had people in them . Couldn't book a la carte as [... read more] our names weren't the couple showing up in our room . Every couple had to run several time to lobby to re- activate their key cards. The resort did compensate us with Level bracelets for our troubles. Some of the rooms are run down some had no hot water, some no air conditioning, some mirror fell off in bathroom, unable to lock patio doors, the bridal couple was stuck on second level in a double bed and shower only while the rest of the group had family rooms on main level with king size bed and jacuzzi tub. Some couple in our group got the wedding package and champagne delivered to their room with desert, not the bridal couple. For booking 8 months in advance you would think k they would have kept the group together in one building instead they scattered our 17 rooms all over in individual buildings, there wasn't any of us that was in same buildings. Will never book Melia again and the staff on resort very nice and friendly but you need to train the booking staff as none knew what they were doing. Even down to the supervisor juon no clue who was in what room and took 1 whole day to change the bridal couple to a new room and give the group their level bracelets. I have never seen such an unorganized resort but beautiful its a shame the staff is giving this resort a very bad name. More training !!

A wonderful family holiday!

This resort was a fantastic breakaway for our family. The resort was very kid-friendly and had loads of activities every day for our boys to enjoy including obstacle courses, bouncy castles, larger than life sized transformer robots, pirate shows, etc. etc. etc. The resort also offers childcare services for children with fun activities scheduled every day. The pools and beaches were beautiful and very well maintained. The food was fairly average and it was difficult to book the ‘special’ restaur [... read more]ants outside of the typical buffet, but it satisfied our kids and there was always something for everyone.

Beautiful Resort

This place was absolutely gorgeous. It was so cool to wake up to peacocks in the garden, and enjoy the walk between the lobby and beach. The reason I am giving this place a 4 instead of 5 is that we found the quality of food and the service from staff a little inconsistent. We came in a group of 3 families, and 2 out of the 3 of us did not initially have the rooms we reserved available. This was corrected, but not until late into the second evening for the one room. One of rooms they were able t [... read more]o give us right away because they had a last minute cancellation, according to the concierge. I wouldn't have confidence knowing I'd get the correct room if I went back there. As for food, you could always find something delicious to eat, but you couldn't necessarily trust that one food, for instance the beans, would taste as delicious from one day to the next. Every meal was an adventure to find what was good that day, which we weren't upset about, but it should be a consideration if you are a fussy eater. Most of the staff were amazing here, however, at times, there were staff that made it clear we were more of a bother to them. It made it frustrating when we had to stand in line daily to get reservations at the restaurants, and we seemed to get different reasons and answers daily. These are small inconveniences, and if you can deal with that, I recommend this place for the value and absolute gorgeous grounds.

Absolutely a Beautiful resort

The grounds were absoltely amazing. Food was awesome. Rooms georgous, very comfortable beds. Showers are extremely slippery, no hand bars for support while showering. This is a huge resort, not recommended for anyone with mobility issues. A lot of walking. The trains that pick you up to take you throughout the resort are not very unreliable, therefore lots of walking to get to the buffet, your room, the pool and beach etc.