Hilton La Romana {DOM}
Mar 14, 2022, 8:58 am
#91
Join Date: Sep 2018
Programs: Marriott BonvAnnoyed
Posts: 106
oh sorry, I ended up booking two separate rooms (one using just points 320K for 5 nights) and (second room with 4 FNC) so ended up staying last night in the same room (points booking) hence they only charged for one night. They booked us in a premium area with the connecting room (a big plus so we can work and kids can watch TV/ sleep in a separate room). Pools, Water park, beach area were GOOD but the food was OK or maybe it's just me, I don't like AI options.
Mar 18, 2022, 9:43 am
#92
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 101
oh sorry, I ended up booking two separate rooms (one using just points 320K for 5 nights) and (second room with 4 FNC) so ended up staying last night in the same room (points booking) hence they only charged for one night. They booked us in a premium area with the connecting room (a big plus so we can work and kids can watch TV/ sleep in a separate room). Pools, Water park, beach area were GOOD but the food was OK or maybe it's just me, I don't like AI options.
Or maybe I didn't read correctly, and you didn't pay for the 5th night but stayed in the same connecting rooms so they just charged for the kids?
Apr 2, 2022, 8:32 am
#93
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 101
A review of our week long stay
A bit of a review for my stay
We arrived in Punta Cana on 03/22/22, and things didn't go so well to start off our trip which may affect our judgment on the actual hotel itself just to preface this review. Our luggage was taken by a porter at the baggage pickup area before we even got there so we had to fill out a lost luggage report with AA before we left the airport. Then the transportation we prebooked took an hour to find someone willing to take us to the Hilton as well (Outbound Shuttles booked through ShuttleFare for $120 roundtrip).
We got to the hotel around 6PM upset that our kid's luggage was no where to be found, and we were taken to the premium check in area. Check in went fine, we told them about our issues with the luggage and asked where we might be able to find clothes and stuff for our kids (at this point we didn't know where our luggage was or if we will ever see it again). The front desk clerk told us the Gift Shop/Boutique would be able to help us and they were open until 10. We asked if there were any upgrades available (paid or not), and they told us we were upgraded to a premium view room instead of the Deluxe Garden view we had booked. We were escorted to a very nice room on the 1st floor with a partial view of the ocean near the premium area pool in building 5. It would have been a great room if it was what we had booked. We had reserved a king room with sofabed since our children are smaller, and we were given a 2 Doubles room instead. We went back to the check in area to see if they had the king bed room instead since I don't fit well in a double sized bed. Queens are just barely doable but a double is a bit too small. She tapped away at the computer for a bit and said they did have a king room they could get us into. But it would be a 2nd floor room in building 7 without the view (it looked out over the back access road on the property). No big deal, that sounds good. We got all moved over and setup in the new room and then went to see the gift shop to see if we could get some things for our kids to sleep in and swim in the next day. It is a very nice gift shop, not so much for essentials or getting clothes for a week long trip. My daughter is 3 and son is 7. There was 1 bathing suit that fit my daughter. Nothing that fit my son, and then some DR T-Shirts in their sizes and that was it. No underwear or diapers (they still sleep in diapers for accidents). We were a bit upset about this but still needed to eat dinner so we went to the buffet. We were pleasantly greeted and taken to our table where we had an ok meal. We went to the main lobby to the concierge if he had any more suggestions about finding clothes for our kids. He was very nice and understanding about our lost luggage. He offered a $65 cab ride to La Romana to go to a store where there should be more options for clothes, not a bad option if it wasn't already 8:30pm. We headed back to our room deciding if we were going to try to do that tonight or the next morning since we did have a couple of spare diapers in our carryon to get us through the night at least. At around 9PM, I got a message from someone at the Bahia Principe Grand Bavaro saying our luggage was at their hotel for some reason. I tried getting them to just put it in a cab and bringing it to me, but the person I was messaging wasn't comfortable with that so I went to our concierge and he arranged a cab for me to travel the 1.25hr one way trip to pick it up and bring me back. $180 in cab fare later and about 3 hours, I get back into bed around midnight of our first night (not the hotel's fault, but we felt the hotel didn't really know how to help us or no one took the effort to assist us in getting things setup to have a good vacation if we had fully lost the luggage).
Day 2 was pretty uneventful. Breakfast and lunch at the grill which had some of the better food at the family side of the hotel. Service is a bit lacking. It feels like they have waiter by committee so one person fills your water/coffee and takes drink orders. Someone else brings the drinks, then someone else takes your order, and a totally different person brings the food out. If you didn't get enough to drink from that first person, you probably weren't getting anything else for the rest of your meal since they all had separate jobs.
Day 3 we went to the water park, and thankfully it wasn't super busy while we were there. There were maybe 10 floats total for the entire park to share, and people started hoarding them about an hour into the waterpark opening since you couldn't get one if you put one back after doing the lazy river or water slides. Once we were done with the lazy river, we put our floats back and then couldn't find any for the slides the rest of the day. My son found a couple of deflated ones that he was told to take to the check in desk at the waterpark to get them filled back up, but they lost air rather quickly when we used them on the slides. We were done at the waterpark around 12:30-1PM that day so we got lunch and headed to the room for a nap. When we woke up and started getting ready to head back out, I noticed something on a beam in our ceiling. After watching it for a bit I realized it was a snake that had came in through the cracks in the ceiling. Not a huge snake by any means (maybe 3-4 feet long), but still a bit disconcerting to my wife and kids knowing one can just crawl in whenever it wants. So my wife went down to the premium club to see about another room move while I packed up and kept an eye on the snake and to let maintenance in when they showed up. But by the time they showed up (20-25 minutes later), it had already disappeared back into the ceiling (see picture for snake) This was in room 7208. We needed to get ready for the Beach BBQ we signed up for and were running a bit late trying to get showers and stuff after moving rooms. We made it to the BBQ and it started sprinkling a bit so we waited under the towel hut. Then it just didn't stop sprinkling. We expected the BBQ to get canceled or moved to another day (it was $49 for adults and $29 for children), but we waited and waited and no one came to let us know what was going on. Once the group of people noticed they were starting to take down the tables, then someone walked over and asked the guy who sold the beach BBQ to everyone if it was canceled and he confirmed it would either be rescheduled for tomorrow or refunded. No communication whatsoever from an actual employee to the patrons waiting. So we went to the buffet. We ended up having the BBQ the next night, and while it was a special experience eating in the sand, I didn't feel it was worth the extra $175 after tip for my family to eat the mediocre food.
We were moved to a different room on the same side of building 7 (room 7222), and when we walked in my wife immediately said it smelled like mildew and it was very wet inside. I didn't notice it as much but we got settled into this room and then went to dinner at the beach BBQ. My wife was still complaining about the smell and the moisture but I just chalked it up to being in the Dominican Republic and it being humid everywhere. When we woke up the next morning, my wife was very congested and everything just felt damp to the touch. We went to breakfast and then back to the premium club to talk to someone about moving to a less moist room. We were told they wouldn't have one available until after 4pm and they would add a dehumidifier to the new room as well just in case. Again I asked if there were any upgrades I could pay for to get us into a room that might help make the trip go better for my wife and kids. Something either closer to the pools/activities or water facing and we were told that this room was all they had (even though you could go on the hilton website and book waterfront rooms and suites for the rest of the trip if you wanted to pay cash). So we did some beach and pool time while waiting for our new room to be cleaned and ready (checked back around 1PM and it was still going to be ready around 4). We took another nap and woke up at 4, packed everything up and then went to the premium club to get our new room assignment. It was a room about 6 doors down and the humidifier did help a bit, but it needed emptied every 6-8 hours or so and things still felt a bit damp. Still faced the access road but we were over the swim up pools on the ground floor now as well.
After all of this, I wrote to Hilton on twitter expressing my current displeasure with how our trip had unfolded so far with the snake and all of the room changes. We enjoyed most of the rest of our time at the hotel though. My wife had a wonderful hot stone massage at the spa, the kids had a fun time at the kid's club, and I was able to have some quiet time if needed. Our second to last day we received a call in our room saying management would like to speak to us, but we were heading out to eat at the time so we asked them to call us back tomorrow. The next day we received a call around 12 wanting us to come to the premium club to sit down with management to find out why we had contacted Hilton about our stay. We discussed everything that had gone on so far, and they offered a couple of things to help get things smoothed out a bit. It was my son's birthday this week, so they put a sash on the door that said Happy Birthday, as well as leaving some candy, balloons and fruit with a Happy Birthday banner also in the room. Very nice touch. Then we had a reservation at the Peruvian restaurant (also good food), where they had balloons setup at a table and brought us out a wonderful chocolate cake. Then they said if we were to come back in the next 12 months, they would happily upgrade us to a suite to help persuade us to come back. I am happy with the results even if we don't come back and take them up on the suite offer. I just wish the staff were more empowered to try to help when we needed assistance, or to get management when they knew we had moved rooms 3 times and still weren't fully happy. For the price of this hotel (rates were in the $600+ per night range when we went), I would expect service that is out of this world, but it was very mediocre unfortunately. It is a beautiful property, with newly updated rooms. Most people probably won't have the same type of issues we saw (except maybe the waiter service). But I didn't see the $600 worth of value when other hotels in the Punta Cana/Cap Cana area would go for $250-$350 and probably have the same type of service/food. Overall I'd give it a 5/10, but it would be lower if management hadn't helped make my son's birthday special. We truly appreciate all they did for him. We paid with Hilton HHonors points at 80,000 points per night (5th night free) and no extra charges for our children booked through the Hilton website.
We arrived in Punta Cana on 03/22/22, and things didn't go so well to start off our trip which may affect our judgment on the actual hotel itself just to preface this review. Our luggage was taken by a porter at the baggage pickup area before we even got there so we had to fill out a lost luggage report with AA before we left the airport. Then the transportation we prebooked took an hour to find someone willing to take us to the Hilton as well (Outbound Shuttles booked through ShuttleFare for $120 roundtrip).
We got to the hotel around 6PM upset that our kid's luggage was no where to be found, and we were taken to the premium check in area. Check in went fine, we told them about our issues with the luggage and asked where we might be able to find clothes and stuff for our kids (at this point we didn't know where our luggage was or if we will ever see it again). The front desk clerk told us the Gift Shop/Boutique would be able to help us and they were open until 10. We asked if there were any upgrades available (paid or not), and they told us we were upgraded to a premium view room instead of the Deluxe Garden view we had booked. We were escorted to a very nice room on the 1st floor with a partial view of the ocean near the premium area pool in building 5. It would have been a great room if it was what we had booked. We had reserved a king room with sofabed since our children are smaller, and we were given a 2 Doubles room instead. We went back to the check in area to see if they had the king bed room instead since I don't fit well in a double sized bed. Queens are just barely doable but a double is a bit too small. She tapped away at the computer for a bit and said they did have a king room they could get us into. But it would be a 2nd floor room in building 7 without the view (it looked out over the back access road on the property). No big deal, that sounds good. We got all moved over and setup in the new room and then went to see the gift shop to see if we could get some things for our kids to sleep in and swim in the next day. It is a very nice gift shop, not so much for essentials or getting clothes for a week long trip. My daughter is 3 and son is 7. There was 1 bathing suit that fit my daughter. Nothing that fit my son, and then some DR T-Shirts in their sizes and that was it. No underwear or diapers (they still sleep in diapers for accidents). We were a bit upset about this but still needed to eat dinner so we went to the buffet. We were pleasantly greeted and taken to our table where we had an ok meal. We went to the main lobby to the concierge if he had any more suggestions about finding clothes for our kids. He was very nice and understanding about our lost luggage. He offered a $65 cab ride to La Romana to go to a store where there should be more options for clothes, not a bad option if it wasn't already 8:30pm. We headed back to our room deciding if we were going to try to do that tonight or the next morning since we did have a couple of spare diapers in our carryon to get us through the night at least. At around 9PM, I got a message from someone at the Bahia Principe Grand Bavaro saying our luggage was at their hotel for some reason. I tried getting them to just put it in a cab and bringing it to me, but the person I was messaging wasn't comfortable with that so I went to our concierge and he arranged a cab for me to travel the 1.25hr one way trip to pick it up and bring me back. $180 in cab fare later and about 3 hours, I get back into bed around midnight of our first night (not the hotel's fault, but we felt the hotel didn't really know how to help us or no one took the effort to assist us in getting things setup to have a good vacation if we had fully lost the luggage).
Day 2 was pretty uneventful. Breakfast and lunch at the grill which had some of the better food at the family side of the hotel. Service is a bit lacking. It feels like they have waiter by committee so one person fills your water/coffee and takes drink orders. Someone else brings the drinks, then someone else takes your order, and a totally different person brings the food out. If you didn't get enough to drink from that first person, you probably weren't getting anything else for the rest of your meal since they all had separate jobs.
Day 3 we went to the water park, and thankfully it wasn't super busy while we were there. There were maybe 10 floats total for the entire park to share, and people started hoarding them about an hour into the waterpark opening since you couldn't get one if you put one back after doing the lazy river or water slides. Once we were done with the lazy river, we put our floats back and then couldn't find any for the slides the rest of the day. My son found a couple of deflated ones that he was told to take to the check in desk at the waterpark to get them filled back up, but they lost air rather quickly when we used them on the slides. We were done at the waterpark around 12:30-1PM that day so we got lunch and headed to the room for a nap. When we woke up and started getting ready to head back out, I noticed something on a beam in our ceiling. After watching it for a bit I realized it was a snake that had came in through the cracks in the ceiling. Not a huge snake by any means (maybe 3-4 feet long), but still a bit disconcerting to my wife and kids knowing one can just crawl in whenever it wants. So my wife went down to the premium club to see about another room move while I packed up and kept an eye on the snake and to let maintenance in when they showed up. But by the time they showed up (20-25 minutes later), it had already disappeared back into the ceiling (see picture for snake) This was in room 7208. We needed to get ready for the Beach BBQ we signed up for and were running a bit late trying to get showers and stuff after moving rooms. We made it to the BBQ and it started sprinkling a bit so we waited under the towel hut. Then it just didn't stop sprinkling. We expected the BBQ to get canceled or moved to another day (it was $49 for adults and $29 for children), but we waited and waited and no one came to let us know what was going on. Once the group of people noticed they were starting to take down the tables, then someone walked over and asked the guy who sold the beach BBQ to everyone if it was canceled and he confirmed it would either be rescheduled for tomorrow or refunded. No communication whatsoever from an actual employee to the patrons waiting. So we went to the buffet. We ended up having the BBQ the next night, and while it was a special experience eating in the sand, I didn't feel it was worth the extra $175 after tip for my family to eat the mediocre food.
We were moved to a different room on the same side of building 7 (room 7222), and when we walked in my wife immediately said it smelled like mildew and it was very wet inside. I didn't notice it as much but we got settled into this room and then went to dinner at the beach BBQ. My wife was still complaining about the smell and the moisture but I just chalked it up to being in the Dominican Republic and it being humid everywhere. When we woke up the next morning, my wife was very congested and everything just felt damp to the touch. We went to breakfast and then back to the premium club to talk to someone about moving to a less moist room. We were told they wouldn't have one available until after 4pm and they would add a dehumidifier to the new room as well just in case. Again I asked if there were any upgrades I could pay for to get us into a room that might help make the trip go better for my wife and kids. Something either closer to the pools/activities or water facing and we were told that this room was all they had (even though you could go on the hilton website and book waterfront rooms and suites for the rest of the trip if you wanted to pay cash). So we did some beach and pool time while waiting for our new room to be cleaned and ready (checked back around 1PM and it was still going to be ready around 4). We took another nap and woke up at 4, packed everything up and then went to the premium club to get our new room assignment. It was a room about 6 doors down and the humidifier did help a bit, but it needed emptied every 6-8 hours or so and things still felt a bit damp. Still faced the access road but we were over the swim up pools on the ground floor now as well.
After all of this, I wrote to Hilton on twitter expressing my current displeasure with how our trip had unfolded so far with the snake and all of the room changes. We enjoyed most of the rest of our time at the hotel though. My wife had a wonderful hot stone massage at the spa, the kids had a fun time at the kid's club, and I was able to have some quiet time if needed. Our second to last day we received a call in our room saying management would like to speak to us, but we were heading out to eat at the time so we asked them to call us back tomorrow. The next day we received a call around 12 wanting us to come to the premium club to sit down with management to find out why we had contacted Hilton about our stay. We discussed everything that had gone on so far, and they offered a couple of things to help get things smoothed out a bit. It was my son's birthday this week, so they put a sash on the door that said Happy Birthday, as well as leaving some candy, balloons and fruit with a Happy Birthday banner also in the room. Very nice touch. Then we had a reservation at the Peruvian restaurant (also good food), where they had balloons setup at a table and brought us out a wonderful chocolate cake. Then they said if we were to come back in the next 12 months, they would happily upgrade us to a suite to help persuade us to come back. I am happy with the results even if we don't come back and take them up on the suite offer. I just wish the staff were more empowered to try to help when we needed assistance, or to get management when they knew we had moved rooms 3 times and still weren't fully happy. For the price of this hotel (rates were in the $600+ per night range when we went), I would expect service that is out of this world, but it was very mediocre unfortunately. It is a beautiful property, with newly updated rooms. Most people probably won't have the same type of issues we saw (except maybe the waiter service). But I didn't see the $600 worth of value when other hotels in the Punta Cana/Cap Cana area would go for $250-$350 and probably have the same type of service/food. Overall I'd give it a 5/10, but it would be lower if management hadn't helped make my son's birthday special. We truly appreciate all they did for him. We paid with Hilton HHonors points at 80,000 points per night (5th night free) and no extra charges for our children booked through the Hilton website.
Apr 2, 2022, 5:11 pm
#94
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 3,458
Great review, but pricing hotels lately in this area what you’re going to get for $250 is pretty pathetic
I haven’t decided if the Hilton is going to be my stay just because something about it isn’t turning me on it’s still a consideration but your review certainly didn’t help their cause
I haven’t decided if the Hilton is going to be my stay just because something about it isn’t turning me on it’s still a consideration but your review certainly didn’t help their cause
Apr 4, 2022, 10:19 am
#95
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 101
I meant the other Dreams resorts in the Punta Cana area. They are in the $250-$350 range and this was a former dreams resort as well. Also, just talking service and food. Like the Dreams Macao Beach is ranked 11 of 191 on tripadvisor and looks very similar to the Hilton. Priced at $336 per night seems like a steal compared to the $650 this one was bookable at.
Apr 4, 2022, 5:33 pm
#96
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 3,458
Well don’t worry dreams is getting ready to go right through the roof. Hyatt just closed on the acquisition And if you look at what Hyatt thinks their all inclusives are worth you can assume the dreams will be in the $400 to $500 a night range minimum.
Apr 6, 2022, 4:03 pm
#98
Join Date: Sep 2021
Posts: 288
crazy because they don’t charge if you have 4 adults in room ….. just kids smh
Apr 12, 2022, 1:02 pm
#99
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Los Angeles
Programs: Hhonors Diamond, IHG Silver, BW Diamond
Posts: 467
A bit of a review for my stay
We arrived in Punta Cana on 03/22/22, and things didn't go so well to start off our trip which may affect our judgment on the actual hotel itself just to preface this review. Our luggage was taken by a porter at the baggage pickup area before we even got there so we had to fill out a lost luggage report with AA before we left the airport. Then the transportation we prebooked took an hour to find someone willing to take us to the Hilton as well (Outbound Shuttles booked through ShuttleFare for $120 roundtrip).
We got to the hotel around 6PM upset that our kid's luggage was no where to be found, and we were taken to the premium check in area. Check in went fine, we told them about our issues with the luggage and asked where we might be able to find clothes and stuff for our kids (at this point we didn't know where our luggage was or if we will ever see it again). The front desk clerk told us the Gift Shop/Boutique would be able to help us and they were open until 10. We asked if there were any upgrades available (paid or not), and they told us we were upgraded to a premium view room instead of the Deluxe Garden view we had booked. We were escorted to a very nice room on the 1st floor with a partial view of the ocean near the premium area pool in building 5. It would have been a great room if it was what we had booked. We had reserved a king room with sofabed since our children are smaller, and we were given a 2 Doubles room instead. We went back to the check in area to see if they had the king bed room instead since I don't fit well in a double sized bed. Queens are just barely doable but a double is a bit too small. She tapped away at the computer for a bit and said they did have a king room they could get us into. But it would be a 2nd floor room in building 7 without the view (it looked out over the back access road on the property). No big deal, that sounds good. We got all moved over and setup in the new room and then went to see the gift shop to see if we could get some things for our kids to sleep in and swim in the next day. It is a very nice gift shop, not so much for essentials or getting clothes for a week long trip. My daughter is 3 and son is 7. There was 1 bathing suit that fit my daughter. Nothing that fit my son, and then some DR T-Shirts in their sizes and that was it. No underwear or diapers (they still sleep in diapers for accidents). We were a bit upset about this but still needed to eat dinner so we went to the buffet. We were pleasantly greeted and taken to our table where we had an ok meal. We went to the main lobby to the concierge if he had any more suggestions about finding clothes for our kids. He was very nice and understanding about our lost luggage. He offered a $65 cab ride to La Romana to go to a store where there should be more options for clothes, not a bad option if it wasn't already 8:30pm. We headed back to our room deciding if we were going to try to do that tonight or the next morning since we did have a couple of spare diapers in our carryon to get us through the night at least. At around 9PM, I got a message from someone at the Bahia Principe Grand Bavaro saying our luggage was at their hotel for some reason. I tried getting them to just put it in a cab and bringing it to me, but the person I was messaging wasn't comfortable with that so I went to our concierge and he arranged a cab for me to travel the 1.25hr one way trip to pick it up and bring me back. $180 in cab fare later and about 3 hours, I get back into bed around midnight of our first night (not the hotel's fault, but we felt the hotel didn't really know how to help us or no one took the effort to assist us in getting things setup to have a good vacation if we had fully lost the luggage).
Day 2 was pretty uneventful. Breakfast and lunch at the grill which had some of the better food at the family side of the hotel. Service is a bit lacking. It feels like they have waiter by committee so one person fills your water/coffee and takes drink orders. Someone else brings the drinks, then someone else takes your order, and a totally different person brings the food out. If you didn't get enough to drink from that first person, you probably weren't getting anything else for the rest of your meal since they all had separate jobs.
Day 3 we went to the water park, and thankfully it wasn't super busy while we were there. There were maybe 10 floats total for the entire park to share, and people started hoarding them about an hour into the waterpark opening since you couldn't get one if you put one back after doing the lazy river or water slides. Once we were done with the lazy river, we put our floats back and then couldn't find any for the slides the rest of the day. My son found a couple of deflated ones that he was told to take to the check in desk at the waterpark to get them filled back up, but they lost air rather quickly when we used them on the slides. We were done at the waterpark around 12:30-1PM that day so we got lunch and headed to the room for a nap. When we woke up and started getting ready to head back out, I noticed something on a beam in our ceiling. After watching it for a bit I realized it was a snake that had came in through the cracks in the ceiling. Not a huge snake by any means (maybe 3-4 feet long), but still a bit disconcerting to my wife and kids knowing one can just crawl in whenever it wants. So my wife went down to the premium club to see about another room move while I packed up and kept an eye on the snake and to let maintenance in when they showed up. But by the time they showed up (20-25 minutes later), it had already disappeared back into the ceiling (see picture for snake) This was in room 7208. We needed to get ready for the Beach BBQ we signed up for and were running a bit late trying to get showers and stuff after moving rooms. We made it to the BBQ and it started sprinkling a bit so we waited under the towel hut. Then it just didn't stop sprinkling. We expected the BBQ to get canceled or moved to another day (it was $49 for adults and $29 for children), but we waited and waited and no one came to let us know what was going on. Once the group of people noticed they were starting to take down the tables, then someone walked over and asked the guy who sold the beach BBQ to everyone if it was canceled and he confirmed it would either be rescheduled for tomorrow or refunded. No communication whatsoever from an actual employee to the patrons waiting. So we went to the buffet. We ended up having the BBQ the next night, and while it was a special experience eating in the sand, I didn't feel it was worth the extra $175 after tip for my family to eat the mediocre food.
We were moved to a different room on the same side of building 7 (room 7222), and when we walked in my wife immediately said it smelled like mildew and it was very wet inside. I didn't notice it as much but we got settled into this room and then went to dinner at the beach BBQ. My wife was still complaining about the smell and the moisture but I just chalked it up to being in the Dominican Republic and it being humid everywhere. When we woke up the next morning, my wife was very congested and everything just felt damp to the touch. We went to breakfast and then back to the premium club to talk to someone about moving to a less moist room. We were told they wouldn't have one available until after 4pm and they would add a dehumidifier to the new room as well just in case. Again I asked if there were any upgrades I could pay for to get us into a room that might help make the trip go better for my wife and kids. Something either closer to the pools/activities or water facing and we were told that this room was all they had (even though you could go on the hilton website and book waterfront rooms and suites for the rest of the trip if you wanted to pay cash). So we did some beach and pool time while waiting for our new room to be cleaned and ready (checked back around 1PM and it was still going to be ready around 4). We took another nap and woke up at 4, packed everything up and then went to the premium club to get our new room assignment. It was a room about 6 doors down and the humidifier did help a bit, but it needed emptied every 6-8 hours or so and things still felt a bit damp. Still faced the access road but we were over the swim up pools on the ground floor now as well.
After all of this, I wrote to Hilton on twitter expressing my current displeasure with how our trip had unfolded so far with the snake and all of the room changes. We enjoyed most of the rest of our time at the hotel though. My wife had a wonderful hot stone massage at the spa, the kids had a fun time at the kid's club, and I was able to have some quiet time if needed. Our second to last day we received a call in our room saying management would like to speak to us, but we were heading out to eat at the time so we asked them to call us back tomorrow. The next day we received a call around 12 wanting us to come to the premium club to sit down with management to find out why we had contacted Hilton about our stay. We discussed everything that had gone on so far, and they offered a couple of things to help get things smoothed out a bit. It was my son's birthday this week, so they put a sash on the door that said Happy Birthday, as well as leaving some candy, balloons and fruit with a Happy Birthday banner also in the room. Very nice touch. Then we had a reservation at the Peruvian restaurant (also good food), where they had balloons setup at a table and brought us out a wonderful chocolate cake. Then they said if we were to come back in the next 12 months, they would happily upgrade us to a suite to help persuade us to come back. I am happy with the results even if we don't come back and take them up on the suite offer. I just wish the staff were more empowered to try to help when we needed assistance, or to get management when they knew we had moved rooms 3 times and still weren't fully happy. For the price of this hotel (rates were in the $600+ per night range when we went), I would expect service that is out of this world, but it was very mediocre unfortunately. It is a beautiful property, with newly updated rooms. Most people probably won't have the same type of issues we saw (except maybe the waiter service). But I didn't see the $600 worth of value when other hotels in the Punta Cana/Cap Cana area would go for $250-$350 and probably have the same type of service/food. Overall I'd give it a 5/10, but it would be lower if management hadn't helped make my son's birthday special. We truly appreciate all they did for him. We paid with Hilton HHonors points at 80,000 points per night (5th night free) and no extra charges for our children booked through the Hilton website.
We arrived in Punta Cana on 03/22/22, and things didn't go so well to start off our trip which may affect our judgment on the actual hotel itself just to preface this review. Our luggage was taken by a porter at the baggage pickup area before we even got there so we had to fill out a lost luggage report with AA before we left the airport. Then the transportation we prebooked took an hour to find someone willing to take us to the Hilton as well (Outbound Shuttles booked through ShuttleFare for $120 roundtrip).
We got to the hotel around 6PM upset that our kid's luggage was no where to be found, and we were taken to the premium check in area. Check in went fine, we told them about our issues with the luggage and asked where we might be able to find clothes and stuff for our kids (at this point we didn't know where our luggage was or if we will ever see it again). The front desk clerk told us the Gift Shop/Boutique would be able to help us and they were open until 10. We asked if there were any upgrades available (paid or not), and they told us we were upgraded to a premium view room instead of the Deluxe Garden view we had booked. We were escorted to a very nice room on the 1st floor with a partial view of the ocean near the premium area pool in building 5. It would have been a great room if it was what we had booked. We had reserved a king room with sofabed since our children are smaller, and we were given a 2 Doubles room instead. We went back to the check in area to see if they had the king bed room instead since I don't fit well in a double sized bed. Queens are just barely doable but a double is a bit too small. She tapped away at the computer for a bit and said they did have a king room they could get us into. But it would be a 2nd floor room in building 7 without the view (it looked out over the back access road on the property). No big deal, that sounds good. We got all moved over and setup in the new room and then went to see the gift shop to see if we could get some things for our kids to sleep in and swim in the next day. It is a very nice gift shop, not so much for essentials or getting clothes for a week long trip. My daughter is 3 and son is 7. There was 1 bathing suit that fit my daughter. Nothing that fit my son, and then some DR T-Shirts in their sizes and that was it. No underwear or diapers (they still sleep in diapers for accidents). We were a bit upset about this but still needed to eat dinner so we went to the buffet. We were pleasantly greeted and taken to our table where we had an ok meal. We went to the main lobby to the concierge if he had any more suggestions about finding clothes for our kids. He was very nice and understanding about our lost luggage. He offered a $65 cab ride to La Romana to go to a store where there should be more options for clothes, not a bad option if it wasn't already 8:30pm. We headed back to our room deciding if we were going to try to do that tonight or the next morning since we did have a couple of spare diapers in our carryon to get us through the night at least. At around 9PM, I got a message from someone at the Bahia Principe Grand Bavaro saying our luggage was at their hotel for some reason. I tried getting them to just put it in a cab and bringing it to me, but the person I was messaging wasn't comfortable with that so I went to our concierge and he arranged a cab for me to travel the 1.25hr one way trip to pick it up and bring me back. $180 in cab fare later and about 3 hours, I get back into bed around midnight of our first night (not the hotel's fault, but we felt the hotel didn't really know how to help us or no one took the effort to assist us in getting things setup to have a good vacation if we had fully lost the luggage).
Day 2 was pretty uneventful. Breakfast and lunch at the grill which had some of the better food at the family side of the hotel. Service is a bit lacking. It feels like they have waiter by committee so one person fills your water/coffee and takes drink orders. Someone else brings the drinks, then someone else takes your order, and a totally different person brings the food out. If you didn't get enough to drink from that first person, you probably weren't getting anything else for the rest of your meal since they all had separate jobs.
Day 3 we went to the water park, and thankfully it wasn't super busy while we were there. There were maybe 10 floats total for the entire park to share, and people started hoarding them about an hour into the waterpark opening since you couldn't get one if you put one back after doing the lazy river or water slides. Once we were done with the lazy river, we put our floats back and then couldn't find any for the slides the rest of the day. My son found a couple of deflated ones that he was told to take to the check in desk at the waterpark to get them filled back up, but they lost air rather quickly when we used them on the slides. We were done at the waterpark around 12:30-1PM that day so we got lunch and headed to the room for a nap. When we woke up and started getting ready to head back out, I noticed something on a beam in our ceiling. After watching it for a bit I realized it was a snake that had came in through the cracks in the ceiling. Not a huge snake by any means (maybe 3-4 feet long), but still a bit disconcerting to my wife and kids knowing one can just crawl in whenever it wants. So my wife went down to the premium club to see about another room move while I packed up and kept an eye on the snake and to let maintenance in when they showed up. But by the time they showed up (20-25 minutes later), it had already disappeared back into the ceiling (see picture for snake) This was in room 7208. We needed to get ready for the Beach BBQ we signed up for and were running a bit late trying to get showers and stuff after moving rooms. We made it to the BBQ and it started sprinkling a bit so we waited under the towel hut. Then it just didn't stop sprinkling. We expected the BBQ to get canceled or moved to another day (it was $49 for adults and $29 for children), but we waited and waited and no one came to let us know what was going on. Once the group of people noticed they were starting to take down the tables, then someone walked over and asked the guy who sold the beach BBQ to everyone if it was canceled and he confirmed it would either be rescheduled for tomorrow or refunded. No communication whatsoever from an actual employee to the patrons waiting. So we went to the buffet. We ended up having the BBQ the next night, and while it was a special experience eating in the sand, I didn't feel it was worth the extra $175 after tip for my family to eat the mediocre food.
We were moved to a different room on the same side of building 7 (room 7222), and when we walked in my wife immediately said it smelled like mildew and it was very wet inside. I didn't notice it as much but we got settled into this room and then went to dinner at the beach BBQ. My wife was still complaining about the smell and the moisture but I just chalked it up to being in the Dominican Republic and it being humid everywhere. When we woke up the next morning, my wife was very congested and everything just felt damp to the touch. We went to breakfast and then back to the premium club to talk to someone about moving to a less moist room. We were told they wouldn't have one available until after 4pm and they would add a dehumidifier to the new room as well just in case. Again I asked if there were any upgrades I could pay for to get us into a room that might help make the trip go better for my wife and kids. Something either closer to the pools/activities or water facing and we were told that this room was all they had (even though you could go on the hilton website and book waterfront rooms and suites for the rest of the trip if you wanted to pay cash). So we did some beach and pool time while waiting for our new room to be cleaned and ready (checked back around 1PM and it was still going to be ready around 4). We took another nap and woke up at 4, packed everything up and then went to the premium club to get our new room assignment. It was a room about 6 doors down and the humidifier did help a bit, but it needed emptied every 6-8 hours or so and things still felt a bit damp. Still faced the access road but we were over the swim up pools on the ground floor now as well.
After all of this, I wrote to Hilton on twitter expressing my current displeasure with how our trip had unfolded so far with the snake and all of the room changes. We enjoyed most of the rest of our time at the hotel though. My wife had a wonderful hot stone massage at the spa, the kids had a fun time at the kid's club, and I was able to have some quiet time if needed. Our second to last day we received a call in our room saying management would like to speak to us, but we were heading out to eat at the time so we asked them to call us back tomorrow. The next day we received a call around 12 wanting us to come to the premium club to sit down with management to find out why we had contacted Hilton about our stay. We discussed everything that had gone on so far, and they offered a couple of things to help get things smoothed out a bit. It was my son's birthday this week, so they put a sash on the door that said Happy Birthday, as well as leaving some candy, balloons and fruit with a Happy Birthday banner also in the room. Very nice touch. Then we had a reservation at the Peruvian restaurant (also good food), where they had balloons setup at a table and brought us out a wonderful chocolate cake. Then they said if we were to come back in the next 12 months, they would happily upgrade us to a suite to help persuade us to come back. I am happy with the results even if we don't come back and take them up on the suite offer. I just wish the staff were more empowered to try to help when we needed assistance, or to get management when they knew we had moved rooms 3 times and still weren't fully happy. For the price of this hotel (rates were in the $600+ per night range when we went), I would expect service that is out of this world, but it was very mediocre unfortunately. It is a beautiful property, with newly updated rooms. Most people probably won't have the same type of issues we saw (except maybe the waiter service). But I didn't see the $600 worth of value when other hotels in the Punta Cana/Cap Cana area would go for $250-$350 and probably have the same type of service/food. Overall I'd give it a 5/10, but it would be lower if management hadn't helped make my son's birthday special. We truly appreciate all they did for him. We paid with Hilton HHonors points at 80,000 points per night (5th night free) and no extra charges for our children booked through the Hilton website.
Apr 13, 2022, 5:17 am
#100
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Midwest USA
Programs: AA EXP, HH Diamond, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 591
Thank you so much for the review. Pretty sure I'd soil myself if I saw a snake in our ceiling!! Any idea what kind that thing was? We'll be staying there later this month. Now I'm thinking of asking for a 2nd floor room just to avoid the whole possibility of a snake. I mean, just hell no.
Apr 21, 2022, 4:22 pm
#101
Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 101
Thank you so much for the review. Pretty sure I'd soil myself if I saw a snake in our ceiling!! Any idea what kind that thing was? We'll be staying there later this month. Now I'm thinking of asking for a 2nd floor room just to avoid the whole possibility of a snake. I mean, just hell no.
Apr 25, 2022, 8:17 am
#102
Join Date: Feb 2019
Posts: 37
Upgrade room with cash?
I am planning on booking a 5 or 6 night stay with points (standard room). I am a Diamond member, but if I wanted to guarantee an upgraded room, is there an option to pay cash for an upgraded room? I know at some Hilton properties after I book, I'll get an email offer to pay $XX/night to upgrade to a suite/premium room. Has anybody ever had this option for this resort? Thanks!
Apr 25, 2022, 9:28 am
#103
Join Date: May 2014
Location: BRU
Programs: BA GGL, TK E (*G), ITA exec
Posts: 4,072
You can upgrade at check-in, in case you don't get the diamond upgrade you really want.
I went two times, early 2021 paying cash, early 2022 using points, and I always got upgraded from the standard to the premium garden, that for me was enough.
I went two times, early 2021 paying cash, early 2022 using points, and I always got upgraded from the standard to the premium garden, that for me was enough.
Apr 26, 2022, 5:05 pm
#104
Join Date: Feb 2020
Posts: 1,203
This hotel is playing games with inventory displayed on Hilton.com. The Standard Award rooms are NOT showing as available for Dec 25th - Jan 1st on Hilton.com but are available and on sale on other channels like Expedia, Hotels.com and PlayaResorts.com
Seems to me like they are trying to prevent people from booking Standard Award rooms using points during that period.
Seems to me like they are trying to prevent people from booking Standard Award rooms using points during that period.
May 10, 2022, 2:57 pm
#105
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Los Angeles
Programs: Hhonors Diamond, IHG Silver, BW Diamond
Posts: 467
We recently stayed at this hotel and all the charges on my Hilton Amex Surpass are only earning 3X points per dollar rather than the usual 12X points per dollar for Hilton purchases. Anyone else run into this and were you able to get it resolved? Currently on hold with an Amex chat agent who is looking into it. Amex agent now says "Upon checking, you should earn 12x points for that charge. What you are seeing in your end is just the base points of 3x and the additional points will be added automatically in your Hilton account once we transfer the points you earned It should still update since the charge is included in your May statement that was just closed yesterday." I guess I'll wait and see if the bonus points show up in my account. They usually show as 12X in transaction history too.
Also, no points are showing on the Hilton site for our stay yet and it's been almost a week. Booked through Hilton.com. How long does it usually take to show up?
Also, no points are showing on the Hilton site for our stay yet and it's been almost a week. Booked through Hilton.com. How long does it usually take to show up?