TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Bars are understaffed, people are there to process you as quickly as possible. Associated services (especially transfers team) have are rude and unapologetic.Ignored me for the 12 days of my stay unwilling to engage in dialogue. Not expensive but DEFINITELY NOT 5 star

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this resort! We stayed at the Colonial and had a wonderful time! This resort is LARGE and offers so much! We didn't get to do more than 1/2 of what's offered. Everyone was amazing and we had an amazing vacation. We will go back and can't wait!!! We all loved the activities, pools, grounds and the peacefulness on the beach. The sand was soft and white and the water was a turquoise clear blue. We never had to fight for a pool/beach chair and could always find sun or shade depending on what we wanted. PROS: 1. Beautiful well kept grounds, pools, beach, rooms, everything! 2 The entertainment staff is wonderful and there is ALWAYS something going on day or night. 3. Food was abundant, fresh and constantly being made right in front of you. 4. Staff is very quick to fix issues. CONS: ( none of these are reasons to not go) 1. Check in takes FOREVER, but staff is doing their best and friendly. 2. The resort is HUGE so expect to walk a lot if you want to explore the resort. We walked approximately 4 miles every day just walking around the resort to pools, towel stands, beach, restaurant's, theatre/disco, snack bars. Etc. 3. We had to have one or both of our room key cards recoded daily. We were there 5 days and not one day went by without one or both of our key cards not working. The walk to the lobby is a far walk - frustrating! 4. We had a few issues in both our rooms we booked. One room had an issue with the main door lock and wouldn't lock/engage. Called guest services a few calls with no luck of anyone showing up and it finally took a manager to get involved where it was fixed immediately. This was a safety concern for me as my boys and all their things were in the room. Once the manager was involved she fixed all the issues in our room as well. I believe we were the first people in our room after hurricane Beryl and our fridge, safe, TV all had issues. They were all replaced quickly.

After concluding our vacation and stay in Barcelo our family of 4 agrees with the following: 1. Customer service in general is not the best. Sometimes there are not enough staff. The ones there are are not very friendly and sometimes they try to avoid you, they seem very reluctant. I don't know how to explain it but it is a different experience from other hotels where the entire staff treats you like a real guest. 2. The drinks were decent in taste. Some were delicious. Others even seem to dilute them with water. There wasn't much consistency. 3. The facilities are very good. There is much to see and do. The pools are large and clean. There are enough lounge chairs both in the pools and on the beach. Our room was clean and acceptable. It could be updated a little. 4. The play and the sea are one of the key points why perhaps we would return. The sea water was calm and transparent. The beach of all the Barcelo hotels together is gigantic. It is very suitable for snorkeling. And this is personally my favorite thing about the hotel. 5. The food is very good at the buffets. We stayed 5 nights and were only allowed to eat 2 nights at special restaurants. Many people were upset with this. But in the two we ate, the food was very good. The desserts were also very delicious in all the restaurants we went to. In itself it was a pleasant experience but with a lot to be desired in terms of service and drinks.

The good: beautiful resort with fantastic views, very good air conditioned rooms with ceiling fans, AC in restaurants and buffets (except at pools), food was decent, quick check in, Kyoto and La Trattata restaurants were great. Helpful with transportation, friendly with filling up our Yetis, it was nice walking to dinners and then back but people who have difficulty walking may not enjoy that aspect, they were helpful with the luggage, food portions at restaurants were large, lots of seating and hammocks at pool and lounges at beach, double decker bus was neat, water in ocean was clear, no seaweed, catamaran was really cool, good waitresses and waiters, The bad: lack of drink selections, restaurant reservations were extremely hard to get for a group of 7, so we had to break us up a lot, keys always malfunction, room service not included,only serves Corona Beer, non motorized water sports fill up super fast, shows were weak, beds were terrible ( ours had a pit in it), shower water pressure was non existent, they don’t allow you to take your food to the pool and eat there, only in the buffet, poor English. Let me stop here and say this so I don’t sound like a snob. I understand we are in a different country, I completely get that. I also understand that 80% of their tourists are English speaking so while I did not have a horrible time communicating, there were several instances in which there was an obvious language barrier, and two or more people had to be involved to correct issue and yet there was one particular bartender in the adults only section that spoke better English than I! Not being premium was evident in the way you were treated especially with drinks ( no top shelf for us lowly peasants….and when is Jack Daniel’s considered top shelf? Maybe I don’t drink that much liquor), one or two accessible outlets in our rooms, mall was a joke, tourist trap prices everywhere ( $57 US Dollars for sunscreen!) I bought a $10 Christmas ornament,

Lots of places to eat but food was tasteless everywhere. Very low quality ingredients used for preparation of food. Shrimp was weird tasting, clams were nasty, drinks tasted like artificially sweetened syrups were used to make them, I could go on. Lots of choices of dishes but I couldn’t find anything that was actually tasty. The mattress in the room was old fashioned spring mattress and bouncy. I kept waking up from being tossed around every time my husband turned. Bedding had holes in it. We slept on the same sheets for 10 days and they were never changed. Service was good everywhere. Hotel is dated and needs to be remodeled. Locks on balcony doors were broken in both of our rooms. Alternatives were installed but didn’t stay latched. We were unfortunate to vacation during hurricane Baryl and found out that metal accordion shutters that are supposed to be used to cover the balcony glass door during the hurricane, didn’t function properly and had a broken off part so we had to call service to close them for us. Pretty average hotel, with remodeling and improvements has a potential for becoming and amazing property. I am not planning to come back or recommend to anyone.