TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Our overall experience at the Catalonia was average to disappointing. The grounds of the hotel are lovely, but this only compensates for the shortcomings for a few days before overall the place becomes annoying, and you are looking forward to coming home. We stayed in a Privileged room. Pros :- 1. Beach area - Has that Caribbean vibe with lots of palm trees, white sand, nice enough sun loungers, bar on the beach, some activities. But there were negatives too - see below. 2. Grounds - Overall has a nicely presented grounds around the resort. Particularly the gardens in the middle. 3. Steakhouse and Teppanyaki - The best of the a la carte's. The food here was good enough to be able to enjoy some meals. And thankfully the hotel didn't place limits on how many nights you could book here (use the hotel website to book up to 4 days in advance). We used these restaurants quite a lot over two weeks because the rest left a lot to be desired. 4. Nice views of the beach once you got out past the seaweed barrier (before that the water is brown in colour and full of it). The water is nice and clear and shallow out past the barrier, so worth venturing out that far for a nicer sea experience. 5. Some maids will stock your fridge with whatever you request in return for a USD tip (others take the tip and don't bother). 6. They can arrange for a buggy to come and pick you up with your luggage on the day you leave. This was appreciated as the complex is large for lugging suitcases around. 7. We enjoyed the live BBQ / Paella / Locrio cooking over charcoal on the beach. The live music guys who sang the Caribbean style songs were excellent! Really added to the atmosphere. 8. Even though we are European tourists, we really enjoyed the effort the hotel went to for 4th July with all the entertainment and US BBQ they put on. They went above and beyond including bringing Harley Davidson's to the pool area. Was a fun day and easily the highlight of the trip entertainment wise. 9. The Michael Jackson show was excellent. This year it coincided with 4th July making that day and evening very enjoyable overall. Now, we are not picky travellers. We expect a few things not to go 100% to plan, understand about different cultures and standards, and often are happy making do with slight annoyances, but this hotel did have some really annoying aspects that overall made our experience only average at best. 1. Pool bar staff ignoring European and US tourists - This was extremely obvious the entire trip. You would go up to the bar and stand there while they continually just skipped past you to serve customers from Latin America. We even spoke to them and placed orders in Spanish, but they still would ignore us and other tourists reported the same experience. This really lets the place down. Even some of the Latin American tourists would instruct the staff to skip serving them and go to us (they arrived at the bar well after us) as they could see this happening too. The hotel really needs to sort this out as all customers should be treated the same. I will say though that some staff (particularly in the Pure Chill Out bar and lobby bar) were very friendly and did not display this behaviour. We had good chats with them in Spanish / English. 2. We had kids with us and the games room area is shockingly bad. Pool tables swelling your tokens and not giving balls, machines sitting with no prizes in them, bugs running around the floor, no responsibility from staff to return lost tokens swallowed by machines. Clearly no care is giving to this area whatsoever. 3. The main stage was out of action for part of our stay, but the hotel didn't make it clear that entertainment was being held in an indoor room. There should have been obvious signs saying so. The entertainment wasn't great anyway except for the Michael Jackson show (which was shown on the main stage). This is a major disadvantage of this property. The evening entertainment is poor, the complex lacks interesting nightlife at night, there is nowhere outside the complex to walk to for some entertainment, and items like the nighttime beach party didn't happen. We often found ourselves back in our room straight after dinner and in bed before 10pm as a result. 4. There is a sewage problem in the resort. Literally like clockwork around 5pm there would be a sewage smell in the room. It seems to correlate with when people might be taking a shower as we felt that the smell was coming from the shower plughole. And it doesn't seem a problem that could easily be fixed by having someone come to your room to look at it because it seems a common theme and related to piping within the buildings. 5. One of the animation team spent more time talking to daughters of families than actually doing his job. Was always seen sitting chatting and eyeing up girls between 16 and 20 whenever their parents weren't looking. 6. Besides the steakhouse and teppanyaki, the restaurants lacked quality food, staff were barely able to keep up with the amount of customers, and cleanliness of bathroom areas with broken equipment showed that the owners of this complex do not care about looking after the place. The food was also monotonous after a few days as the buffet had the exact same food every day, and the a la cartes obviously had fixed menus and we tended to gravitate to using the steakhouse and teppanyaki multiple times as these were the only two places offering decent food at night. 7. A minor annoyance, but our room keys kept stopping working (you use your wrist band to access the room) which required a long trip to reception to get them re-programmed again. 8. Seaweed - This one cannot be really avoided as such, but the sea close to the beach was absolutely full of sargasum and seaweed. There was only one narrow area that everyone had to go to to walk out past the seaweed barrier to get to clearer water. Once there though, the sea was pretty nice and the view was great. 9. Heat and humidity in the restaurants and bars - The whole complex is pretty much outside including the semi inside bars and restaurants. This meant that besides the a la carte's which were air conditioned, the rest of the time you spent in very sticky conditions that made eating and having a drink uncomfortable. Have been to other humid locations before, but we found this complex to be uncomfortably sticky when dining and using the bars. The ceiling fans were totally ineffective most of the time. 10. Broken air-con - The air-con in our room almost never worked properly. It failed to cool the room below 28 - 29c most nights and was very noisy. In the second week of the trip we came back to the room in the evening to find a flood because the air con unit had some kind of major leak. Although to be fair to the hotel they did send someone quickly who drained the system and it worked better after that. 11. Fridge that would work one day and not the next - Our family had two rooms during this stay and our fridges would work for one or two days and then not cool our drinks at all. Both rooms had this problem. As we had two rooms, we simply used the fridge in whichever room was working at the time! But if you only had one room then more often than not the fridge would not have been working. 12. Bad bug - My wife developed a bad gastrointestinal bug during the first week of the trip which persisted right through. I developed the same symptoms about 3 days before the end of our holiday. Severe lower abdominal cramps, bad toilet habits, etc. Another couple we spoke to were travelling with their parents who spent £3000 in hospital fees after becoming ill as well. Given we never left the complex, or ate anything other than the hotel food we can only conclude that the food there made us sick. Symptoms persisted for at least another week after we came home, so overall 2 to 3 weeks of moderate to severe discomfort. 13. Shocking room service - During the second week we decided to order room service one evening rather than venture to the restaurants. A simple order of 2 hamburger meals. It took a total of 3 hours to arrive! (Finally arrived at 10:30pm). And the shocking thing was that when you called room service to ask for updates they repeated just hung up the phone on you. We had fully given up after been hung up so many times before it finally arrived way too late. Room service at this hotel for Privileged guests feels like something they advertise to get a booking but don't really intend to give you and begrudgingly they will deliver something only if you persist with them by calling for updates every half hour. I have never experienced room service like this before. There were positives and negatives to this place, but overall the negatives outweighed the positives. When you book a place like this which is isolated you really are reliant on high quality entertainment, good food, nice accommodation, and the staff. Catalonia failed on some of these aspects - especially with some staff treatment of non-Latin American customers, poor room service, poor entertainment options at night, and a lack of maintenance to the property in places. It wouldn't be so bad if you could easily walk out of complex to some nearby bars, restaurants, or other entertainment but there are no such options at all meaning your only option would be to risk an Uber / taxi to Bavaro or Punta Cana in the evenings. Over a two week vacation the cost of that would add up, and you run the risk of being stuck away from the resort if you cannot get a ride back.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the staff members MARIA FROM CHECK IN & JOSE ALBERTO FROM GUEST SERVICE who went above and beyond in their services during our second stay at your hotel. Their attentiveness and dedication truly made our stay comfortable and enjoyable. It is evident that they understand the importance of assisting customers and are always willing to listen to any issues or concerns we may have had. Thank you for having such amazing staff members who make our experience at your hotel exceptional.

We stayed at Catalonia Bavaro for two weeks in July and unfortunately it fell well below our expectations. From the moment we arrived, there were issues with our booking, with two members of our party missing from the hotel's system despite our documentation being correct. Resolving this took several days and involved multiple trips to reception and the TUI representative, causing unnecessary stress at the start of our holiday. Housekeeping standards were poor throughout our stay. Rooms were often cleaned very late, sometimes not at all, and the quality of cleaning was below what you would expect from a resort of this standard. Public areas around our accommodation were regularly left with dirty glasses, bottles and plates for extended periods. The entertainment was limited, heavily focused on Spanish-speaking guests and lacked variety. Customer service was inconsistent, with long waits at bars and reception often difficult to contact. We also found the beach disappointing due to large amounts of trapped seaweed, unpleasant odours and poor swimming conditions. We upgraded to the Privilege package expecting a premium experience, but unfortunately the service, facilities and overall organisation did not justify the additional cost. While there were some friendly staff members and the weather was great, the overall experience left us disappointed and it was not the Caribbean holiday we had been looking forward to. I would not return or recommend the hotel based on our experience.

The resort is not it!! From the beginning to when we were leaving, the customer service leaves a lot to be desired. Information was not provided during check in and when asking clarifying questions, the language barrier was a hindrance. So, we had to go to guest services several times only to be told they couldn’t help us with the dinner reservations even though it was their computer glitch that caused our party to not be able to reserve the restaurant in time. The rooms were extremely hot and filled with mosquitoes. The rooms were not cleaned properly. There was dust everywhere. Underneath the bed had so much dust that when the kids dropped something and went to get it, they picked up a handful of dust. That was gross. There was even previous guest items under the bed, like a chapstick and hair accessory. The refrigerator was not cooling and the water was not replenished daily. That was crazy since we need water daily! And, if you’re not flashing them dollar bills, no one there is willing to work. Even standing at the bar they ignore you. If you don’t speak Spanish it’s difficult to communicate with anyone there. I understand I’m in a different country but I am in a tourist area. So, the expectation is that there should be a way for communicating especially with the accommodations. I will NOT be going back to this country because of this horrible experience.

2nd time there never again staff rude letting people front of the line if your spanish mexican argentinian and when your waiting at the bar they ignore you and go to the same people like your not there