TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

My reservation was made through JetBlue! We booked the Bahia aquamarine resort! We got upgraded to Bahia Ambar thinking it was a Luxury Hotel and paid an extra $864.00 for both rooms that we had. I came for my anniversary which was on July 4th and it was ruined. The Bahia Ambar is not a Luxury Hotel!!! Don’t get fooled. The restaurants all need some help from the service to the quality of the food. What i really want to say is, Antonio, Jesus, NoNo ( waiter in the buffet), Yohandry, Ezekiel, (bartenders), bellman, the entertainment group were all amazing. I feel that it was wrong from the hotel to charge me $864 for an upgrade that didn’t even exist! Very sad!!!!

Amazing stay. The hotel was impeccable, and the food quality was very good. I will come back. I want to give a big shout out to the beach bar bartender, Confesionario, and Alexandra. They were always on top of our drinks and asking if we needed something.

just returned from an excellent 6 night stay at Bahia Principe Escape Ambar. I am a travel agent and I have been to a variety of different resorts. I will try to be as detailed as I can on what I liked, loved and what could be improved. I have been to this resort twice previously but stayed at the escape Esmeralda which is the family side. This was my first time staying at the AMBAR, adults only resort. 1) I always feel the staff is the most valuable thing at this resort. I still feel the same. 99-9 percent of the staff are amazing. Whether it’s the lobby, buffet, restaurant, bell staff, maid service, bartenders…. Everyone was amazing. I still feel the same. These folks know and understand service. We did have an odd negative encounter with the staff at other Mexican spot our first night so if I had to change anything, I would restart the Mexican restaurant with staff that matches the friendliness of the typical Bahia staff. 2) rooms were beautiful, clean, bed was comfy. we had a room with 2 beds and there was a desk area plus a sitting area and outdoor pool. we only used the beds. room was spacious, had a large shower with both rain water shower-head and hand held shower head and was alway perfect pressure and temp. room. This room did not have the automation option for lights and tv like in Bahia. There seemed to be more channels on the tv but we could never find a channel guide or menu. The room had air conditioning and a ceiling fan. Note: all the outlets are 2 prong not 3 prong. So my extension cord for chargers did not work. There were plenty of usb outlets throughout the room. 3) there is an app you can download to your phone to check daily events and make reservations. My only advice here is, it would be nice if the app told you where the event was. It took me a minute to figure out it was limiting entertainment list to only those at the ambar in the lobby. I think they could improve here and list a full page of resort events and locations as well as resort map. Having been here twice before, I was aware of a casino, a karaoke bar, plus sports bars around the resort. While we were there we enjoyed some great events at the resort but it would be great to know where all the resort events are nightly. 4) food at the daily buffet was really good. there was a great variety of things to choose from . steaks, lambchops, grilled shrimps , pastas, nachos, local fare. there is enough to choose from. Also the buffet was very clean, air conditioned and nice environment. The buffet countries to be high quality. 5). There were a lot of mosquitoes in the lobby area at night. I never has this problem at Esmeralda. Maybe it’s timing but at Esmeralda when I remember seeing men come out nightly to spray for pests. I never saw this at ambar. I think they need to spray more around lobby. The mosquitoes are bad. 6) spa services-- great rates and amazing services. treat yourself. Still great. Love Rosany! Great massages every time. 7) pools- there is a huge main pool at this resort. there were always more than enough chairs and towels. bar staff were very friendly and drinks were nice. They often had a band, a dj, pool contests or a foam party. Never a dull moment. 8) sports bar --ambar had its own sports bar. I never went to that one. I rode the trolly to the sports bar at Esmeralda. I think the menu is the same at both. Nice place to hang out. 9) . resort is huge so you will be walking or taking the trolley carts. I am short and have difficulty climbing into the carts. I was so happy to see they actually made improvements here. Now they have steps inside the trolley carts to help the shorties. They also have some carts that are smaller and lower to the ground. now a few things that I think could be improved upon did did not ruin my stay-- 1). Room service needs more options. A pizza would be great or healthy salad with grilled chicken or shrimp on top with Italian or blue cheese dressing. The only choices were beef wraps, pasta, burger, or generic fruit plate or nachos. Buffet closes at 3 so if you having out at pool all day your options are limited. Also my room mate had some early morning excursions before the buffet opened. Ordering eggs super early around 5 am did not appear possible on the preorder menu. 2) we tried 4 of the restaurants. Italian: pizza was good, the rest was subpar. The lasagna was not good. Oddly the lasagna at the buffet was delicious. The bar service here was also good. I really wish the pizzas were on the room service menu because they are great!! Limbo: still my favorite. We went here 3 times. The steak is delicious. The sea urchin soup and scallops are great. The lemon cloud is yummy. They also have great welcome cocktails like raspberry 75. Bar service is good too. I had a nice cosmo here. Meat: loved the bbq chicken wings. Yummy. Someone should add these to the menu at the sports bar or on room service. These are better than the sports bar wings. Great bar service here. The crab cakes are good but they are not the typical American recipe, they kind of taste like thanksgiving stuffing. But who doesn’t like thanksgiving stuffing? Mexican: hated it. The only restaurant that had rude staff and the food was not great. We ordered fajitas. It’s not the grilled sizzly kind. It’s more like meat stirred in a sauce abandoned the sauce is not a great flavor. How do you mess up Mexican? Just skip this place. Even the margaritas were subpar. For our group. We agree eating at buffet is first option, limbo is second. If you are wondering- yes there is also a beach, but we hung out at the pool and never ventured to the beach. Often. I am Sure it was beautiful but I didn't make time for it. Overall, I had an amazing time. will share a few pictures. I will definitely return. This is a great place. One more thing, this resort is now part of Hyatt. They need to complete the merger of the websites so that you can see your reservation on Hyatt pages. The merger has made accessing the old pages impossible or confusing. This is 2026, figure it out!

So many little things make this just an ok resort. No welcome drink on arrival. Our first rooms air conditioning was broken. We had 3 different people come “fix” it. We would wait an hour or so and then call again. We wasted a ton of vacation time trying to get it fixed, then re-packing and unpacking when we moved rooms. That’s a big deal for me being disabled. Food was mediocre at best. We actually ended up at buffet multiple nights because food in special restaurants was so horrible. The menus have been paired down from what’s on the website. La Isla in particular. That was supposed to be best lunch place but had half the items that was listed online. The staff was friendly, but very few spoke English enough to ask questions. The feeling this week was more of a party resort than a luxury resort. Seaweed was all over beach and in first few feet of ocean. Didn’t see anyone trying to clean it. Service around the pool was almost non existent. And we were tipping well. Beds were hard as a rock. Even after asking for mattress topper. The Good…. Grounds are beautiful. Oneida, the guest relations specialist was the sweetest and most helpful. Juan was also helpful. And Reynaldo made the best lemon drop martinis in the lobby bar. The rooms seemed fairly updated. Everyone greets you with a smile. Been were very friendly and efficient. Hyatt has a lot of work to do to get this place to their standards. Food needs to be worked on first.

We arrived on 11th June and from our arrival at the airport the support of TUI was no existent ! We found the TUI desk and was handed a sheet of paper with a coach number, no indication of to where the coach may be, some random woman showed us to where the coaches were parked and then put her hand out for a tip. We were dropped off at AquaMarine and transferred to Ambar by buggy people remained on the coach as they hadn’t been told this was normal practice…. Check in was done quickly, however we were not offered a welcome drink or cold clothes as we have previously received at other venues. We went back to where we had left our luggage and bellboy accompanied us to our room which was on the first floor our luggage quickly followed. I would add that there are no lifts, so if you have any mobility issues this may be a problem. Our room was nicely laid out and clean. I do have concerns as we had put the do not disturb on the door as we don’t need our room cleaned every day but noticed that someone had been in as the bin had been emptied. Used the Palmyra on first night, however we used the app to book the restaurants for remaining days of our 14 night stay. The breakfast buffet was plentiful depending on your culinary tastes, for us it was not good ?? bacon that was burnt to a crisp or none available, poached eggs that were cooked and served in a dish filled with water, they were hard and because they were left the water was congealed and ??.. the only decent thing was the freshly cooked omelette. Husband had cereal on 5 occasions as the breakfast looked so unappealing. Service was very hit and miss. We booked dinner at El Olivo - we arrived at 19:20 for a 19:30 booking, we were shown to our table and asked if we wanted water, we said no so not only did they take away the water glasses but they also took the wine glasses! We sat there for approx 10 minutes before we managed to get someone’s attention to ask for wine which we eventually got! We were then ignored for another 10 minutes before someone came and took our order for dinner, my husband asked for fries but he couldn’t understand what he wanted so went away and got someone else to help, finally the other person knew what he wanted and said it was no problem.. we sat there for a further 15 minutes with empty wine glasses and no bread was offered (you get this straight away in the other restaurants we went to) so in total we had sat in this restaurant for 40 minutes and had no one refill the wine. By now we were getting fed up of being ignored so decided at 20:15 we walked out. The woman who my husband spoke and told her we were leaving just shrugged her shoulders and couldn’t care… Las Olas - Brazilian Well this was not like any Brazilian restaurant I have ever been to! We had to wait to be seated until I booking time even though we were only 5 minutes early! Once shown to our table a plate of what they describe as starters was placed on our table, I can only describe it as what looks like shepherds pie, 3 breaded prawns, some sort of pasty and something else I couldn’t describe… next came the meat, you got sausage, chicken thigh which was so hard and tough you couldn’t cut it, fillet wrapped in bacon but again so dry.. you then got another plate with rice, and other bits and pieces and finally 3 desserts to share. So disappointed was expecting lovely fresh salad bar and succulent cuts of meat definitely not what we got!! Definitely recommend MEAT, we visited 4 times ?????? Limbo was definitely our favourite the food was amazing as were the cocktails and Imari was a super star ? she went above what we expected and made our anniversary and my birthday extra special ?? We spent most of our time at the pool, and was always able to get a sun bed, even though people were putting towels down early to get the best spots, we found that unless you were willing to tip big you got ignored by the pool waitresses, also some language barriers at the pool bar where by they didn’t understand you or didn’t want to! Some days the smell of the seaweed was unpleasant but the guys were working hard to clean the beach but it was having very little effect. The Entertainment team work very hard and try to include all age groups but it could be improved upon as we noticed that there were more mature adults at the time we were there.. The white party music was definitely catered for the younger people. However, the fire show was definitely the best experience we saw and would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Did we enjoy our holiday yes to a degree, the resort is lovely and the grounds well kept, most staff were friendly and helpful, food was good in some place's but excellent in some others. Definitely not a 5 star hotel or experience!