TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Spent two weeks here in November, and this by far was the worst resort I’ve stayed at in 20 years of travelling the Caribbean. It is an embarrassment to the Royalton and Marriott brands, and a black eye to Dominican Republic tourism. If you’ve stayed at any other Royaltons (we’ve stayed at 3) don’t bring those expectations here, or you’ll be severely disappointed. Food The buffet is small with very limited selection, and items are rarely replenished. Restaurants close on a whim, even on nights you’re able to make reservations for (happened to us twice, check the app daily and have a plan “B”). The restaurants don’t have ventilation systems for the wood fired ovens, so if they’re using the ovens the restaurant will be full of smoke. Food at the restaurants is hit or miss, for example we ate at Hunter’s steak house and had horrible meals, when we returned a week later the meals were awesome, but we sick for two days afterward (we cancelled our remaining reservations after that). Excite sports bar is a joke, with very few tables and most of the floor space taken up by an unused dance floor. Coffee Shop Open at 7am and provides good service and decent snacks. Ice cream machines rarely worked Room We were in building 6, which appeared to be renovated, and everything worked as it was supposed to. This is a very quiet area at nights. Our room was cleaned daily by Hilma, and she was awesome. The room was always cleaned perfectly and the mini-bar was stocked daily. Pool The main pool is the deepest pool I’ve seen in the Caribbean and it appeared to be fairly clean. The loungers are reserved pretty quickly in the mornings. This is one of the few resorts left that still allow smoking around the pool, so it is very popular with smokers. All three sets of washrooms around the pool were closed for 3 days, with no attempt to fix any of them until one of the guests said something to management. The swim-up bar was also closed for three days after thy got the washrooms opened. The resort is also very popular with folks from the southern US celebrating anniversaries or birthdays. They book 3 or 4 day vacations to party hard, loud, and obnoxiously around the pool. If that’s your thing you’ll love it here. The decking at the Mermaid pool is actually very dangerous, so much so that I’m surprised it’s allowed to be used by guests. Beach The beach area is great, with plenty of shade and sand. You can walk for miles on the left side of the beach. There were some seaweed issues but very manageable. Staff Most of the staff we met were excellent, with Hilda and Mayfer being the best (Hilma looked after our room, and Mayfer made all of our reservations for us for transportation and dining). The front desk staff really need to learn a lot about customer service, and management personnel were rarely visible, if at all. Summary When substandard food and maintenance are the norm, it doesn’t equate to an enjoyable vacation. It’s not excusable in the Dominican Republic, where there are so many better options for your money.

Traveled with a group, and there were many complaints. Our reservation confirmation said two beds, and we received one. The rooms smell of mold, and included large bug sightings. The panhandlers were annoying the first day, and they never went away. The food in the buffet was not edible, and so we mostly stayed away. Saving grace was the made-to-order omelettes, and freshly blended juice. The food in the steakhouse was pretty good, and the waitstaff was friendly. Best thing about Diamond class was the beach, and Carlos at the bar. And I really enjoyed the hydro massage at the spa. The Mermaid pool has broken boards, and is inconvenient. Kettle One could not be found -- not even in the Diamond Lounge. Our butler was helpful, but heard others were not. Security would not let our excursion bus through the gate, so we had to walk. We lost power and water for about 5 mins... not sure what that was about. Oh, and confusion with the transportation back to the airport. I was happy to get back home.

The staff and team are so amazing and positive, they care about you and are very personal! They deserve all the tips in the world ??

The Royalton Chic is past its best due date and in need of a major retrofit. It’s tired! Toilets and hand dryers don’t work, bad sewage smells, insufficient staff at the Italian and Hunter dinner venues where you wait for 1.5 hours to be served, burnt scrabbled eggs at the weekend Diamond breakfasts and long waits to be served, worn out walk walkways where you are guaranteed to get slivers, broken boards and failing apart hand rails, there was a fire next door and the smoke choked us one evening. There is much more but in short this was the worst Royalton experience we have had in 5 years. The spa and gym are great. Some staff were exceptional like our butler Teudi, Jacqueline our house keeper and German and Carlos at the beach bar and restaurant. Simply put, it’s not worth the money. It’s barely a 2.5 star resort. As a result, we will be pulling back from the Royalton for the immediate future.

Just returned from a girl’s trip to celebrate my 60th and although we had fun, we were extremely disappointed with this resort. As soon as we checked in, the problems began. My other two girlfriends were given a room with one king sized bed, they had requested 2 beds of course. We had requested our rooms be beside each other and this wasn’t the case either. They ended up in a ground floor room in the same building as ours with 2 beds. Our air conditioning didn’t work properly, kept saying it was 15 degrees C but it was more like 22 or 23 and the ceiling fan only went one speed-very slow. We tried calling the front desk but our phone didn’t work. The air conditioning in our friend’s room was so noisy that they had to have their TV at maximum volume just to hear it, of course they tried calling but their phone also didn’t work. We went down to the front desk and told them and they wrote everything down so we thought that it would be taken care of, this was not the case. We went down the next day and put our complaints in again as well as other issues. The light outside of room was burnt out, we only got one coffee mug, the coffee maker leaked everywhere, we had no steamer in our room or umbrella. They did finally bring an umbrella and steamer on day 4 but none of the other issues were ever addressed. Next is the preparation and storage of food on the resort. I got severe food poisoning the second night I was there. I was the only one of the 4 that had them grill me a piece of Maki Maki on the buffet…I was violently ill and my girlfriend thought she might even have to take me to the hospital. Nothing was hot…just barely warm and nothing was really cold either. The a la cartes were decent except for the steakhouse. My girlfriends ordered a really nice steak at $40 American per piece and they ordered it medium rare…it came well done so they sent it back. It took forever for it to come out again and myself and my other girlfriend had already finished ours. I had the salmon and it was ok and my girlfriend that ordered the steak off the menu (no extra charge), got mostly gristle and couldn’t really eat it. My 2 girlfriends only ate a bit of their $40 steaks by the time they came and no compensation was offered. I would have loved some french fries on the buffet because I felt that would be safe but not once did they have them….only at the snack bar munchies during lunchtime which you had to order and it took about 20mins. The alcohol and drinks were good, bartenders great, no complaints here. We didn’t receive coffee every day, nor did we get hand towels every day. We had one small garbage can in our bathroom that we had to move out to use. Our friends had 3 garbage cans in their room…there is no rhyme or reason. The pool was really noisy and games going on all day…it would have been nice if they had a pool that was a bit quieter and for this reason we hung out at the beach most days. The nightly entertainment was pretty disappointing but they did try hard. The last night was the cherry on top because they hadn’t cleaned our room when we went back at 5pm to get ready for dinner…they came at 5:30 while we were trying to shower and we told them to come back at 6….10 mins later they were back….I'm thinking they wanted to go home for the day but who cleans your room at 5pm when you’re trying to get ready for dinner. This was supposed to be a 5 star luxury resort…..I would say a 3 at best and for me it was worse than that because I got so sick…don’t fall for the beautiful pictures and descriptions…it is old, worn and tired, desperately needing to be renovated. This was my first time staying at a Royalton and I will never stay at one ever again.