TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

Amazing beach and weather; however service was lacking. We paid to stay in a specific room and building with our grad kids. We didn’t get that room and I am still trying to get the money back I paid to book this room and building. Booking restaurants was also frustrating. We were told they were all booked up for dinners at 6. However if we paid 65 US for a bottle of wine then they could get us a table. This is wrong at so many levels. We were forced to buy wine so our family could get a table. Tried to reason with them and they didn’t care.

We've been to this resort multiple times due to its property size, awesome Lazy River, multiple pools, gorgeous beach with shaded cabanas, and best of all... the exceptional staff!! The evening entertainment featured shows like a Queen & Beyonce Tribute Show in addition the the always popular Michael Jackson show... These were remarkable performances! The resort grounds have been very well manicured and are tended to every day all day and these workers work tirelessly and it shows!! As for the food... it's best at the A La Carte restaurants and even at the buffet one won't be disappointed... The servers everywhere are generally friendly and there were many who go beyond and make the dining experience especially memorable! Shout out to Alfonso who served us with smiles, high fives and and quickly too! The rooms were clean and for the few minor issues we had the maintenance staff resolved the issue in a timely manner. Several courtesy calls to our room throughout our stay to see if we needed anything; nice touch! At this resort there are no limit on towels so no pesky card trade in requirements! When one arrives at the resort on your way to your room one is still met with Vacation Club sales representatives. We found that annoying...! We are not interested in buying that. Special shout out to Angela who took exceptional care of us... when we had ANY issues she asked us to contact her so we did... and she made sure we were satisfied and happy with the resolution of our issue. Anywhere from service issues to room issues. This made our stay one again exceptional and we will definitely be going back again in 2026!!

I am not one for reviews but this resort earned it. - advice here: BOOK YOUR OWN TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM THE RESORT!!! This resort is 20 minutes from the airport, transportation took 1.5 hours, not because of drop off or pick ups, but simply for the drivers or reps to kill time, still unclear as to why. -Booking requests for decor for a celebration were ignored. It took our butler 3 days of reminders to get this sorted out, it appeared that he forgot…every time. - No linens were provided for children’s beds and we were sent back to our room two times after walking up to the front desk staff who clearly never ensured anyone came. - Check in was awful, front desk checked us in and didn’t realize until 45 minutes later that he should have sent us to the diamond club check in fir which we had to wait fur a trolley ( we should have walked, it was faster that our wait for the golf cart. - Because no linens were provided for the pull out and one of children fell off the main bed and was injured. - Timeshares consistently being offered was a vibe killer. - The Nexus reps were upselling fibbers, first off all… if you don’t take them up on the upsell, you’re pretty much useless to them ( that’s definitely the message given off) . Honestly wish we went with James by the grotto lazy river… he kept it real and didnt’t give off that vibe). I sag this because I purposely asked how long the transportation would take to get us to the Catamaran and was lied to and told 20-30 minutes…. Again it took…. 1.5 hours just to get there. Catamaran- Awful ride to get there… it probably should have been rescheduled for a day that wasn’t just after the storm but the organizers decided to go out anyway… it was a little scary and the snorkeling was cut short because the weather was not appropriate for it. I Do have to give props to the catamaran operators, the staff made sure our children were secured to the buoy the entire time and stayed with them along with us so that the little ones could still participate and see the fish a little bit. Rooms- Decent… 3 star perhaps, we had the previous guests garbage in our room when we arrived. Cleaning- you must request clean sheets or else you won’t get them- request you toiletries to be topped up or it won’t be done and we had staff cleaning our rooms just vaping away inside with no care about it at all… Pros- Diamond club pool and snack lounge were a blessing either very early or just before close. (There were a few times that there was inappropriate behavior happening there. I’m not talking about people being intoxicated and loud, generally the type of dancing that one would anticipate at an adult only resort. This is just an FYI in case anyone is traveling with children). The lazy river was incredible. Saved this trip. Just don’t drop your sunglasses in there… because they will be taken… even if it’s just a few minutes later….trust. Beach: just lovely … waves were awesome. Weather: delightful Staff: hit or miss… Stephanie at the beach restaurant was amazing- most of the staff there were amazing… sit outside… it’s stunning. The beach night buffet is incredible, recommend it 100%. White party was wonderful. Hunters - service was awful. Don’t recommend. To the hotel management- all the issues here were brought to the attention of the butler. We know it won’t matter because we would never return, and after this especially never to another Royalton ever again. The bad reviews we thought were people being overdramatic were unfortunately mostly accurate. Flights: West jet flights- terrible,both delayed and were made to stand for boarding in the airport and on the tarmac bc they were so unorganized. It was nuts.

Once we arrived at the resort we had a wonderful experience. We paid for the diamond club which was worth it. We were able to do everything we wanted…lots of pools for kids, lazy river, lots of events for kids. Kelvin our butler made the experience even better-best butler we’ve had in 3 trips!

My wife, our children and I stayed at the Royalton Bavaro in November. If you are looking for a review telling you who “makes the most delicious cocktails” or how the staff at the resort are like their “family”, skip this review. If you are looking for a somewhat lengthy, but unbiased and objective review of the resort, read on. I’ll start by saying that some of our complaints may sound like nit picking. But it’s because we didn’t really have any big complaints and overall, it’s a pretty nice resort. We checked in around 1pm. Check in was quick and relatively painless and we got our wrist bands right away. But our room wasn’t ready. They said 3pm but it was closer to 330pm by the time we got our room. I don’t know why they can’t get the rooms ready sooner when so many people check out early in the morning. But we’ve encountered this at many other resorts to though so it’s not uncommon. We had a “Luxury Family Suite” It was clean and nice. But instead of having two full size beds (there was plenty of room) it had a King and a sort of couch that a second bed pulled out of. This wasn’t ideal for the kids. They also didn’t provide bedding for it until we called them, which was kind of silly since they knew there were four of us. It had a nice big bath tub and a separate shower. The shower had an opaque door for privacy, but there was no door to the bathroom so the tub had no privacy. I wouldn’t call that family. The shower’s double (dual, 2, two, twin) rain shower heads were pretty nice though. I was in the toilet on day one and a giant cockroach walked by. I wasn’t quick enough to flatten him. My kids spotted him the next day. But I think shortly after that he turned around and went back under the door and left, because we never saw him again. I tell this story because if a harmless bug has you giving a bad review, you really shouldn’t be vacationing in the Caribbean (or California, or Florida or really anywhere south of the 49th parallel.) There was not “cockroaches everywhere” as one of the other reviews said. Ok, lets talk service next. For the people who think the service was bad I would like to know where they are getting better service. Perhaps if you are going to resorts that are way more expensive than the Royalton Bavaro you might get better service. But overall we thought the service was quite good and we weren’t even Diamond Club. Perhaps we got good service because we were friendly to them and gave tips. But we went to a similar class of resort in Punta Cana a couple years ago, the O.E.F. and we thought the service here was far better. I would say the pool and lazy river cleanliness were slightly above average. Whoever said the pool was green either needed better quality sunglasses or was just fibbing. But unfortunately, the term lazy river had more than one meaning. People were always leaving their empty cups in inaccessible places on the lazy river. If you can’t bring your cup back to the bar, at least put it near the many entry stairs so they can pick it up without having to put on a bathing suit to get to it. The shows were good, but average. We saw Michael Jackson, Queen, Elvis, Adele, and the Circus. I thought the stage set up was silly though. They had a small covered stage and a bigger uncovered island stage in the center of a courtyard with limited seating in the courtyard. What this meant was you could either get there very early for a seat in the courtyard and risk getting rained on, or sit under cover and watch the show with binoculars. Elvis and Michael Jackson actually got a little rained on. (At least with the rain Michael didn’t have to worry about his hair catching fire.) I’m sure the stage and courtyard looked good on paper to some architect. But it wasn’t very practical. If shows are your thing, the O.E.F. has a big indoor theatre with air conditioning and soft seats. The Buffet was pretty good with a fair bit of variety. The reservation system for the a la carte restaurants still left a bit to be desired. It wasn’t as bad as the O.E.F. where you had to line up every day at 7am to book one restaurant though. But we were rarely able to get an early evening reservation. The best I could do on Monday for the steakhouse was 9pm Friday. I’m guessing the problem is most of the good times go to the Diamond Club people. Their website actually says “reservation free dining”. Either they are talking about the buffet or fibbing. Next time we will go to the other big resort chain that starts with an “R” They have genuine reservation free dining. We went to the Italian, the International, the Japanese, the Brazilian and the Steakhouse. The Italian was ok but it took a ridiculous amount of time to get our meal. It was about 40 minutes to get our starter and another 40 minutes for our main course and I’m not fibbing. Granted it was busy when we were there. The International wasn’t too exciting, but the service was great. The Japanese was tasty. But because of the show they put on the restaurant was smoky, hot and loud. The Brazilian was basically seven different kinds of meet barbequed on spits. It was good and we came out of there quite full, but most of it was a bit over cooked. Someone told me they thought the Brazilian was the best. But we thought the steakhouse was the best. As far as we were concerned, they all had good service. But the International, the Brazilian and the Steakhouse were top notch. I know this is getting long, but I have to mention the sports bar. It was like an a la carte that you could go to any time you wanted to without a reservation. It serves pub food and had really good service. But sometimes the food there wasn’t the warmest. Compared to the buffet it was quiet, relaxing and civilized though. I would recommend the chicken wings. Though sometimes they were like little balls of fresh lava, other times the balls of lava had cooled down. Again, in summary we thought the Royalton Bavaro was a pretty nice resort. We’ll give it 4 ½ stars. If you got this far, thanks for reading.