Grand Palladium Punta Cana Resort & Spa

We stayed 2 weeks here. Stuff (mostly waiters) are SUPER inefficient. You get into a restaurant, you HAVE to ask for water and wait 20 minutes to get it (if you are lucky). Sometimes, I actually went to get it myself. Same for tea and beer. They just give you the annoying look. For breakfast, prepare to wait 20-30 minutes to get into the restaurant, because for some reason you have to wait to be seated (and most of the time, half the restaurant tables are empty). They run out of plates at the restaurant repeatedly. Towel service runs out of towels around 2pm, so if you didn't take/exchange your towel before that, good luck next day. The hotel has nice decorations and gardeners do a great job of maintaining the grass/bushes/trees, but the waiters are the restaurants (buffets) really give a bad impression overall. Live music in the evening is very nice and each lobby had their own singer. Overall, go to another hotel. You'll get the same sun, sand and weather, but the service will be better. This is a "5 star hotel", but in our book, it's a "barely-4-star" from "service perspective".

With my wife and little son we are in the 1st day of the 2nd week booked vacation and we were hoping things might get better, but starting the morning with a water blackout not allowing us neither to wash our face is letting us counting the days left to come back home and thinking why we invested almost 5k dollars for a vacation that is turning into a kind of nightmare... but let's start from the beginning. What brought us to choose the Grand Palladium Punta Cana vs other cheaper or same level locations was the possibility to have a relaxing vacation after a challenging year confident of the usage of the mini club for our son 11 months and 10 days old (close to 1 year therefore), everything confirmed prior to our booking by the customer service Manager and documented via mail. Our expectation was indeed not to leave our little son all day at the baby club, but just having these 4-5 hours/day to have a bit of time for ourselves and relax on the beach plus enjoying some of the activities organized by the hotels of this huge complex and then finally use the baby sitting service at a cost of 15USD/hour in the evening for a quite dinner of a couple of hours. But then surprise: we arrive and they say our son is not 1 year old therefore no free service for us, hence I spent the 1st 4 days with guest service and different management showing the proof of our mail chain where it was promised this service... everybody saying how sorry they were but nobody taking any concrete action to solve our problem. On day 3 we also wasted almost 4 hours with some "concierge" of the TRAVEL CLUB that promised us a breakfast in a reserved VIP location to then solve our problem with the baby club thanks to the support of some "EXECUTIVE"... Such a pity for them I work as a Senior Manager and I am hard to convince and above all challenge on a big sales process. RESULT: a total SCAM! They brought us to LA CATEDRAL restaurant already in our all inclusive package to then waste our time in their location trying to sell us a almost 15K USD package to have "better experience" in the future... but how come you are selling better services for future vacation and you are not able to solve our current issue now? Do we look like dumps willing to purchase a future package at the same group after such bad experience in just 3 days? It was a quite offensive approach... My wife prayed me to leave and she finally burst into tears into our room questioning why we are surrounded by people who just wanted to cheat on us and we spent half day in our room just to avoid contact with other people of suck kind.... Yes, because in day 2 and 3 we didn't have the opportunity to enjoy pool or beach because surrounded by tons of sellers of any kind that don't leave you in peace 1 sec or till when you don't buy something from them. So after 1 week, the memories we have are: - no baby services as promised at the time of the booking --> this is leading us to spend 60USD/day for just 4 hours to get a baby sitter because we cannot afford more than that having spent already 5k USD for the trip and because not in the forecasted budget - 4 out of 7 days using "fast food room service" --> we have to follow the baby schedule so it will be insane forcing my baby with other time schedule for our own good.... but sorry I don't travel on the other side of the planet for eating room service, I could have stayed in EU instead and cover the difference of money in full time baby sitter. - 2 morning hours for beach or pool poisoned by the fear of walking across all these sellers in any corner and wasting lot of time just to say "NO" a million if times - 1 trip purchased by the Kiosk of the hotel, that I had to cancel because no mini club available and because baby got sick --> I prayed the front desk to help me with the refund process of this service highlighting how is accountability of the hotel to support this type of queries because the hotel itself allows these vendors to approach customers like me --> result was rude answer about missing hotel responsibility and the best they could do was to allow a call to the service. Who knows if I will ever see my 210USD back... - baby got sick: I used the hotel clinic service and my travel insurance. Even here total SCAM: they sent me to an outside hospital of their chain where I spent 5 min for the same type of visit I got at the hotel clinic, and 3 hours between waiting and bureaucratic steps... they wanted to keep me, my wife and sick son "hostages" till when the insurance was not gonna reply back to their mail (process which could take even a couple of days to validate all docs) even though thay had all details of my room, hotel, passport, phone, etc etc... I had to threat them I was gonna call the police for fraud and only then they left us to go... 500USD with an invoice saying "medical check" with no doctor details, therapy details, check details... absolutely nothing! - Room cleaned 5 out of 7 days and the quality is very low... they forget to clean floor and tables, they forget to replace products such shampoo, shower gel etc etc... My wife is having a nervous breakdown and I have to be careful in the next days with the planning, in order to ensure to optimize the left over budget for the baby sitter and ensure me and my wife a little relax whenever we can. It is such a pity because there are plenty of extremely good things about this resort: - the resort is giant, made of 4 hotels, and everything looks absolutely clean everywhere - the location is gorgeous, amazing beach and wonderful sea views - the pools are simply amazing and a huge number of activities are planned on a daily basis - the transport with electric cars and train around all the resort is nice and allow people to enjoy all facilities - restaurants a la carte are a very good plus! - the food overall looked extremely good (even in the buffet) everywhere we could go - 24 hrs bar with food is a genuine and huge plus - minibar is very good with nice beers and analchoolic drinks - also the room service, even though is kind of fast food, is not too bad - the alcohol choice is huge and extremely good - all the bars as "waiting area" before "a la carte restaurants" is simply a touch of class! - the major part of the staff is nice and kind even though sometimes if they don't get tipped immediately they somehow forget about you or look at you in a wrong way. A special and huge thanks to Paloma, our baby sitter from the mini-club... if we are having a bit of piece and relax is thanks to her who is extremely good with our baby and put us in a good comfort zone leaving our son with her even if only 4 hours a day. And thanks to the lady at the front desk (forgot the name unfortunately) who helped us in getting a medication for our son avoiding to get cheated again and that tried to address our concern about the mini club missed free service. So overall the resort looks great... but without the possibility to enjoy it and its services because of this (let's call it) "management misunderstanding", it is hard for me to rate over 2*... the 2* are really because the location and facilities look great, but the nightmare with sellers, medical services, room cleaning, travel club "management", hotel customer service in certain occasions is something that heavily impacted our opinion and above all vacation which will lead me, I am afraid, to struggle with booking another time at any other Grand Palladium hotel starting from here. Hope things might get better for other customers.

We had a great time! Punta Cana was amazing, especialmente REDBULL aka Constantino. He took great care of us everywhere on the resort and made the trip that much better. So did Kelli for booking trips in the lobby he was amazing!

This resort is amazing, the customer service is great food drinks all inclusive entertainment the beach beautiful with different shows, I met mami boy during my stay his the best , I'll come back soon.

Entertainment team was amazing, poolside activities all day. Food at Helios was my favourite of all the restaurants. We took part in the dance class, bartending class (contest) and water polo. Made for a very fun couple days, never bored! Red bull, blue and Gracie made sure we were always happy and having a great time.