The hotel advertises itself with a beautiful beach, beautiful garden, good ideas and good cleaning.
The buildings and interiors are good for their age, it's visible that they care about their appearance.
The personnel at the reception are helpful, kind and they solve every issue. Some personnel even speak German, Erik and his boss are doing excellent work.
The room was clean without exception with regular cleaning.
Now the things that, in our opinion, are unacceptable in a 5-star hotel.
1.
We chose a hotel without a disco on purpose, but we got something worse than that.
Every night at around 7:30-8:00 music starts blaring from the pool, even if there are 5-10 people swimming about.
This goes on until midnight, sometimes even 1 in the morning with a volume that shakes the terrace door and they keep turning the music louder.
It's impossible to sleep, let alone rest.
And the hotel that shares the building with the Royal, Hotel Bayahibe, plays relatively quiet live saxophones and violins, which fits the ambience more than what plays in the Royal.
2.
The number of restaurants in the hotel does not match the number and names listed on the website.
According to the website, there is a Peruvian restaurant (which doesn’t exist); “Toscana” is not actually “Toscana” but “Mamma Mia,” and the same restaurant is also listed as “Sea Blue” at lunchtime.
While we were there, they couldn’t provide a list of restaurants (there was none) that listed the restaurants, nor was there a list of opening hours.
When we tried to go, the staff in the restaurants gave conflicting information about when they were open.
Because of this, we ended up walking back and forth from our room several times for no reason, because at the restaurant they’d say, “Señor, we’re not open”.....
“And when do you open? Could you write that down for us?”—“Later, señor....”
There was even a time when we were turned away from the Terasse Tapas restaurant—which was supposedly open continuously from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.—because they said they didn’t open until 8:00 a.m.,
and then they wouldn’t let us in at 10:45 a.m. because they were closed.
3.
According to the official advertisement, guests at the Royal Hotel can use the restaurants at the Hotel Bayahibe.
Well, let’s give them a try if things are this chaotic.
According to the official website, there’s a restaurant called Yuca. We spent half an hour looking for it before we found out it closed years ago.
Bravo....
Well, let’s go to the BRETONNE restaurant, which is listed on the website. No matter where we asked the staff, they just looked at us—as if to say, “There’s no such thing…” And sure enough, there isn’t.
Bravo....
4.
There isn’t a single fast-food spot at the hotel during the day where you can get hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, salad, or pastries.
We haven’t encountered anything like this on our previous trips to the Dominican Republic.
This means that at noon, you have to go up to your room from the beach, change clothes, go to the restaurant, wait there for the slow service, go back to your room, change clothes again, and then head back down to the beach.
It’s guaranteed to take up 1 to 1.5 hours of your vacation every day.
5.
In the evening, you can only eat at the à la carte restaurant with a reservation.
And everything is done via smartphone, by scanning a code. What are people without a smartphone supposed to do? Do they have to go to the front desk every time?
It’s particularly interesting that, for example, you can only make a reservation for 6:50 p.m., because that’s supposedly the only time they have availability—yet when we get there, the restaurant is completely empty.
So why couldn’t we make a reservation for an earlier time?
6.
There are hardly any guests in the à la carte restaurants, yet the service is very slow.
The orange juice is made from cheap, artificially sweetened syrup; it gave me constant stomach cramps until we figured out the cause.
The food selection doesn’t even measure up to that of a three-star hotel—it’s the same thing everywhere, just with a different name or a minor tweak.
I was served beef so well-done that I couldn’t cut it even with a sharp knife.
There were bloody chicken thighs, undercooked potatoes, and the side dishes were almost never enough.
After a few days, we gave up on the à la carte restaurants and went to the buffet restaurant at the Hotel Bayahibe El Taino instead. But then, what makes this a 5-star hotel?
7.
The El Taino buffet restaurant is the only one that deserves praise.
The staff there deserve nothing but the highest praise. They’re exceptionally organized, quick, offer a good selection, and are friendly.
The only problem is that this restaurant isn’t part of the Royal Hotel...
I rate only this restaurant as excellent, even though on the second-to-last day I was hit with such a bad case of stomach flu that I didn’t dare go more than 50 meters from my room for an entire day.
It speaks volumes about the hotel’s culinary standards that the buffet restaurant—which, incidentally, doesn’t even belong to this hotel- can be called the best in the hotel.
8.
The room service was a disaster.
We ordered five times and only received our order once. We had to go to the front desk every time to complain.
The next day, even though we hadn't ordered anything, they brought it...
The selection offered by room service would be insufficient even for a 3-star hotel.
9.
A few words about the restaurants:
TAO CAT: So dark that I had to use my phone as a flashlight to see what was on my plate.
SEA BLUE: It’s part of the Mamma Mia restaurant, so they could add another restaurant to the list.
The menu here was in Spanish and Italian; you just point to something and wait for the surprise of what you’ll get.
THALASSA: It’s no coincidence there were hardly any guests in the evenings. The selection is monotonous, and it’s unclear what kind of culinary concept they’re trying to pull off.
TERASSE TAPAS: Perhaps the worst place of all. Slow service, poor selection, and rude staff.
BLOVED: Limited selection, but what’s available is of acceptable quality. The service is unreasonably slow.
BEACH BAR: There are five staff members serving, but all they care about is singing and dancing while the line is waiting; to them, the guests are just a nuisance.
SUSHI BAR: Calling that 1-meter-long counter with 5–6 types of sushi a “bar” is a huge exaggeration.
MAMMA MIA: The only decent place for lunch; the food is acceptable, but it’s a long way from 5-star quality.
10.
The staff’s language skills in the restaurants are problematic, to put it mildly.
Some speak English very well, but with many others, it’s impossible to communicate in any language other than Spanish.
What surprised me was that several housekeeping staff spoke better English (and some even spoke German) than those working in the restaurant.
For these reasons, this hotel falls far short of a five-star standard; it’s by far the weakest of all the Dominican hotels we’ve stayed at so far.
Given all this, it’s no wonder there are hardly any guests from Europe or the United States.
LASZLO H2026-08-15
