Sunscape Dominicus La Romana

Great resort ,nice food,lots staff , all your needs on holiday meet by the team at the hotel,entertainment team amazing.

My honest review of this resort, after having read reviews for 10 month prior to travel. It's going to be lengthy with most of what you need to know, so buckle up! The staff: They all work TIRELESSLY! The animation team you see around the pool at 10am, you also see around the bar at 10pm. There are always staff working hard EVERYWHERE. Granted, you do get the odd really grumpy/rude one, but the great ones far outweigh the bad. The service: This can be quite slow, we've been to a couple of A La Cartes where our starters have actually arrived before our water. Be prepared for this. It's also worth noting, when you tip at the bars, they will remember you and I've found they do prioritise you for this - definitely worth the few dollars. A few dollars to us is a lot to them, it seems. The room: We were quite fortunate with ours and have no complaints - spacious, clean and everything we need (just a standard room in block 3). We have also been blessed with a really great maid, Bernarda. We wrote her little notes in Spanish for the first two days (because we drink nearly 4 litres of water a day each, and love a morning coffee), but that was all it took to come back each afternoon to see our towels replenished, our room cleaned, and more than enough coffee and water to keep us going. Note: the walls are quite thin, if your neighbours are up then so are you! Lol. Same applies to those arriving in at 2am after the White Party on a Tuesday and Friday. The beach: Just WOW! To put it into perspective, the only difference between the beach here and Saona Island, is the unique beautiful palm trees that dress Saona. The water is beyond magical and stays shallow quite far out. It's lovely and warm, too! 😍. Yes, there are some rocks in there, but they are large and flat, I've not once felt like I've needed to wear beach shoes (I would advise taking these for Saona though!). The beach is kept clean and seaweed free, also. The pools: So, they WILL turn white bikinis/swimwear yellow. The maintenance and cleaners use a yellow substance to keep it 'clean'. Even my hair went from bright blonde to a yellow/green tinge! I'm praying this is short lived 😬🤣. I'll be honest though, even though you see them being skimmed constantly, they aren't the cleanest pools I've experienced at all. Lots of entertainment around them during the day, though. The sunbed hogging! Parasols are very limited! You have to be out before/by 7am to reserve shade, and in this heat with this UV index, you WILL need it. There aren't enough to accommodate all guests by a long shot and between the hours of 12-4ish, the heat from the sun can be unbearable! The problem lies with the hotel for this, they just give out towels for fun. If there was a card system or you had to pay a deposit, or you had to give one back to get a clean one then this wouldn't happen. You literally see towels on beds all day and nobody ever comes back to them - quite frustrating to say the least, especially when you've missed the boat trying to find shelter in the sweltering heat and you have skin that would shame the average ginger person! The food: Where do I start with this one? So there is more than ample and a really good variety, the issue lies with how it's kept. Everything is Luke warm at best, even when served at the A La Carte restaurants (though the pizza shop serves fresh hot pizzas, so is worth a visit). Myself and my husband contracted gastroenteritis that made us poorly for over 4 days of our trip (we're still poorly with this now, started Thursday evening and today is Tuesday), but it started 2 hours after we'd had quite a late lunch, so I assume the food we consumed had been left out and hadn't been tested or changed. What I would advise is to get to the buffets upon opening to ensure everything is fresh before the ants and flies have a chance to swarm it. I won't lie, I may have spotted entire colonies of ants having a fiesta on the salad tomatoes. We eat quite late in a morning, so have found that skipping breakfast and turning up to Windows at 12:30 when they open for lunch works best for us. I will now only eat the meat from the live stations and plain carbs, just to be safe. The sanitation: The restaurants are quite hands on with ensuring you use sanitiser before you enter, which is brilliant! But it's also pointless if the food isn't being handled correctly/stored out at a temperature that isn't hot enough. The entertainment: The animation team are amazing!! They are always smiling and getting people involved - I can only assume they definitely aren't paid enough because they are so good and work incredibly long hours! I also can't fault the evening entertainment either, I especially loved the saxophone player. I can't speak for the Theatre activities/parties though because we haven't actually made it out that late at night 🤣. The grounds: These are so highly maintained. I honestly believe that the grounds, coupled with the beach and animation is what makes this resort 4 stars. There is always staff about working on it all, around the clock, from fixing roofs, to gardening, to litter picking - you name it, all hours! Tipping: We took quite a large quantity of 1s and 5s USD. We ordered our drinks 2 each at a time to save multiple bar visits. We tipped $1 at Sharkeys pool bar per drink, and $2 at Starboard when we received waitress service - these were very well received and appreciated. We tipped our maid $3 a day, $6-$10 in the A La Carte restaurants depending on service. We tipped transfer/bus drivers $2. Bell boys we tipped $5. The language barrier: So I can speak and understand some Spanish, I am an amateur, granted, but I know enough to get me by in Europe. Here, I really struggled to understand the dialect. They all also just assume you can speak their language and communicate with you like this is the case lol. Some can speak English, but a lot can't. Some do like to speak to you in English to practise though, I assume this helps with job promotions. Those best at speaking English, I've found, are reception, the bell boys, the animation team and some bar staff, plus some of the girls at the podiums in the buffets and restaurants. Is Sun Club worth it?: We met some British friends whilst here who had sun club and they wished they hadn't bothered. The bar that the premium spirits are sold in is quite quiet (but is air con'd). There isn't much going on in their pool area so they spent most of their time at the main pool. They had a few issues with their room also. If you like a quieter pool area and premium drinks and feel that this is worth an additional $50 a day then it might be worth booking, but if not then I wouldn't bother. We booked without and are glad we did. Handy points to note: ● We brought 1.2ltr Stanley cups, and 1ltr stainless steel bottle flasks for during the day. The steel bottles were really handy for water because they kept it cold all day. The Stanley cups we filled with a cocktail for around the pool, and this lasted the whole day and kept it really cold - best idea we had to take them and now I don't think I'll ever travel without them! ● Mozzies are RIFE! They are everywhere - if you are prone to being bitten then you will get eaten alive. Pack plenty of decent quality repellent. ● The sockets here are American sockets, we bought Adapters off Amazon for my hair tools. They do have USB C & USB ports in the sockets in the room as well, which is handy to know. ● A basic hairdryer and iron are provided in the rooms, along with a coded safe, a filter coffee machine, body wash, shampoo but no conditioner (we opted to bring our own of these though) ● Bring LOTS of suncream! Even if you feel you have enough, bring more! We brought 4 x bottles of 'Once-A-Day', but because the UV index is next level here, we had to apply it a couple of times. We have 1 bottle left and 2 days left of our holiday. Suncream is around $50 here, so it's worth packing the extra bottle just in case. ● Packing a bum bag and a backpack is worth its weight in gold, especially for excursions. We also packed our own snorkels, though the resort do offer these to hire, free of charge, along with free kayak and paddleboard hire. ● You can just turn up to all A La Carte Restaurants, the only two you need to book are the Mexican (Tiki Taco) and The Teppenyaki experience (at Chopsticks) which you can do via the Hyatt app. The Bluewater Grill must also be reserved, but this can only be done via reception and cannot be reserved via the Hyatt app. ● A lot of the evening restaurants have a different name during the day, which can be quite confusing. The Sun Club breakfast and lunch club is that by day and 'Tierra' by night. Kaleidoscope buffet is that during the day and the Italian 'Da Mario' by night. 'Sunny Side' is that by day and 'Bluewater Grill' by night - this was quite confusing for us at first lol, so it is worth knowing. ● We eat dinner around 6pm, which means showering around 5pm. At this time the water heat and pressure is a lot better. When the whole resort are getting ready to head out, it's understandable the water pressure will drop and the water won't be as hot. Restaurants are a lot quieter at this time as well, so you're not tackling people either. Overall: 3.5/5 We did a lot of research before booking, so was quite prepared. This resort is lovely and there are a lot of pros to it, I just found the food let it down a bit (and we really aren't fussy in the slightest!). I understand this is classed as a 'budget 4 star hotel', but when you're travelling from the UK, you're spending the best part of £3k to be here, so for that reason, if we were to book Dominican Republic again then we probably will look into exploring somewhere different.

The hotel’s location is great. The beach and the water is fantastic, all the atmosphere in general. The services are 5*, the employees are super kind and always available to help us. The rooms have very good conditions and are very clean.

Save your money!!! Food is worse than Cuba - if that’s possible. Service is depressing. Some rooms are renovated some are moldy and falling apart. Beach was nice but that was it! I’d never go back and don’t understand a single positive review for this place. 99% of the tourists at the resort were Spanish - Portugal or Argentinian- chain smoked everywhere you just live in a cloud of smoke all week. Be prepared to live off fries and ice cream bc everything is Russian roulette - 8/11 people in our party got food poisoning. We were celebrating 3 bdays, one was a 40th- notified the hotel about it - they left two apples and 5 grapes in the room it was laughable. Bar service is sooooo understaffed and slow you just end up not drinking. Pools are sooooooo nasty my husband grabbed the net most days to clean up the nasty hair and gunk floating around. Gross.

Oscar Felipe Cedeño, the chef, was really helpful and kind helping us doing a surprise for our friend on Mother’s Day! We are really happy!