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“If You're Going to the Dominican Republic, You Should...”

written by Frank Joseph on 15/05/2005

If You're Going to the Dominican Republic, You Should Know ...



I was in the Dominican Republic from April 29th to May 6th, 2005, along with eight other travellers in my party. My experiences compelled me to write about this trip for your benefit. This information is guaranteed to not be supplied to you by the agent that you pay your fees to. I have tried to be as objective as possible in spite of all the problems encountered.



I hope you find this write-up helpful both to decide if you want to visit the Dominican Republic and to know what to expect if you do decide to go there.



I should also mention that this review has been submitted to Sunwing, the tour operator, prior to posting for their comments. They did not respond.



First of all let me tell you that I have travelled extensively around the world both on business and for pleasure and that I have stayed in five star hotels as well as in two star hotels (small towns usually have nothing better!) and everything in between. So this is not an account of the experiences of the teenager who just went on his/her first trip and had a great time getting inebriated nor of the senior citizen who just returned from the fourth (OK tenth) trip of his/her lifetime.







The Agent:



We used a travel agency in Ajax, Ontario, to book our nine all-inclusive trips to Bahia Principe San Juan which is near the town of Rio San Juan about one hour's drive east of the Puerto Plata airport. The agency's name is TRAVEL LAST MINUTE. This agency purports to do many things on their web site (and by telephone if you call them) to attract your business. In our case they provided very bad advice about pricing and when to book and promised parking vouchers included in the price at the time of booking the trip and later refused to supply them. They claim that they will beat other agency's prices by at least $5.00 for each traveller but they did not. The total extra cost to out party because of their bad advice and lies was $705.





Recommendation - AVOID THIS AGENCY - Remember the name TRAVEL LAST MINUTE, not to be confused with The Last Minute Club, which is good.







The Tour Operator/Airline:



The trip packages were put together by a tour operator named SUNWING, which charters the planes from Skyservice. Sunwing claims on its web site to offer larger seating spaces and hot towel service, among other things. They did deliver on other

things, but I found the seating spaces to be the same as all other airlines provide in economy class. The hot towel service was simply not provided!



The airline provided its standard service as they do for other tour operators.



Sunwing also provides on-site representation at the resort.



When you arrive at the Puerto Plata airport you are directed to waiting buses that take you to the resort. A woman came on our bus laughing and putting the microphone very close to her lips talking (who knows what language) and laughing into a bad sound system on the bus - I did not understand a word she said! Then a local man put dog tags on everybody's wrist so that you are recognized as an all-inclusive guest at the resort, but no explanation is given as to the meaning of the dog tags! Not all all-inclusive resorts do this by the way. In spite of the dog tags, you are still asked for your room number at some resort bars!



Upon arrival at the resort we were asked to attend a meeting with the on-site Sunwing representative. He spent an hour of our time telling bad jokes, offering his help while at the resort, but mostly pushing

excursion trips on the guests. If you're an excursion enthusiast this would be right up your alley. For those who know that guided excursions are no more than a way to rip off unsuspecting guests, this was a complete waste of time. When I later went to Junior for help with getting hotel room changes or repairs effected, a service that he had offered, he was totally useless and never even got back to me! His sole reason for being there is obviously to push his excursions on you, his victims.





Recommendation - Skyservice provides standard service. Sunwing does not deliver what it promises and you might be better served by another better known and longer established tour operator. Unless local excursions are of interest to you, avoid

reps meeting and don't bother seeking his help for resort related problems.







The Resort:



The Bahia Principe San Juan is about ten years old. I have no doubt that it was a four star resort when it was built and possibly when it was rated four stars. Contrary to what Sunwing claims that it is a four star resort, IT IS NOT A FOUR STAR RESORT TODAY. It may appear like a palace to the very poor local people, but by any other standard the resort is lacking in many ways to be considered a four star resort (some suggested a two star rating for the beach and rooms!).



The temperature ranged from a glorious and very humid 31 to 33 degrees with a few cloudy periods, but no rain during our stay.



The grounds of the resort consist of beautifully landscaped grounds with patterned concrete or clay tiled walkways and lush vegetation, much of which is obviously not indigenous to the resort area but was brought in to add charm to the resort.



Vegetation includes numerous palm trees and other tree varieties, many in bloom, and flowering hedges all over. The hedges were quite well maintained near the lobby and less well maintained as you walk further away from the common areas towards the rooms. Personnel extensively water the vegetation nightly to keep it lush. The common areas such as the lobby, bars, and restaurants are attractive with clay tile and marble surfaces and wicker and wood furniture. The seating surfaces are very uncomfortable everywhere consisting mostly of wicker chairs without pads, and where pads are used they are very thin and use soft foam so that you feel the wicker though the foam!



At the time of booking our trips, I requested ground floor rooms close to the common facilities because one of the travellers in our group has a physical handicap and walks with the aid of a cane. The ground floor request was honoured but not the proximity to common facilities - our rooms were halfway down the resort as far back from the beach as possible!



As is common in Latin American countries, maintenance has not been the resort's forte. The rooms are suffering from ten years of neglect. We had four rooms. Every room had problems, and some were quite major. The air conditioning did not work in any of our rooms! The walls and ceilings had visible water damage and there were holes in the walls that allowed access to the rooms by insects and small reptiles. My bathroom window did not work so with no air conditioning and a non functioning bathroom window the whole room felt like a steam bath. Light bulbs were missing, light fixtures were mostly broken and dirty, and the beds felt very hard and lumpy - extremely uncomfortable to sleep on. There were broken tiles in the bathrooms. Before eight o'clock in the morning the housekeepers rolled their carts on the tiled walkways outside the rooms and spoke loudly

amongst themselves - an effective wake up call whether you wanted one or not! The telephones worked fine, but we only used them as house phones. The 20 inch televisions were showing their age as well flickering from black and white to colour every few seconds. Only a few channels were in English. My remote control did not work.



We arrived at the resort around 10:00 PM on Friday. When we went into the rooms, we decided to try to get things rectified right away at the front desk, but were told to come back the following day after guests had checked out the next day around 12:00 PM. The following day we again tried to have the room problems and location rectified. I spoke with the fore mentioned Sunwing Rep on Saturday who ended up doing absolutely nothing. The same day I spoke with one of the clerks at the front desk who referred me to his supervisor. I explained the problem with the location for the handicapped traveller to the supervisor to see if he could move us all - he told me that the hotel was overbooked for the weekend and that he would look at moving us on Monday. As it turned out the overbooking was with new weekend Dominican guests who were given preferential treatment over the foreign guests that had arrived the night before!

After analyzing the situation with the rooms, I figured that neither the rep nor the supervisor at the front desk would do anything about any of the problems, either through lack of interest or incompetence, or both, so we decided to keep the rooms and attempt to have things corrected, one at a time. I started by asking one of the front desk clerks to get my A/C fixed and asked him if he could do it right away - he called somebody in my presence and the A/C compressor was fixed later that day. The A/C then worked for all rooms because the compressor was common to all rooms. The next day it broke down again! I asked the housekeeper to call on my behalf to get the A/C working again - she did and it lasted for the rest of our stay. The old compressor was obviously under sized because it was running non-stop to maintain the rooms at about 25 degrees!



I then asked the housekeeper to get me a working remote control, which she did half way through our stay. The other problems we learned to live with. Hardly what you should expect from a four star resort!



The beach was quite long but not what you would expect. The sand was NOT the usual clean coarse sea sand but consisted mostly of light brown fine sand, silt and clay which formed clouds of dust when the wind picked up. In some parts there were small pebbles. There was sea weed in the water and throughout the beach. Sand fleas were common and I was bitten in several places. Two of my bites were on each forearm which caused pain similar to tendonitis in each arm for about one day with muscle soreness for another day, before they healed. The sand was very hot and I know of one traveller who had to seek medical treatment for burns on the soles of her feet! The water was shallow quite far out into the sea. There were plenty of chairs at the beach, but many were broken.



At each end of the resort there were stagnant bodies of water that resembled sewage settlement ponds. My suspicion is that that's exactly what they were which would account for the pungent smell that was all over the resort!



In spite of the bad smell, the food was good to very good, with the a la carte restaurants being better than the buffet restaurant and snack bars. The a la carte restaurants were Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican and Seafood, but many items were commonly served at them all and there was little authenticity to the food they served. Amazingly, not much variety of seafood was served there for an island country. You need reservations but are allowed one meal at each of these restaurants per week.



I found the drinks good to very good as well, with a wide assortment, but the ones with grenadine seemed to all taste the same! There was considerable variability in the same drink depending on which bartender mixed it because they don't measure anything (all done by eye).



Entertainment on the main stage consisted of a little talent show every single night, during which a fast talking multi-lingual (haha) MC brought all of the kids up to the stage from the audience and did the same boring routine nightly.

Following that they would either do local dancing to various types of music or bring in live music bands that badly imitated English songs. Unfortunately there was next to no local musical talent in the shows, which I personally was hoping to see. I found myself leaving the show out of boredom to watch TV, even if it was intermittent between black and white and colour. They had another entertainment spot on the Pueblo Principe (the street leading to the resort) but that was even worse and irregular. The waiters in the buffet restaurant made strange animal sounds as they came to the tables - some might consider that entertainment, but most people found it annoying.



Service was mediocre to good, quite good in the a la carte restaurants. It helps if you are aggressive asking for things and especially if you learn some Spanish because most of the staff speak very little English and if they don't understand what you ask for they will smile, say Ok, and leave! You should learn the words for knife, fork, and spoon before you go because you will need to ask for them often in the buffet restaurant unless you get there for each meal as soon as it opens. They are very slow cleaning and resetting tables.



The pools had obviously not been repainted since they were built 10 years ago. Paint was badly missing in many spots. The water was well chlorinated but filthy with bird droppings, grass blades, and cups and straws from the pool bar. The circulation system was turned off (likely to save hydro) so there was little to no automatic skimming action and very little hand skimming done. Every day, throughout the day, you were required to move from your spot in the main pool to make way for small groups that participated in water sports organized by the hotel! On May 5th the main swimming pool area was taken out of service. Fencing was put up and a large number of workers were chipping away with hammer and chisel and jackhammers to rebuild the pool. This work was badly needed, but the resort should have closed down for this time of chaos so as not to subject guests to a construction zone on their holiday, with the associated noise and dust! Nobody told us about this before May 5th! it is expected to last until the end of the month while guests keep checking in! When they drained the pool, they used 4 inch diameter pipes to pump the pool water to the sea. At the end of the pipeline, the beach sand was so badly eroded that the front end loader raking the beach sand the morning of May 6th did not cross the crater left by the erosion!



Shopping is available in the resort but prices are typically higher than in Canada and at least triple what they are in Rio San Juan. For example a bottle of quality rum in the shops is US $12.00 and only about 115 pesos (about US $4.00) in Rio San Juan. The same bottle can be had for $7.00 or less from the beach shack shops east of the resort and about the same at duty free shops in the Puerto Plata airport. Taxis in front of the resort charge US $20.00 to take you to Rio San Juan, wait up to 2 hours for you and drive you back to the resort. If you use them, pay at the end of your trip. If you plan to do a reasonable amount of shopping there, this will save you money and give an opportunity to see the local town and shop with the locals.





Other things you should know about the resort

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Latin Americans do not use face cloths, so pack your own if you like to have one.



The resort provides abundant quantities of soap, but only enough shampoo for one day, so bring along your own shampoo.



Towels provided are not adequate for most people but you can ask for more or use the beach towels which you can replace any time you wish.





Recommendation - This resort may be OK once it's fixed up, but all the rooms require updating and the pool is presently being re-constructed. So, in the meantime STAY AWAY FROM IT, ESPECIALLY WHILE IT'S UNDER CONSTRUCTION, unless you like noise and

dust while you eat, sun, and sip your pina calada.







The Dominican Republic:



Everyone in La Republica Dominicana tells you how much they want you to return to their country, but be warned that in all my travels I have never experienced anything as blatantly corrupt.



Upon arrival at the Puerto Plata airport, one Dominican told me to put our bags down and tip the other Dominican to place the bags on the bus. This is an all-inclusive!



On departure at the Puerto Plata airport, one of the travellers in my group handed in her tourist card and the airport employee put it away and told her she would have to pay US $10.00 because she did not have her tourist card. After a heated argument she had to pay again to be allowed through. She was not given another tourist card (because the employee already had it). That employee extorted an amount from this traveller far in excess of his daily earnings!



At the entrance to the jetway to the aircraft, one of three young ladies directly in front of me handed in her boarding pass and the employee ripped it in half, examined it, and told the young lady that she had not paid her $20.00 departure tax. Her two friends came to the rescue and vouched for her, telling the Dominican employee that she had paid, that they both saw her pay. He backed off and the young lady was let go without paying again.



At the end of the jetway another employee asked one of the travellers in my group for other ID besides his passport! La Republica Dominicana only requires a birth certificate from Canadians and this guy isn't satisfied with a passport! Very strange because a passport is all you need to travel anywhere - that's the purpose of a passport. I pointed out firmly that passports are all one needs to travel and that none of us had any other ID - he did not ask anyone else for other ID!



Hopefully, after all this, all the bites that I was subjected to at the resort were not from the malaria carrying mosquito and will not result in malaria down the road like the other 20 or so cases reported in the Dominican Republic since November 2004. I am glad I live in Canada!





Recommendation:



If you really must go the Dominican Republic, go ahead, knowing what you might get into. But with all the choices in the world, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS DESTINATION TO ANYONE, Sammy Sousa or not.





Happy Holidays