Puerto Plata, Bahia Principe San Juan

I love this place! My two friends and I went to Bahia Principe San Juan this pasted March Break (2010) and had a blast. All the staff are absolutely amazing and so friendly. The buffets are so good with lots of different foods to choice from. Bar staff are very efficient even better with tips they will keep your drinks full. While we where there, we met lots of people and made some life times friends. I look forward to returning in the near future,this time with my family!!

After having to wait 4 1/2 hours for our room to be ready at the Bahia Principe San Juan, my family of 4 were first put into 2 rooms with a generator behind them. It was like trying to sleep on an airport runway. When we asked to be moved, we were given the number of maintenance and told to try to find out what it was. We had to keep making the point that we did not care what it was, just wanted to be moved. We spoke to the Signature rep and she got us moved. The next afternoon, I went up to my room to find ants all over the bathroom. Our Signature rep suggested that we should put towels under the door to keep them out. For goodness sakes I was camping. The front desk did not care what was happening, just gave us the number of maintenance to find out what was causing things. The food was a great disappointment, especially after having stayed at the Tulum Bahia Principe. There were no blankets on the beds, no kleenex in the rooms. We had to call for everything from towels to filling the mini bar.

Sold to us as 4 star plus, so we have expected it to be better than average quality. Our disappointments listed:

1. Overall athmosphere wasn't good: complaining quests and slow ,sad and without motivation waitresses and hotel service.

2. Room wasn't tidied up, when we arrived. We had to wait an hour at 23:00 for our room to be ready. Not nice welcome after 9.5 hours of flight only.

3. AC was broken in our room. Room itself was old with dirty doors

4. Some people had bed-bugs in their rooms and were biten by them.

5. Lots of moskitos and sand flies. Many people complained about that.

5. In restaurant there was no interest from waitresses unless you have waived at least one dollar note in front of them. (It is nice to tip for good service but not to tip to be serviced at all, as we have already paid for service). We needed to bring drinks and look for clean cuttlery, glasses, mugs ourselves, as didn't want to give money to lazy and careless service.

6. Food was old or badly stored. Often cold (!) or just empty trays...Stomach sensations, headake and heaviness after each meal. We ended up eating pizzas and chips - most safe food but not the healthiest one.

7. Food of poor choice and monothonious. No choice of meat, if someone likes. Just pork sossages, hamburgers and eg chicken in a souce.

8. Tasty and fresh food served on trips outside of hotel or in restaurants in Cabarete - to compare and show that it was possible to get good even simple food.

9. Dirty tables at hotel bars and dirty sunbeds. They start cleaning at 10 am.

10. Quite smelly and wet toilet next to reception - for women.....before 10 am obviously.

11. Majority of hotel staff don't speak English - amazing when most of quests are English and Canadians... Even emergency line Spanish only. So needed quick Spanish lessons to order second bottle of water to be delivered to our room. However we were two, only one bottle of water was delivered for us... Guys who delivered water wanted tips of cource, so one bottle of water did cost one dollar.....

12. Had problems with booking pedal boat and kayak...Tried 3 times....and did not get it at the end ...

13. Old, grey often torn towels. Last day we have got one new - thus had a comparison.

14. Our bath hasn't been cleaned even once (could see these same shampoo marks everyday)

15. No chance to get a bath, only shower awailable and hot water after 10 minutes...if you were lucky.

16. When raining there were not enough umbrellas for everybody.

17.During Christmas week there were many quests but not enough tables in restaurants. People were wondering with their full plates looking for free table to sit at. Nobody cares..

Just for one night everything had changed. Restaurant was nicely decorated, candles on tables, huge choice of meats and other meals, very helpful waitresses (other people - probably from different hotel). We were asked 4 times in a row if we would like a coffee, while normally we had to call for it. It was just as it was supposed to be. The reason was - there were GESHOTELS anquetters present that one night.

Overall very dissapointed with hotel, service and atmosphere at Bahia Principle SJ. It really looks like it is getting down and nobody cares about it.

No chance to upgrade to Diamond as it was said to be better... why weren't we warned before buying?

Just felt like USSR holidays for this same company workers. Everybody together ...from management to labour and none cares about quality. Just to pass it through... Really bad feeling...

Luckily for us the second week we have spent on trips or walks and had a chance to get some nice memories from Dominican Republic.

We are two retired Canadians, aged 62, and we had a wonderful time. We used everything, including the bicycles, the gym, the putting green, the disco and of course the beach and pools, and we never paid a cent over our all-inclusive rate.

We will be going back to the Bahia Principe San Juan in the Dominican Republic soon.

Puerto Plata, Bahia Principe San Juan - I was a little wary of going to this resort after reading other reviews, but no need to have worried because my husband, daughter and I had the most fab time.

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

My dad, his fianc and I went to Bahia Principe San Juan in March. The staff and animation team are absolutely amazing. The restaurant staff are quick and don't keep you waiting for very long. Bar staff very efficient. While I was over there I met loads of people. We booked our trips through campo tours.

Bahia Principe San Juan is a wonderful place that we will be visiting again!! The staff and level of service was just superb. The food was excellent and the choice was wide and varied. We visited on our honeymoon in August 2003 and intend to take our daughter there early next year. Wonderful!!!

We had way too much fun there. We are all in our early 20's and had an amazing time. Trips are what you make them and if you go there expecting not to have a great time than you won't. The rooms were clean, the food was great, the nightly entertainment was good and funny all at the same time. There is always something to do there for people of all ages. Check it out!

We have been to Bahia Principe San Juan twice now, and will go again (2adults and a 9 year old girl). The food is very good, especially the a la carte. The setting is beautiful and it is bar far the best entertainment I have come across the shows are great and when you think the evening is coming to a close you go out of the main entrance and the hotel have built a Caribbean street (which is all inclusive) & you can continue your evening until the early hours (dancing, drinking & bands etc). The hotel has its own huge private beech and you feel 100% safe at this Hotel. The rooms are clean and typical Caribbean -a lot of cane furniture-not my style but this complex is so good it is a minor point ...I had to find something .Look out for "mami" she is a lady who just wants to dance you daft all day & night she is lovely. We have been to 2 other bahia -Principe hotels and you get the same feeling at them all (so good we intend to go and stay at all there hotels. Final word its very relaxing but if you are looking for a wild holiday try another hotel as the hotel IS the resort.