I just got back from a week at the Barcelo Dominican Beach resort and i was happy with the experience.

People told me to watch out for the heat this time of year and boy was it hot, but once we got down to the beach or the pool and lounged, the heat was easier to deal with.

The resort was very clean, much cleaner than i thought it would be or expected it to be. The people are all very nice and try to make you happy and looked after.

The food is something i'm not exactly qualified to speak about. Everything i tasted was great but my stomach is so weak and unable to adapt to new spices and things that i had to really watch what i could eat. The buffets were great with a good variety of food from the omelet station in the morning to the pasta station at lunch and all the different types of choices available, there must have been 15-20 things available every meal and about 10 of those changed from meal to meal.

Because of my weak stomach, i was living off of bread, cheese, fruit and pizza when ever i could.

I tried the Mexican, Brazilian and Japanese a la carte restaurants and they were all good. The Japanese in particular is really good so i had to go back for a second time to that one.

The entertainment was of good quality for a resort, they had costumes and choreography for all their shows and there was a spectacular show done in the main pool that had most people amazed.

Overall i would recommend this resort to most people, just remember to deal with a good travel agent (i had issues booking this vacation on a discount vacation website, which resulted in booking problems with the resort, but this was not the resorts fault at all).

The only negative i would have to say, is that there are a lot of entertainment coordinators walking around the beach and pool area, approaching you many times a day sometimes and it's not easy to convince them that you are not interested or don't have time or money to deal with them at the time.

I did not do any local tours or excursions but people we met all thought they were great.

I just returned from a 1 week all inclusive trip to Punta Cana with my boyfriend and we stayed in the Barcelo Dominican. We booked through FlightCentre and paid $1280 which was more then what we wanted to spend considering we booked 5 days before we left.

We arrived to the resort at 9pm and checked in. They gave us the wrong room (we had asked during booking for a 2nd story, corner room with a king bed) we got a main floor, corner room with 2 double beds. We returned to the lobby area and informed them of the mix up and they assured us that we would get a different room the following day. As promised we did receive a better room with the king bed PLUS ocean view which was great. During our stay we came to figure out that with the room switch they never registered us to our new room, therefore having it always show up on there system as vacant. On 3 different occasions we had someone enter our room while we were either watching t.v. or sleeping. As you can imagine we were livid....the icing on the cake was at 2:00am on our last night a local staff along with a bikini wearing vacationer entered our room, we literally jumped out of bed and ran up to them yelling and telling the staff that this has happened 3 times and was unacceptable. The girl quickly ran off while the local staff was apologetic. We believe that he was going to "hook up" with the bikini wearing vacationer and simply went to the front desk..asked one of his "buddies" for a vacant room so he could get his freak on. Everytime someone entered our room it would de-activate our own rooms keys...making it extremely frustrating as we spent way to much time in the lobby attempting to resolve the situation and of course we somehow were "never in the system" as if we "never checked in"
With all the inconveniences we demanded a late checkout since we weren't getting picked up until 5pm (check out being at 12) they continued to insist we pay $40 for an the late checkout but after arguing with the manager we finally got our way. There was also a very long line up for people waiting to speak to Guest Services with the same issue of people walking into there room, and items being stolen. For this sole reason alone and seeing how much this affected many vacationers i would NOT recommend this hotel..money of course talks...so flass a dollar or two and its a complete different story. ALSO EVERYTHING IS IN EUROS! Don't be fouled and bring US $...the small shop at the resort as well as all the shops on the beach - everything is in EUROS absolutely ridiculous. Food was not very good and same goes for the al a carte's.

Weather was amazing! couldn't ask for better weather.
Beach was nice - Cuba 10x better...the further down you walk from your resort the nicer the water gets - however during your wonderful walks, you WILL get harassed immensely with guys wanting you to check out there over priced souvenirs...the resort was very busy, lots of kids, lots to do....so if you are looking for a laid back vacation this place is not for you.

this was my first holiday abroad with my boyfriend which he bought for my bday but the hotel was that bad we were both really disapointed and ended up stayin in on the night of my bday.i would advise anybody who has booked to stay at this hotel to try change it as it will spoil your holiday.we paid for our room upgrading and got put in block 9 which i think was the worst block on the complex.with our package we got private check-in so we thought this would mean we didnt have to queue and would get our room quick.we didnt have to queue,instead we were taken away from the queues and was sat at a table for 1hr by the time we finally did get checked in there were no queues left!
these are the problems we had with our stay...you will need about an hour to read this!!

room
when we finally got to our room it wasnt upto standards it smelt and did not look like an upgraded room(this was just the start)
most days our front door did not lock ,when it did we got locked out because it wouldnt unlock,our balcony door was broke for 3days and did not close.our bed side lamps did not work(when we complained somebody was sent to tape the wires up as they were faulty)they sparked when we plugged them in! our tv remote did not not work this meant we couldnt watch the tv as the tv buttons did not work either-we complained but nobody came to fix it.we also had a large gap underneath our door which meant we werent sleepin alone at night as we had all kinds of bugs coming in our room.
after going down to reception for the sixth time in 1wk we argued with the staff for 2hrs to be moved to a different room.when we finally got moved to "the best block on the complex" (block 6) we had the same problems and on the last night our bathroom cieling nearly fell through as there was a really bad leak with water comming through the lights! i went to reception AGAIN and nobody came to see to it for 30mins(a bit dangerous when theres water leaking through the lights) when they did come they just had one look at it and said they will get somebody to come clean it up-nobody came.

food and drink
the only restaraunt i liked was the japanese as the food was cooked in front of you but its always hard to get in that restaraunt as its always booked up.i didnt like the main restaruant as food wasnt covered up and was covered in flies and ants.
everybody we met up with had a stomach bug as did myself and my boyfriend and we are both off work now as were still poorly.
we booked a trip and was happy to get away from the hotel for the day but as food wasnt served till dinner time on the trip we decided to go to the main restaurant for breakfast at 7.00am,we were getting picked up at 7.30am-we were stil waiting at 7.20am because the ovens werent workin so ended up leaving for the day without breakfast.
on our last day one of the snack bars was closed down as it was so dirty!
the drinks in the bars are limited there is only one beer they have and its flat and tastes horrible the vodka and rum they have is also nasty it tastes so strong.we went all-inclusive and had to pay for our drinks in the disco which by the way is rubbish we only went once and the music was spanish and it fit about 30ppl in.

entertainment
it states on the internet that the hotel has its own beach party wkly,i thought this would be good-i was wrong! its a party for the locals that come to stay at the hotel every wknd the party lasts most of the night and is very noisy keeping you up all night.
be carefull if you do go to this hotel and want to do parasailing as me and my boyfriend got charged 90 dollars and then found out two other couples got charged 50 dollars from the same man(he calls himself the king of the beach you cant miss him)
the hotel only has one bar with entertainment and it is poor,we stayed in most nights for the first wk until we met some friends,michelle,gary and goerge and margaret who made our holiday.

staff
the bar staff were really ignorant and not helpful!!
we went with first choice who have their own rep(melanie) living on sight which i thought is really helpful to have but when we had a problem she didnt want to know.
when we had all the problems with our first room we argued with a member of staff(santa) for 2hrs for her to tell us to come back at 5pm with our bags packed to be ready to change rooms,this was at 10am.when we went back she had gone home and told nobody about the room so there wasnt one ready for us move into we were then told we had to go back the next day.

all these problems in just 2wk i may sound like i complain too much but when you've paid alot of money to have your dream holiday and you get this its very disapointing.i would never go back to that hotel in fact it as put me and my boyfriend going back to the dominican altogether.

We grabed this hotel as part of the cheaper expedia deals and did not expect much of it. As it turned out, this was one of the most favorable vacations we've been on. Some flaws existed of course but nothing can be perfect. As long as these flaws were minor and did not matter at all, unless you are a person with pointless complains. We travel a lot and never stay at hotels below 4 stars. However, this is only 3.5 stars and the quality of food is a well deserved 5+ !!! In buffet, the variety isn't extremely wide but everything they have is very tasty. If you're a meat lover, try the Spanish restaurant (El Meson)-sirloin steak is the best we ever had! Japanese (Wassabi) & Brazilian(Baha) are also very, very good!!!! The service is somewhat slow but you can "Show them the money!" and you'll be the king. There's also a cafe (starbucks style). The beach is absolutely beautiful, sandy with palm trees all over & water is clean and see-through.Resort is also very pretty, a bit old but very clean. What we did not like was the night shows (immature and not interesting at all), also the beds aren't too comfortable & so are the pillows. But the rooms are clean, bathrooms are nice! Check-in took awhile-1.5 hrs but the check-out was fast. Plenty of fun beach entertainment, nightclib and cousino are nice and fun! The spa and gym are just o.k. but not bad at all. If you wanna workout you'll be overlooking a beautiful sightseeing. We are very pleased and will deffinately consider the resort again!!!!