Santo Domingo Hoteller

For "Santo Domingo" this hotel is fairly priced for it's star rating. It's an older building, but recently renovated and redesigned inside. The lobby and rooms are modern with new baths (CAUTION: slippery shower tiles!). The rooms and public areas are clean. Even though the hotel is facing a main avenue (27. Febrero), the rooms are surprisingly quiet. I know Santo Domingo well, the location is "OK" if you just stay overnight or are OK with taking a taxi to most everything. There are NO good dining opportunities besides the hotel restaurant. The two malls at "walking distance" are some of the older malls and only have food courts and the better of the two may be too far a night. The hotel restaurant is food wise OK. Sadly the staff is too busy checking their messages on their cell phones and discussing them with each other. I had to get up from my table twice. Getting some coffee and desert after dinner, took 15 mins to get a waiter. Another 30 mins after TWO warnings (the last one ALOUD across the room offering to either bring the coffee and pastery in one more minute or the Chef... 2 mins later we finally got the coffee and pastery). Breakfast buffet is "OK" but again the "service" is lacking training and supervision. Storing bags for a few hours after check out is interesting again. The desk manager has a room for it, but no clear process, has to find some paper and scribble on it. Checkout is another point of discussion. People checking out before us criticized and questioned the transparency and clarity with which the credit card "security hold" was being handled. This is typical in Dominican Hotels! My advice is NOT to use any extra services or pay them cash against a receipt. So that the deposit/hold/freeze can simply asked to be canceled. While there were 3 people at the front desk, only one was handling customer flow. The manager seemed busy with himself and an other "customer assistant" was very busy ignoring customers. All in all, it seems there needs to be training, training, training and supervision. While the rooms are fairly freshly renovated, some of the materials used are not commercial grade, and some are just not appropriate or safe, which is typical for Latin America. The shower floor tiles are not meant for wet areas and are extremely slippery (a rubber mat is included, USE IT!). The room furniture is already showing signs of suffering from the humidity (electrical power in the DR is very expensive, so they turn the AC off when nobody is using the room.... composit board can't handle the humidity, and I am afraid it won't age well under commercial use and abuse). At our room's bath room entry there is an un-framed person-sized mirror FLOATING on pins. Anybody falling, or leaning on the mirror will break it and may be badly hurt. Keep in mind, weather you are American or what ever you are, the DR has no liability laws like the US. So use caution... not just at this hotel!

The bed was really comfy. The pool was nice. The room key has to be inserted in order for the air and lights to work, which is inconvenient. While showering, the water seeps through and floods the bathroom. There is no free wifi. The breakfast was not worth it's expensive price. The fan makes a sudden and loud noise. The cleaning service knocks on your door 3 times a night to check up on things. The gym was really hot and under construction. There were pigeons that would get in the pool. No calls can be made (not even local calls) unless a credit is paid prior. The toilet wouldn't flush and maintenence had to be called everyday to fix it. Things would be moved or gone missing after the room was cleaned.

Hotel location is great, walking distance to everything. The pool is clean. Rooms are clean and well taken care of. Barcelo Hotel now offers gym membership and access to the pool to locals. Those who buy membership to the gym also are allowed to use the pool area thereafter. I am pretty sure that many local residence obtain gym memberhip just to be able to use a pool.. Well, this is a huge incinvenience for visitors and guests of the Barcelo Hotel. The day we arrived, te pool was full of local teenagers who were cursing, making a lot of unnecessary noise, inappropriately making out in the pool and behaving in a very obnoxious matter. There was no security nor anyone from hotel management around to observe and to correct the situation. To Barcelo Management: if you want and need to have a repetitive business, you must either ban te local visitors from using a pool or have someone to observe the disipline in your pool area. a