Iberostar Selection Hacienda Dominicus

“Amazing holiday & will return, 5*”

We are from the UK & booked 2 weeks with British airways, we were there 28 Jan - 12th February. My boyfriend had been to this hotel 20 years ago and said it was amazing so we thought we’d try it! I wondered if it would be as good as he said it was 20 years ago, but he said it was better this time! … more

We are from the UK & booked 2 weeks with British airways, we were there 28 Jan - 12th February. My boyfriend had been to this hotel 20 years ago and said it was amazing so we thought we’d try it! I wondered if it would be as good as he said it was 20 years ago, but he said it was better this time! Our private minibus transfer took 50 min from the airport, I booked with Holiday Extras which was very reasonable value and they were easy to find at the airport. On arrival at the hotel our first room wasn’t good (Block 3), noisy overlooking the restaurant & broken curtain / air con! We went straight back to the reception and were moved to a gorgeous renovated room in block 7 (7219) which was amazing and right by the pool/close to beach, so definitely make sure you book a renovated room. I can’t fault the hotel - it was perfect. Everything was amazing - the food, the drinks were top brands not local, all the A La Carte restaurants were excellent and we ate in one every night - once we’d used up our allocation on the app we just went up to Concierge each day & they booked more for us. We only ate in the breakfast buffet, and had freshly cooked food on the beach for lunch. The coffee shop is top quality - Starbucks style coffees & delicious cakes - all included! They have soya milk as well. It’s open 24/7 so my boyfriend would go up there early in the morning. The clientele is French, South American, and USA. I think we were the only British people there in 2 weeks. We tipped a little, but it doesn’t seem expected, most people were not tipping & the service was still great. The resort is quite small compared to some of the huge resorts you find in Mexico & Caribbean - you can walk one end to the other in 10 min. It’s really well kept, clean, & pretty - gardeners are constantly trimming & tidying up. There are beautiful peacocks wandering around, parrots, turkeys, ducks in the pond, it was lovely!! Hardly any bugs. I didn’t use bug spray and was bitten just a couple of times, during the day. My partner wasn’t bitten at all. Also the hotel really goes to great efforts to keep pigeons away from the outside food areas / buffet - they have a women who visits with a trained Bird of Prey (Hawk) which chases all the birds away, we thought this was very effective & I’ve not seen this at other hotels. The beach is absolutely stunning, gorgeous white sand and hardly any seaweed. The beach does get very busy, whereas the pool was a lot quieter. We spent a few days at the beach but preferred the pool as it was so much quieter and easy to get a sunbed in the sun at anytime! At the beach you needed to be there by 10am to get a sunbed. Just 1 full day of rain in 2 weeks, a few showers here and there but the weather was perfect otherwise and 28-30 degrees. The gym is great & very well equipped. Very heavy weights / bench press / pull ups rig available if that’s what you want. There are lots of classes & personal training available included. I did yoga/stretch every morning, the class was the same every day and easy if you already do yoga, but it was a good stretch & worth doing. I booked a Saona island trip with TUI and this boat goes from the the hotel next door (you can walk 2 min along the beach rather than bothering with the bus transfer!) and it was an amazing day, definitely worth doing. There are a couple of improvement points for the hotel but very minor things! - Add some little tables by the pool, there’s no where really to put your drink or bag. - Allow more bookings for restaurants to be made on the app for ease. - Add a small path at the beach restaurant between tables - the waiters in the evening really struggled through the sand in their shoes with the food/drinks. - The bingo at the pool in the afternoon could be a little quieter on the microphone, it was very loud. We’ll definitely be coming back to this hotel the next time we visit Dominican Republic. 5*

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