Great hotel !! and other Punta Cana, Dominican Republic Hotel/Accommodation Reviews

In September 2004 we have been on a 10 day holiday in Riu Taino and it was great! I visited this website very regularly and I can assure you, only believe the positive evaluations!
The rooms are very nice, located in beautiful gardens, clean, cool (has the inventor of airconditioning already won a Nobelprice?),? The beds were rather small, but hey, you aren't there to sleep all day, are you? The pool was great. There were always more than enough sunbeds and there is a great swim-up bar. If you are thirsty you'll certainly get a drink. You get to know a lot of new drinks (like Mamajuana?)!
The main restaurant is wonderful! You want to eat pizza, fries, chicken,? every day? No problem! But if you want to put some variation in your menu, you'll enjoy the buffets.
The hotel-staff is incredible. Whenever and where ever you meet them, there is always a big smile and a friendly "Hola". And if you prefer an active holiday, you can join in to an activity from the Animation-team every 30 minutes. And, believe me, these guys are completely loco! The staff of these hotels doesn't earn a lot, so when you give them a tip, they really appreciate it. When you hear a strange noice in one of the gardens and you see coconuts falling out of a tree. Look up, there is probable a 'jardinero' in the tree. They even offer you fresh coconuts on the spot.
One last good advice : take a good spray against mosquitos! And don't forget some lotion to put on mosquito-stings? Don't ask me how these little monsters did it, but I stopped counting on 45 mosquito-stings. And they do itch! If you need to, you can finds sprays and lotions in the Caribbean Street.
On the 7th day we had the pleasure (?) of meeting hurricane Jeanne and that meant the end of our holiday. But whenever I visit the Domenican republic again, I will surely stay in this or another Riu resort!
Our general rating? Riu Taino is an absolute 5*-place and we loved it!


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Theme: Hotel
Comparison: more expensive than average

Phone: 809-221-2290
Address: Playa De Arena Gorda Dominican Re

We stayed in this hotel in June 2005 for 10-days. We booked it last minute at a travel agency and when I got home I looked up reviews and had regrets booking it. While I wanted to rebook to another hotel my bf said we'd just check it out, couldn't be that bad.

Summary :
1) Rooms : standard rooms were terrible, we went back to the reception immediatly after checking our room out. We asked to change rooms which was no problem but took some time to arrange (we had had a 10 hour flight and just wanted to shower and freshen up).
Second room they send us to didn't open with a card but with a key but they had given us a card. Cleaning lady let us in so we could freshen up, we did and then went back to the reception to ask for the key instead of the card... They'd lost the key... problem?.... no no problem, we give u another room!
Hello??? Our luggage is in the second room which is locked now,how do we get that out???
Anyway my bf had to get very angry and about an hour later (still waiting at the reception) someone had found the cleaninglady and we got her key....

2)Service : in one word terrible !!! I read different reviews on that, think that the people who did think they were friendly didn't have any problems then but we started out bad with our room!
Also the language barrier, if you don't speak a word of Spanish but just English, German or Dutch, they aren't that keen on helping, also there were a lot of Spanish speaking tourists there and I felt they were helped easier then the other tourists.
The staff in the main restaurant wasn't friendly either (or organised for that matter).
Overall I thought the place was badly organised and managed, too much staff working too slow!

We went to the dominican republic last year too and stayed in a RIU hotel (Riu Taino), which I can recommend everyone. You are sure that the hotel is ok and the staff would do everything to make your stay a pleasure.
Unfortunatly it was fully booked this year.

Unique Qualities: Pool : both were nice and cleaned daily, no bad comments on that. Only thing that bothered me was that there were people smoking in the pool which I thought wasn't appropriate.

Food : breakfast = good. The rest got a bit boring after a few days. That's why we usually booked a restaurant. I can recommend the Italian place, cute waiter too :-) The 24h pizza place was always sold out of pizza, don't know if that only happened when we wanted pizza but after a few days we just gave up trying.

Service : in one word terrible !!! I read different reviews on that, think that the people who did think they were friendly didn't have any problems then but we started out bad with our room!
Also the language barrier, if you don't speak a word of Spanish but just English, German or Dutch, they aren't that keen on helping, also there were a lot of Spanish speaking tourists there and I felt they were helped easier then the other tourists.
The staff in the main restaurant wasn't friendly either (or organised for that matter).
Overall I thought the place was badly organised and managed, too much staff working too slow!

We went to the dominican republic last year too and stayed in a RIU hotel (Riu Taino), which I can recommend everyone. You are sure that the hotel is ok and the staff would do everything to make your stay a pleasure.
Unfortunatly it was fully booked this year.

Lesson we learned?
Next year for sure another Riu hotel, will not visit or recommand this hotel because of its rooms and bad service!

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Theme: Hotel
Comparison: about average

Address: Playa Cortecito Bavaro