Hotel Riu Palace Bavaro

My wife and I went to the hotel and as we were diamond class customers we were upgraded to the elite club although we didn't get a room upgrade. We had a great time for the most part. The atmosphere in the pool near the food hall wasn't good but we found another pool near the pirate ship pool. The reason for saying about the kids pool was we were meeting our daughter and her son and my son his wife and their two sons. My daughter had a terrible experience at check in and was ignored for 35 minutes. My son had a better experience. My wife and I had a lovely experience but there were a lot of inconsistent services from staff. Some, like in the Italian restaurant were excellent some like in the American restaurant was very poor.it was obvious some staff favoured Spanish speakers especially at the bars. Having said that the service we ( my wife and I) got was superb in the elite lounge and in the elite restaurant. The hotel has had a refurb and looks amazing, perhaps some of the staff need to be retrained as a lot of them didn't meet Riu standards. It is a shame that we as a couple had a fantastic time but the son and daughter and children didn't.

Room was nice. Pools were great. We spent all of our days in the adult only pool - it was fantastic! Bartenders René, Franklin & Reublin were AMAZING. This was a great place to take our recent HS graduates and their awesome parents. We felt the boys were safe and had lots of options of things to do each day. Breakfast buffet was decent. The made to order omelets were a fav! The food court is where we had lunch each day - great options! Dinner options weren't great. Service wasn't great, the wait was TOO long and the food wasn't great. The best place we did have dinner was Zen. Krystal was a MISS! The mexican restaurant was terrible. American Country was decent. The buffet was good - nothing fancy. Housekeeping kept our fridge stocked with waters well. Room Service was a fail. Didn't come on multiple occasions and not very many options. Our biggest con of this resort was the buildings are so spread out. We had a group of 30, we all booked together with a travel agent and we were all spread out throughout the resort. That was annoying.