Name: Occidental Punta Cana
Address: Avenida Espana, 2300, Bavaro, Bavaro, Bavaro, 2300, Dominican Republic
Rating: 8

Room service

Rooms

Restaurant

Meals

Swimming pool

Pool and beach

Business center

Business

Beauty and wellness

Family/Kid Friendly

Kids

Location

At the hotel

Cortecito Beach

Princess Tower Casino Punta Cana

White Sands Golf Course

Iberostar Golf Course

Cocotal Golf and Country Club

Palma Real Shopping Village

Arena Gorda Beach

Macao Beach

Punta Cana International Airport

Sirenis Aquagames Water Park

Indigenous Eyes Ecological Park

Cap Cana Golf Club

Punta Espada Golf Course

La Romana Airport

Occidental Punta Cana

Bavaro

child-bed

child-bed-fee

external-private-bathroom

private-bathroom

shared-bathroom

10-beds

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king-bed

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limited-time

lounge

treatment

no-window

bay-view

bosphorus-view

canal-view

city-view

courtyard-view

garden-view

golf-view

harbour-view

inland-view

lake-view

land-view

mountain-view

ocean-front

ocean-view

oceanside

panoramic-view

park-view

partial-ocean-view

partial-sea-view

partial-view

pool-view

river-view

sea-front

sea-view

street-view

sunrise-view

sunset-view

water-view

with-view

annex

basement

main-building

1-bedroom

2-bedrooms

3-bedrooms

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6-bedrooms

not-guaranteed

wired-internet-access

smoking

sauna

duplex

safe

mini-bar

breakfast-for-1

breakfast-for-2

pets-allowed

wi-fi

kitchen

Myself and my husband spent 2 weeks in January at this resort. From check in to check out we were treated like family. The Grand Level Manager Diana and her team, Zolanilly, Melina, Ovelissa & Luisa always have a welcoming smile when you see them. They always check to make sure you have everything you need. First Club Manager Aris is exceptional and has the First Club running smooth. Her staff Natyvida, Karina & Maria always make you feel like you are coming home and the awesome Bartenders Ruth, Cruz & Yassar are always ready to keep your glass full. The Arena Beach Bar has awesome Bartenders. Cold drinks, a smile and some laughs are all part of the day for Genesis, Rocio and Franklin. Wilda at The First Club Beach Bar has a smile bigger then the sun. She is always happy. The Royal Level restaurant has improved since our last visit. John Kelly will try his hardest if you have any special requests. The staff,  Sammy, Hypolito, Diego, Armando, Daniel, Louis, Nacho, Stepfanie and Martha work very hard to ensure all of the guests have an awesome time. Our room was very clean and well stocked. We had a problem with hot water one afternoon but it was fixed in 15 minutes. A special Thank You to the Bell Hop Ramon for his hard work.We will be back!!!

Another awesome vacation!!!

I have spent a week with my family, my mom and one of her friends at this resort and I don't really understand why it has a few bad reviews. It was my first time in Punta Cana and thank God we booked this resort, it's well maintained, delicious food, there's people constantly cleaning and the stuff is super nice. If you have young kids this is the resort for you; they have a Kids Club where Esperanza and Cerna will take care of them really well and they will have lots of fun for sure, they offer a variety of activities for the kids, such as mini disco, mini fashion show, pool time, movies etc.  The reason of the trip was my mom and her friend's 60th birthday, they had a blast!!, we purchased a cake for $10 and ate at the "Las Caracolas" the sea food restaurant and it was really good!!! All their restaurants are VERY delicious!. make sure to reserve the restaurants upon your arrival.
The" Animacion" team is amazing, all of them are fun, La Diva, Manuela, Marisol, Café, Carla, Roger, Nelson, Juan y Alejandro they always have a smile for you.
If you want to book any excursions or go to Coco Bongo talk to Lilin he is super nice and will love to help you booking your day trips to "Isla Saona", " Santo Domingo" etc.
Don't hesitate to book this resort you will have a fantastic vacation.

Highly recommended! specially with kids, GREAT Kids Club!!!!

Wow! We had a wonderful vacation from the 27th of February till March 6th. Our room on the second floor (block 24) was spacious and very clean. With Air Transat, we had a free hour of WiFi per person and we could use it in our room. The hotel itself is very clean. The staff is friendly. We tried the italian restaurant, the steak house and the seafood restaurant. They were all good. We liked eating lunch at the Beach Club. The view was priceless. The Beach is gorgeous. Good waves too. Would return anytime! 

Wonderful vacation

We went as a family of 3 for 7 days. Food was good, rooms were clean and newer, our air conditioner stopped working but after advising front desk they fixed it the next day.
Best a la carte restaurants steak house (mmm filet mignon) and mexican, lunch over the pool is great chicken fingers and burgers and fries. Buffet was all around good as well. 
Esperanza from the kids club wow thank you sooo much my daughter loved mini disco time, with fashion show and movie time. 
Beach is wide with lots of space, 3 pools to choose from quiet and with animation.
The only down fall would be the waiting staff don't speak much english or french they say Yes alot. LOL
Overall we ate well, slept well and had fun.

Nice family vacation

Date of Visit: Feb 13-20, 2018

First time at this resort. 7th time in Punta Cana.

Stayed in Building 13 (rooms 214 and 220) no First Club or any other upgrade.

Our group: 4 Adults, 2 teens. From Canada. Well-traveled throughout the world.

We would go back. Age bracket varied but leaned towards older adults. Demographic make-up was Russian, French Canadian, English Canadian and American – in that order.

We spent many months before our vacation stressing over the negative reviews we read on this resort. My significant other would raise the alarm almost daily when she read another review. Please take negative reviews with a grain of salt and try to understand the context of the review, the reviewer and realize that complaints about the plastic on the roadside down the road from the resort or that the weather wasn’t perfect don’t really count.

While there are some very high end resorts in Punta Cana, your mileage will vary between resorts and different years at the same resort. Try to average out the feedback you are reading and focus on the things that are really important deal-breakers for your personal situation.

Rule #1 - You are in an impoverished foreign country so set your expectations accordingly. The average wage in Dominican Republic is $150-$200 USD per month. You are not going to a 5 star hotel located in New York or Toronto or London. Haiti was nearly wiped off the map by a hurricane and many workers we talked to were essentially refugees from Haiti with nothing but the clothes on their back. Context matters.

Pro-tip before you leave #1 - Sunscreen at the resort is sold for between $20 USD and $30 USD per bottle. Do yourself a favor and bring a few extra bottles. We brought 8 for the week and had just enough.

Pro-tip before you leave #2 – Exchange money in your home country. Everything will cost you more after you land. Fees, commissions, exchange rates, etc. We brought some pesos but if you are staying on-resort you will only need $1 USD bills for tips. We brought $100 in $1 USD bills and had probably half left.

Pro-tip before you leave #3 – Wear your bathing suit or shorts on the plane under your winter clothing or change at the airport into something you will wear for the afternoon and you'll be good to go. We packed our “First Day” clothing in our carry-ons along with small sunscreens, expecting that we may have a long wait for check-in. You will have LOTS of time at the airport to change out of a pair of pants while the rest of your fellow passengers are running around scrambling trying to find their bags. Go the bathroom and change and give the baggage line a few minutes to calm down. (There’s no rush – your bus won’t leave without you)

Pro-tip at airport: Don’t get suckered into paying $5 or more in USD for a no-name can of beer from a black shopping bag on your tour bus to the hotel. You literally walk by a bar on your way to the bus. It’s outside on the left hand side. Stop there, buy a beer (or 2 or 3) and get on the bus. Your welcome.

Tipping: We left $2/day in our room and tipped our dinner server $1-$2 if we had exceptional service. Ditto for the bartender, a couple bucks at the end of multiple rounds of drinks, if we had exceptional service. No need to go wild on the tipping. We didn't get towel animals in our rooms. The teenagers cried every. single. day. They were inconsolable. Really people?!?

I’ll try to address some negative reviews we read before and after we came back:

- They don’t speak {insert my own language here}

Read Rule #1. If you can’t learn the 10 or so Spanish words necessary to get by and expect that someone earning $1.00 an hour was able to go to school to learn to be completely fluent in your particular mother tongue… really?

The concierges doing the restaurant reservations, First Club or timeshare sales will be minimally capable in English, French and Russian - you are equally capable in 3 languages, right? The check-in counter or the assistance desk will be similar. Everyone else will know as much of your language as you do Spanish. Hi, Bye, Yes, No, Beer.

Any interaction with staff will simply require you to have patience. Speak slower than usual, choose simple words and realize that you are not speaking to a native speaker. You may need to repeat yourself using different words. It's called travelling to a different country.

- Wifi and Internet is not widely available. 

It’s true. See Rule #1. 

- Resort is dirty, rooms are dirty.

Not true. Resort was very clean. Lots of maintenance staff everywhere working constantly. Those people posting those reviews may have been staying somewhere else. Not sure. Our rooms in Building 13 were immaculate and renovated. Everything worked. 

Ask at check-in if your room has been renovated or ask for one that has been. Easy enough. Speak slower and enunciate your words, be patient. They will accommodate you if you are nice.

- Slow check-in / rooms took a long time

Depends. Check-in is slow depending on when you arrive. They have typically 2 staff working the counter and some buses from the airport drop 30-40 people in one shot. It takes time. They need to go through everyone’s passports and reservation paperwork. It’s not hard math.

Pro-tip: Have your vacation booking / reservation paperwork handy with your passport when you hit the check-in counter.

They seem to turn-over rooms mid-afternoon so if you arrive early (we arrived at noon), you'll leave your bags with the bellboy and come back to check-in after 3-4pm. (see Pro-tip #3 re: wear your shorts on the plane or change at airport)

- Food sucks

Not true, but if you are picky, ignoring Rule #1 and/or if this is your first trip abroad, you may be disappointed.

Food is 3.5-4-star first-world comparable quality. Comparable to other Punta Cana resorts. Always found something enjoyable. Picky kids did too. Crepe stations at all buffets at all meals. Yep - shocked me too. Egg & omelette stations at breakfast and pasta and grill stations at supper. More dessert than anyone realistically needs to choose from. Diabetics or sugar addicts beware. Lots of local flair available so you may not know what some stuff is, even after reading the description. Try small portions of it to test and you may be surprised.

Snack bar had hot dogs, burgers, chicken nuggets, chicken thighs, fries, etc. throughout the day so kids typically hit that up instead of the lunch buffet at main hall. There’s an “ice cream” machine in the snack bar that gets quite a workout. Watch your kids as ours decided ice cream was an appropriate meal replacement. Its machine made ice cream, so it won’t be the same as grocery store ice cream. See Rule #1. Kids ate like 15 cones of the stuff and didn’t complain once.

Beach buffet for breakfast will be much quieter than the main hall. We alternated between the two throughout the week. Was able to go at 6:30am and have a quiet coffee nearly by ourselves for an hour before anyone else showed up. Always lots of fresh fruit, cheeses, breads, pancakes, bacon, etc. I'm sure someone would find something to complain about, but we didn't.

We didn’t try any a la carte restaurants. Didn’t feel like dressing up and found more than enough to eat at buffets. You do know where the a la cart food eventually goes, right?

We are wine drinkers and found the house wines difficult to drink a ton of. We chose not to buy any wine off the list available (e.g. $25-30 USD for Wolff Blass Yellow Label Shiraz) at dinner and made do with 1-2 glasses of house wine each meal. It's not awesome but it's o-k. Wouldn't recommend wine (specifically the red) as your primary drink of choice while you are here. Though, if you normally drink red wine poolside in 35 degree heat, you may be fine with it.

We brought 2 bottles of Clamato in our checked bags and made ourselves ceasars or micheladas most of the week. Highly recommend.

We didn't have access to the First Club "premium" alcohol (only available at the First Club bar). Got just as drunk as those folks and didn't have to leave the pool. #Winning

- Towel exchanges / towels in general

Not sure why people were complaining about towels. They give you towels in your room (no towel tickets at this resort) and you can exchange them in 2 places on the resort if they are dirty. They will gladly give you more so I think this complaint can be safely ignored.  We had towels stolen off our chairs, no biggie – go to the towel shack and ask for more. Crisis averted.

- Beach & Shade

Beach is very well maintained. This and the resorts on either side have maintenance staff raking up seaweed, etc. Never a problem but if there’s a few pieces of seaweed on the beach that is ruining your day like we saw in some reviews – See Rule #1.

There’s zero shade on the beach aside from what little the palms provide. No palapas. There are 4-5 pergolas around the pools but you gotta be up early to get a chair as they are hot commodities. 6-6:30am or earlier.

So yes, the reviews are accurate that shade is tough to come by. It wasn’t an issue for us as we reserved chairs at the pergolas but if you are planning on sleeping in most days, you're going to need to pack more sunscreen.

- Timeshare / Vacation Club pestering

True story. Each building is assigned a concierge whose mission in life is to get people to the timeshare presentation. Just say “no gracias”. End of story. They may ask you a few times because they won’t remember your face out of the hundreds of people coming and going. Imagine that.

- Entertainment

We’ve stayed at places that had a very active entertainment team. Not so here. Much quieter resort. There were some activities at the pool closest to the beach in the mornings and on the weekend there was some action at the main pool but overall this is a quiet resort. Kids were a little bored as kids are. We had to push them to entertain themselves or go make friends. Again, crisis averted.

Shows at night were really good.

Lobby entertainment was pretty decent also.

Note: Lobby bar seating fills up late afternoon. If you want a drink before dinner, you'll need to be up there by 4-4:30pm or you won't get a seat. Dinner opens at 6:30pm so plan on a few drinks at least.

- Sketchy beach vendors

True story. Punta Cana is a public beach. You’ll find all manner of people trying to sell stuff to tourists who are silly enough to bring money to the beach. Fake sunglasses, fake cigars, fake jewelry, pictures with some lizard or a bird that a random dude is carrying on the beach. You’ll see it all. Just say “no gracias” and move along. Or not. It’s your money. 

There’s also a set of tourist trap shacks located a 25-30 minute walk down the beach past the Grand Palladium resort. If that’s your thing, go for it - go buy souvenirs made in China for 100X their value. If you’re walking by, simply no thanks or no gracias will keep the shop-keepers from bugging.

There's also a few shops on-resort out of the front of the main lobby. Dicker hard. Everything is seemingly negotiable. The shop inside the resort lobby has posted prices, we didn't try to negotiate in there so not sure how much luck you'd have.

- First club / Royal club

We didn’t upgrade and after we left we didn’t see any reason why someone would. Again, if you’ve got money to burn go for it I guess. The "perks" advertised for it didn't appeal to us and didn't seem worth the expense after we saw them for ourselves.

- Fancy rooms with hot tubs

We noticed that some of the buildings had hot tubs outside their balconies (ground floor). Keep in mind there’s no fence or any privacy between the patio doors and the public walkways of the resort so if that’s cool with you, give it a go for whatever those rooms cost I guess. I’d pass.

- Rooms near the the entertainment areas

Check the map of the resort. Not sure that you'll have much control over where your room is but be aware of where the buildings are in relation to the main entertainment area. The nighttime shows can be loud.

We’d go back to this resort based on our experience but if you are looking for a high-activity, fist-pumping, foam party experience for twenty-somethings, probably not going to be the atmosphere you’d want. 

If you want a lower-key, relaxing vacation, this is a real solid, safe contender.

Great Experience - Negative Reviews Debunked

We visited at half term and stayed in the royal club with our two teenage daughter , the room was lovely and Gloria our cleaner was amazing all week, she looked after our teenage daughters and was a delight ! The rooms are spotlessly clean and plenty of hot water. 
The royal restaurant staff are excellent so friendly, very hard working thank you Samuel and your team for making our holiday special and the food is way better than the other restaurants the menu changes daily for lunch and dinner , we stayed at the Mexico royal club and that was the same menu everyday so punta in that respect was better, we tried the Italian it  was good, but the oriental was bad, the guy at the desk was so rude to everyone and the food was shocking ! The sea food restaurant was ok, the menu descriptions sounded better than what was served.
The resort had a lots of Canadian and Americans who came year on year for up too a month , and the guests at the royal club went out of their way to include us Brits , especially Theo ! Who welcomes everyone when they arrived and introduced us to lots of the other guests ,the only frustration was the bed reserving but when the wind died down on the beach it wasn’t an issue.   The grounds are spotless and the gardener at the royal club worked constantly tidying the area. It was a Shame there was not  a pool drinks service like Mexico but the beach bar was nice. The cocktails where not as good a Mexico but the wine and champagne where fine so I drank that, however the main resort wine was undrinkable.The star of the whole resort was the beach it is stunning , the sand is so soft and you can walk for miles. I could have sat on that beach forever. Overall we had a lovely relaxing holiday and will come back to the Caribbean.

Royal club Feb 18

Good
- pool
- strong drinks
- Italian and Mexican restaurants
- massages
- shuttle service
- amount of chairs at the beach

Bad
- customer service from front desk
- timeliness of addressing concerns

Average
- food
- housekeeping
- amount of shade

Overall the trip here was not terrible. I went with my fiance and if you are not a high maintenance person, then this is a hotel that could work for you. The pools are nice and large but needed more shade. The food was nothing special but I definitely suggest getting reservations for the restaurants for dinner 100%. In addition, we got a double room instead of king size room so we had to push together our beds but it wasn't that bad because we had lots of bed space haha. 
The two main negative experiences I had was the timeliness of addressing my issue with the power in my room cutting off due to my hairdryer and it took them a lot of time to come fix it. I had called about the issue but it was not until I walked all the way to the customer service table, that someone finally came to fix it. I also went back to my room after breakfast one day and our cards just stopped working so I had to walk far to get them reset.

Overall Average Trip

Great beach - beautiful!  Pools were nice.  The ease of getting around the resort was good.  Do NOT go to the Asian restaurant!  Could not go one day without being approached about a time share.  Overall I would go back if they promised to give us a bracelet that told the staff not to keep bothering us about time shares.

No Title

Wonderful staff, substandard food and lack of concern and accommodation for an ill guest. Would not return to this Occidental and the brand is off my list as well. It is unfortunate that our rooms were wrong when we arrived and we spent hours trying to fix it. One room had a terrible odor that they were not able to get rid of. The building we were in was leaking near the stairwell. They had buckets and towels all over to keep the water from going down the staircase but it was worrisome. Overall the weather and the staff were the greatest things about this vacation. 

Not Great!

I have been to Punta Cana 9 times one of which was in 2009 at this resort. At the time it was good, then the  majority of the reviews were negative until  year.I decided to give it another try. Glad I did but I will be returning to the Iberostars where I spent my last 5 visits. Better quality and variety of food and friendlier staff

Occidental Punta Cana

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