Hotel Diuwak — Hotel in Bahía Ballena

We end up having to stay at Diuwak only because there's really not many other options for hotels in Dominical. We love Dominical and love supporting the local community but it just stinks we have to spend our money at Diuwak. It's a decent place, with the exception that there's never a room with a nice working shower with hot water ever, but I only decided to write this review after a hugely disappointing experience with the complete lack of customer service at the front desk staff. Guest satisfaction is most definitely NOT a priority at this hotel, it's money.

I have stayed here many times with tourist groups that we bring to Dominical, so I feel I have a pretty good level of knowledge of the place. I decided to bring my family here to show them Dominical and Costa Rica, and because our reservation somewhere else fell through, we again had to resort to Diuwak. I know there are rooms with room for three people, but had made our reservation through travelocity for 2; upon check in and realizing this mistake, I didn't think to correct it or that it would be a problem. The guy checking us in was upset to know we had three people and was attempting to charge us more for the room because of that. I tried to reason with him and was more than willing to pay the extra $5 to cover our third guest at breakfast, and even logged into travelocity and showed him that if I were to book a room with 2 people or 3 people that it didn't matter and the price was the same. Even though he spoke English, we just couldn't seem to understand each other, and he seemed to have eventually been fine with the fact we had an extra person. However, he was unfriendly to us the two days we stayed and after coming to tell him we once again had not hot water, didn't bother fixing it or giving us a different room. After we checked out and left, we noticed on our online bank statement we were charged on our credit card an extra $40, even though he had said (reluctantly) that it was fine. Two people or three, we still just used one room and two beds and two towels between us and essentially no real extra costs were incurred, but they waited until after we checked out to then charge our card extra just to make the profit. It's hugely disappointing that they're more about making money off of us than serving and...

I have been to Dominical several times, and have never discovered this beautiful hidden gem. I'm so happy this last time we did, it's an absolute gem smack dab in the middle of town, in a perfect location in the middle of everything. |The pool area and grounds are beautiful, you can see immediately - time has been spent on the outside space and making it a little oasis in the middle of town. |The rooms were clean and adequate for what we were there for - exploring the area, and only sleeping there(Why else?). I will say the pillows were too big & fluffy... lol I had to ditch the pillows and roll up a towel because they were too high for my neck, that though is an individual preference, not taking away stars for that. It seems ridiculous to even mention it.|The front desk staff were friendly and helpful at check in/out. Both English and Spanish, even though I do speak ok Spanish. |I HAVE to give a shout out to Rodney, who works at the restaurant/bar. His personality and vibe was immediately inviting from check in, he made us feel welcome and comfortable right away. He is a gem, so genuine, authentic and just a lovely human. That continued on through our stay as we then met his mom Lu (had her dancing!), sister Roxanne, and the cook(Randall? Sorry bro!), who were all lovely in the same, we had such a good time with them!|It is a lovely, charming Costa Rican hotel. Thank you for everything! We...

First off let’s start with the pros: it’s one of the nicer properties in dominical and quite happy with the layout and how the property is taken care of. The pool was quite nice and the hotel is located in a good spot. There is a guy that seems to run the desk and breakfast in the morning who is extremely friendly, polite and hospitable. We had many great interactions with him. The breakfasts were not huge but adequate, although it wasn’t well explained if we were allowed to have more than one coffee or juice etc and nobody offered us a refill but not the end of the world! The room and bathrooms were clean.||The cons: we originally reserved a room with a fridge and upon our arrival was placed into a room without a fridge. They wanted us to pay them more for the fridge. After arguing and telling us we were going to leave, they conceded and provided us a room with a fridge. I was happy that a coffee maker was provided but after having opened it, I was disgusted about the amount of absolute filth was inside, I don’t have high standards for coffee (17 years in the army) but I wouldn’t drink anything that came from that coffee machine. To be fair I didn’t inform the staff because I didn’t want to complain about another thing on top of the fridge.||All in all, I would probably go back if it was convenient and the...