Sunscape Coco Punta Cana — Hotel in Higüey

This resort has such great potential! If the staff is properly trained in customer service, problem solving along with being fully staffed and proper planning. When we checked in we decided to upgrade to Sunclub. That is honestly a waste of money. They do not monitor who has Sunclub and who does not. When checking in we asked if the buliding we got put in had an elevator. It did NOT work. Then our bell hop told us to grab bags and start walking. I can not do that many stairs as I have spinal fusions. I made the staff very aware of this during our check in. We were told it would be fixed tomorrow. It was not fixed all week and never worked. So we went back down and got different rooms in a building that had a working elevator. The food to us was horrible. We never got a hot meal. It took us complaining multiple times and talking to staff to get our app to work to make dinner reservations. Finally day 4 we were able to make them. I tried making them at 1am and restaurants were full. This is very annoying. The staff does not have access to make reservations and a supervisor is always in a meeting. They also always said you can only make reservations on the app and to hand them your phone. Enough complaining it magically works and we can get dinner reservations. There was never any plates at breakfast. Or silverware on our tables. When i had asked where i could get some with cups for coffee and juice i got told they are on the tables. It was always a joke if they had any plates or cups. I had talked to one concier and stressed my concerns about how terrible customer service was and how nothing was getting resolved. He Told be yeah, I asked if he was agreeing with me also told yeah. I have over 20 years of customer service. I am fully aware that people have off and bad days. I give so much grace with this bc I know it's a hard field to be in. I tried problem solving and kept getting told to come back.I also have not been to a resort where so many people got hurt. There is no non slip areas around the pools. We saw 4 people get seriously injured while getting out of the pool. 2 of them need to go to the hospital. Not to mention the many the sliped just walking with shoes on to the sunclub area. I was one of them. Our friends didn't realize some water had spilled in their room. She slipped and feel broke the glass she was carrying and it shattered. Glass everywhere. She cut herself pretty bad. We went to the nurse and they gave her 3 tiny band aids. I asked for more. They have us 2 more. She cut her had in 4 different places. We also walked to the maids area to ask for a broom and dust pan bc of the glass everywhere and a mop bc of the blood and was told 15 mins. We said can we just have it. Then they said 5 mins. And we said no we need it now. Okay 2 mins. They came 5 min later when they were 2 doors down from them. We are and were more then willing to clean it up ourselves. We also saw another guest have part of the building fall on her. It took them 3 days to finally fix the part of the balcony on the 2nd floor that fell. While still have guest in that room. Our room was okay, the first night I called to ask if we could get a box of tissues as I started an allergy flare up and our room was out. I was told the person who does that will be up at some point bc she is dealing with another bigger issue and that is more important. I had asked if I could go get them myself. I have no problem doing so at all and got hung up on. The next day we went to take showers after a day in the ocean. No running water in our shower. They did take care of that issue right away. Our air conditioner barley worked. Our mini fridge was iffy if it got stocked. We even told the staff that we had to resort to taking the things we needed off the carts in the hallways. The shower spewed water and we had a floor mat 2 of the 7 days. We asked every days for one. Every single day the resort ran out of something. The pool bars kept running out of beer, rum and tequila daily. I understand that it's busy season but why aren't they...

I recently stayed for 6 days and 5 nights in the Sun Club Section of the resort, Building 1. Here's a detailed, realistic review — with pics coming soon!

Staff Highlights: Manuel, the egg guy at Kaleidoscope, was amazing. His omelettes were perfect every time, and he was kind to everyone, regardless of language — which isn’t always the case with staff. Also at Kaleidoscope, there was a lovely hostess (name unknown) who lit up when greeting guests and affectionately called us “Princess” — very sweet. Maria, the bartender at the Sun Club bar, was disappointing. She was slow, cold, and unengaging — not ideal for a bartender. Pedro C. at Flip Flopz Bar was the opposite — quick, kind, and consistent. I’d walk over just for his service. Entertainment Staff (King, Coffee, Tutti Frutti, Chocolate, and Nicki Minaj!) were INCREDIBLE. High energy from morning beach aerobics to late-night shows. King especially handled rowdy guests with grace and humour.

Restaurants: Chopsticks: A must! The chefs entertain and cook right in front of you — top recommendation. Damario: Surprisingly delicious Italian. The pesto tasted freshly made, and the pizza, pasta, and steak dish were all hits. Terria: The buffet wasn’t great — limited options, and only the carved meat was decent. Tiki Taco: Gave us the wrong food order, and we couldn’t tell shrimp from chicken (same texture/sauce). Language barrier was tough, but we don’t blame them — we’re in their country and don’t expect perfect English.

Reservations were tricky — one night, walk-ins were denied despite many empty tables. Kaleidoscope was the fallback, which is fine for breakfast/lunch, but we wanted dinner variety. Also, many restaurants were randomly closed, making it hard to plan meals — even in off-season, it felt inconsistent.

Rooms: Wouldn’t recommend staying outside the Sun Club at all. Our room had stains on the wall that a fresh coat of paint could fix. Loved the app-based room cleaning requests and wind-down service (sheets untucked, water by bed, etc.). In our room, when we turned on the bathtub, the faucet popped right off and started spraying water all over the wall...We requested maintenance, and he seemed to do a short-term fix... A pipe likely burst in our building — water poured from the wall, not in our room, but in the hallway. Fire alarms went off 4 times during our stay, but you can’t hear them in the rooms — a definite safety concern. No welcome tour or map made it hard to get oriented — we didn’t realize how big the resort was until days in. On our last day, one of the non–Sun Club pools was drained and closed — a letdown for those expecting easy pool access.

Beach: The beds that you see in the photos that are on the beach, cost anywhere from like $25USD-$100USD++ (which include special bottle service, etc.) I think it is so weird. There is no wristband or anything to separate sun club and non-sun club, so many non-sun club people ended up in the "private" sun club portion of the beach. There was security from our resort who made sure the people that were selling things on the beach stayed behind a certain line and did not bother you that much, but the sellers were more funny than annoying.

It feels like there is a charge for every small thing here. If you lose your towel card, it is $20 USD; if you damage/lose the umbrella in the room, it's $50 USD; the beach beds are a cost, there were more restaurants that you pay for rather than included ones...Like if it's an all-inclusive, the majority of it needs to be INCLUDED in the original price you pay. Some people had robes, some didn't, not sure if that is another thing you have to pay for.

This resort has the possibility to become a 5-star, but they need many, many changes. I had a really positive experience and wish I could give it a 5-star, but there are many things the resort needs to do better. There were many things that I could see that would negatively affect other people at the resort, but not applicable to my stay, which was overall...

First of all, let me start with the positives: The property was beautiful and well maintained and the beach was very clean (although there were a lot of Vendors on it) The night time shows and entertainment and the daytime activities were great, the resort had a very fun vibe. The Hyatt App was very convenient and when we ordered toilet paper to the room with it, it arrived within 5 minutes. Housekeeping was awesome. Our suite had a lovely view and the air conditioning worked great. Café Coco was very quick and efficient and all of the Baristas were great. Now the opportunities for improvement: The main buffet “Windows” had a nice variety and the food was always hot and constantly being refilled. HOWEVER the tables were always dirty and even in the rare instance that the hostess was available to find you clean table, there was usually not silverware or glasses and 9 out of 10 times nobody came by to offer us water or drinks. It was truly self serve and frankly exhausting, it should not be up to the guests to do the staff’s jobs for them. Also, the cards listing the various food items above the buffet were often wrong or missing. The A La Carte restaurants were complicated to book. Once we booked them, there was on opportunity to submit our dietary restrictions or food allergies, so we did. When we arrived for our reservation at Blue Water, our dietary restrictions were noted on the Hostesses paperwork and confirmed at the door. When we ordered our food, we mentioned them again, and my wife ordered the ONE item on the menu that would fit her needs. Although it did not list cheese as an ingredient, my wife is lactose intolerant so she made sure to request that if by chance there WAS cheese, could they please leave it out. The waiter made no comment about it so we assumed it was fine. We waited 45 minutes before a different staff member arrived at our table to inform us that the meal DID in fact contain cheese and they would not take it out for us. They offered no alternative for her and stared at us in silence until we just said that we would be leaving. We later visited 2 Dominican grocery stores in town, where we were able to confirm that Lactose free and Vegan alternative products were widely available, so obviously this was not a lack of knowledge by the staff, just a lack of care for their clientele. The Majority of the staff at the resort were 100% indifferent to our presence and treated the guests as an inconvenience. On the final day of our stay, checkout was at 12:00pm but our bus to the airport was not picking us up until 6:30pm, so we requested to pay for late checkout when we checked in. We were informed that they could not tell us whether or not we could have a late checkout until 10am the day of our checkout (because apparently it is IMPOSSIBLE to view the reservations ahead of time). At 10am on our checkout day we checked and they informed us that late checkout was not possible because all of the rooms were booked. I checked the flight schedule and the majority of the flights coming in were landing after 3pm, which would have meant that there was a strong possibility they COULD have given us a late checkout until at least 2 or 3pm, if they cared at all to investigate for us but they did not. It seems like the staff at this resort have gotten LAZY and feel entitled to tips from the tourists just for being there.

Seating by the pool and the beach was a problem, people put towels on the chairs as early as 6am and left them there all day. Since there was no card system for the towels, people stockpiled them and they ran out early in the day The internet is PAINFULLY slow and constantly throws you off. Although our room was very clean and had a nice view, we upgraded to the ocean view suite and there were NO CHAIRS in the room, so we had to sit on the bed. Don’t expect to get a lot of sleep at this resort, as there is very little security to wrangle in the hoards of drunk guests wandering around yelling until 4 in...