Vista Sol Punta Cana Beach Resort & Spa — Hotel in Higüey

Beach: 4 out of 5 Sizeable, no shortage of towels, a guard on duty, turquoise water, tall palm trees, fine white sand, almost no sea weeds. There is significant beach erosion with quite a few uprooted unsightly tree stumps, but a lot of sand still remains. Beach chairs are at times in short supply; there was one case of zero beach chairs. The Internet is available in the proximity of the beach restaurant. To the south of the hotel the beach is full of anchored and marooned boats, piles of decomposing seaweed, abandoned construction and other eyesores, so don't count on paradisiac walks in that direction. The beach to the left (north), although starts with the mess of local businesses, quickly widens and turns very nice, well cared for, stretching for several kilometers along big chain hotels.

Buffet: 3 out of 5 Good food quality, adequate variety and presentation. The food, however, is not hot. The team of waiters can hardly cope during peak demand, resulting in shortage of ready tables, absence of coffee cups and lack of attention overall. Outside of peak hours the service is better. There are a few other other nuisances such as uneven floors, noise, and poor internet. Low-quality cappuccino is self-served from coffee machines, some of which often don't function or don't do as expected.

Room: 2 out of 5 Standard size, nice balcony, bottled water in the fridge, drip coffee machine. Room cleaning is impeccable. Bathroom is sparkling clean. "Bath gel" and conditioner in small bottles; but no shampoo. Our toilet was making periodic "auto-flushing", sink plug required extraction with scissors. 3 nights out of 7 there was no hot water (!!!). Luckily, cold water was tepid. TV was not working and three appeals resulted in smiles and kindest assurances to fix it, but not in working TV. Zero internet in the room. Mosquitos in corridors, in the rooms and washrooms. (Take care of them if you are not looking for dengue, chikungunya or malaria)

Activities: 5 out of 5 Various fun and physical activities in the main pool area and at the beach. Volleyball several hours every day, dance classes, stretching and aerobics exercises, even painting on canvas. A couple of crude ping pong tables sunk in the sand are not great, but playable. A single catamaran and several kayaks are available weather permitting. The team of animators is doing a great job, organizing and motivating people. My hat is off for them.

Grounds: 5 out of 5 Quite spacious, very green, in a grove of mature, tall palm trees, with clean pathways, many peacocks and ducks walking around the grounds. A trained eye will notice small colibris here and there. There are several pools: a lively one and a few quiet ones. A few small shops, and a couple of hammocks in a quiet corner. All looks very green and taken excellent care of. Everything is wheel-chair accessible.

Reception area: 3 out of 5 Lots of sitting places, but still not sufficient for the population - sometimes there are no chairs/sofas available. There is a basic bar and some rudimentary table service. Every day a small, but lively outdoor disco plays popular music, often live, and many people dance. Internet quality seems to depend on the load. During peak hours almost not functioning, later at night - quite good. Very noisy. Hungry mosquitos.

Night entertainment: 4 of 5 There is something every night: twice a week there is "beach party" - a well animated disco at the beach under flying jellyfish lanterns, other times are karaoke or various shows in the theater, which look good and end with dances. Nothing extraordinary, but a good way to spend an evening. Nothing non-traditional or otherwise tasteless is demonstrated.

Surrounding area: 1 of 5 There is nothing of interest nearby. The area is not pretty.

Restaurants: Self-reservation using touch screens. Usually available for the next day. Not visited any, no opinion.

Other: Many families with babies and small kids, but there are also many seniors. No late night food. The only ATM does not accept...

First of all, I don't like that all inclusive thing by itself everywhere. I hate their entertainment and so. But as I discovered later, Punta Cana is not suitable for other types of stay with kids for safety reason. At least, from my point of view. I like the resort location since they have their own private beach and is not surrounded by stores and local businesses. Which was good and bad at the same time. Good because of pretty quiet and not so touristy around but bad if you want some souvenirs or other things to buy. Also consider that all out of the hotel tours routes go through Punta Cana downtown which has very narrow streets and pretty intense traffic. Gathering tourist for the tour from different hotels and dropping them off may take additional 1-2 hrs to the tour length. The resort itself is a little bit outdated. Even newer buildings had yellowish toilet seat, rust stains on plumbing, etc. But overall clean. For some reason, room did not have that "do not disturb" placard and the next day we were woken up by room service at 9pm after sleepless flight night. There was no wifi in the room but on the balcony I could catch the one from lobby. But we lived pretty close. The buffet is open for breakfast between 7 and 10am. And variety is impressive with mostly average european kitchen. But you can find there everything: all types of meat, vegeterian options, snacks, cereals, etc. We were very surprised by not having seafood options. It seems like Dominican Republic does not fish at all. No shrimps, squids, or others. For all 8 days I saw only 2 or 3 types of fish, and 1 mixed seafood with hardy identifying ingredients except crab imitation sticks. Lol. Staying on the beach, we expected much more seafood options. The buffet available 3 times a day. And you don't have much options for breakfast and lunch. But they have food truck with pizza and hamburgers and bar on the beach. For dinner you may choose buffet or reserve 1 of the 5 restaraunts: gourmet, italian, mexican, american, and japanese. Those restaraunts are free as well and available only by reservation. The reservation screen is located in the lobby next to buffet. And usually they are booked for nearest 1-2 days. So think ahead. We did not try Mexican and American since nothing new for us. But we did book 3 others for different days, each 3 days before. It creates artificial demand. And seems like nobody comes 2nd time. Despite lack of reservation, half of the tables were not occupied. Or they limit number of guests for some reason. Gourmet was the 1st and really pretended to be luxury. Candles on the table, serving of the dishes, and very attentive staff. Food differed from buffet assortment but just small pieces on the plate. As many high level restaraunt do. Haha. I liked it but we still go to the buffet after to find something for my 4yo who was not impressed by luxury style. Italian restaraunt next day did not impress even me. 50% or more from buffet. I was shocked to see a plate with a tuna from can there. And we again ended up in the buffet. I joked that no way they would use canned tuna in sushi next day. And you know?! They did. The Japanese restaraunt has sushi bar and bowl restaraunt under the same roof (with separate reservation). There were 5 types of sushi: pretty traditional Philadelphia, California with carrot, one with chicken, one with canned tuna, and one with banana. It was so long awaited dinner and my 4yo was excited too, but tried one and rejected to continue. So.... i fed her later in the buffet. Haha. Also the restaraunt's part was extremely loud in couple feet from us. It was a cook's show with throwing food and all this stuff. Never understood it but guys had fun. We had another reservation for sushi bar next day and did not go. The only thing we participated in the hotel was kids mini-disco at 8:30 each evening. But it was about 15min and definitely not enough for them to dance. Our goal was to swim all day in the emerald sea and sleep enough and we got it. Punta Cana is not a place where I'd...

Hi I am a 40 year old woman who went to Vista Sol from Sept 18th to Sept 25th with my sister 46 and my 2 children aged 16 and 7. If you are a fancy pants nose to the air type this resort is NOT for you. ||Grounds - beautiful and maintained||Pool view room - small - double beds. Tv was mainly Spanish and most of the time wouldn't turn on. Remote batteries didn't work needed to ask for new ones . Bathroom smelled like mold. Fridge was only stocked with water no booze no pop. ||Ala carts - Very good. Especially the Italian. ||Pizza truck on beach - Nothing special, pizza was gross, hamburgers were edible I suppose, the hotdogs were meh, ok, and the fries were very dry - but again if you need to eat it is available and edible if you are not picky like me. ||Beach - The beach itself was not what I would consider a nice beach. The water was not as blue as I would like - more dirty like and grey. The border of the resort is next to a local area with restaurants and locals and they come on the beach on our side DAILY and ALL day and harass you. NOT COOL - I have a 16 year old daughter and she was NEVER left alone. The water was warm but again not my kid of swimming when the water is murky. ||Snack Bar - on the beach - they have the same thing most days fruit, nachos and cheese, salad bar sometimes they had gyros. ||Beach Bar - convenient||Pools - beautiful - main pool has daily activities like Coconut party and Foam Party. Other days are dance classes or beer chug challenge or booze bottle ring toss. ||Theater - same ol, as all resorts - Karaoke - Michael Jackson show was good. Beach party was cool - wear white. they have conga lines and a booze table and limbo etc.||Lobby bar closes at 12 midnight and the theater bar closes at 1130 so lines are long. There is NOTHING food wise open from 10pm to 7am again not cool for those who are night owls.||Excursions: Horse back riding was nice - it was on the beach, no more than the one hr tour is LONG ENOUGH especially if you are an old bird like me. IT HURTS more than you think on the ass and legs. Remember your age and weight before considering. Cheap though, like 45 bucks but its like a 45 min drive away so you are away from the hotel for 4 hrs which I didn't like. ||Dune Buggies - DO NOT RECOMMEND unless you are doing a different one that I did. The one I did took us to a cave - felt rushed - could barely enjoy the swim in the cave. There was almost 200 buggies at the same time so we were only able to go like 10 km an hr and it was a waste if time. They took us to a beach where we were IMMEDIATIELY harassed and it SMELT LIKE FISH so bad I just wanted to get out of there. ||WESTJET/SUNWING REP - He will tell you that there is a shuttle to the shops for free but when you get there it is in the middle of the city and ONLY 2 stores and a waste of time and OVERPRICED . If you want to take the shuttle to BLUE MALL you can for free as well from the LOBBY. ||Non motorized sports - CATAMARAN is supposed to be free and the guy takes you out like I have done on all my other trips and you give him a tip to say thanks BUT NO they want $45 USD for the guy to take you out and I said NO that's not happening and eventually got him to take us out and I gave him a $15 USD tip. They have kayaks but I didn't check if they were free or not. ||Alcohol - to me it is what it is GROSS if you want top shelf you have to pay for it.||Banana Mamas were good. White rum and 7up and grenadine was good. ||Staff - all super nice - no issues. ||Buffet - pretty much the same thing every day with some small changes here and there. ||If you have kids I would reconsider looking for something that has a splash pad area or a kids club . ||EVERYONE there who were vacationing were from Europe or South America for some reason. Only a few from Canada. Not a bad thing but definitely noticeable. ||All in all it was a good vacation but I wouldn't go back to this resort since I prefer to have more bars that are open later and a 24 hr snack bar and a better beach with less locals. ||Hope...