Hotel Catalonia Royal La Romana - Adults Only — Hotel in La Hispaniola

This is a good 3-Star Hotel, I had a week holiday end of September

✅ Amazing sea, gorgeous beach ✅ The rooms are big and clean ✅ They regularly change towels: you can do it on the beach, or they just come to the room during dinner and change them ✅ Beautiful territory of the hotel ✅ You don't need to book your sunbed at 6 a.m. ✅ There is always someone at the beach to make people with children from a different hotel leave ✅ No annoying upsells ✅ No tour operators are allowed on the territory ✅ Ceviches and seafood are amazing ✅ Guests are nice, not annoying or loud ✅ Animators at the beach are active, friendly and fun ✅ Booking a restaurant for a dinner was not a problem ✅ Good noise insulation

Now remember, they call themselves a ‘Royal’ 5-star hotel:

❌ Staff don't speak English. At all ❌ So, staff is friendly with Spanish-speaking people and panics any time you make an order in English. ❌ Food is mediocre. The buffet is poor, has a small variety and is cheap. Desserts are a shame. If you want to eat cheap sausages, rice, potatoes, very few veggies - you'll enjoy it here ❌ Cooking stations at the buffet where the staff cooks for you are weird. Half of the time they are open, but there's no one to cook for you. ❌ Alcoholic cocktails rarely contain alcohol ❌ Level of service varies. More often it's slow and gloomy, less often - nice, quick and friendly. Sometimes they just forget your order and move on with their lives ❌ The hotel needs to be renovated. In some places, the roof leaks, and rooms are quite ‘tired’ ❌ The next closest hotel has rave parties at the beach several times a day. Very loud and annoying. The moment their music stops, this hotel turns on their music very loudly, so enjoying the sound of the sea may be problematic. Beware of booking a romantic dinner at the beach - you will be doomed to hear bad karaoke from that other hotel or their ultra-loud rave party ❌ They don't really want you to know that on the family side of the hotel, you can get crepes on the beach, paella and smoothies ❌ You can take a kayak once a day. The trick is that for 2 large fully booked hotels they offer 5 boats: 4 singles and 1 double. So… They have plenty of additional boats in their shed, but they choose not to offer them to guests. And you can't book it reserve a boat. Sometimes they don't offer you help to put the boat on the water or a hotel guy can just sit on the chair and watch you do it ❌ Evening animation is boring and short. After it beach animators organise dancing for guests or caraoke ❌ Beach Bar works from 10 a.m. If you come to the beach at 8 a.m., by 10 a.m. it's too hot, and you're dehydrated ❌ Food in some restaurants is very good, in some - quite bad. Desserts often are not worth it. Getting a chocolate dessert (not Nutella crepes, but real chocolate) is almost impossible. The buffet menu (especially breakfast) is the same every day ❌ Gym is small and has very little equipment ❌ Tennis court is just a painted concrete ❌ Would be nice to have dedicated smoking areas instead of just letting people smoke everywhere. Not to mention cigarette buts in the sand on the beach 🥲 ❌ Rooms need toilet brushes, my room didn't have ‘do not disturb’ card ❌ I have a feeling there are rain umbrellas and floaties available for guests to use. Too bad guests have no idea about these options

This all would be fine for a 3-star hotel. I came from the UK, and I wouldn't recommend paying for a tour more than £1200 for a week. The fair price would be £900-£950...

Total Nightmare!!! Health hazard!!!

You couldn't pay us to stay at this resort ever again!

Huge heads up that my husband and I botg contacted food poisoning due to E-COLI. We stayed here July 2025.

Yes, our medical tests came back positive for e-coli and it was from this resort.

First thing, if you are looking to have a fun and exciting good time, Do not book your trip here. This resort is beyond boring and I'm talking morning through night! My husband and I are both american in our late 30s and we met four people out of the entire resort that spoke english. With speaking with those individuals, they too complainrd how dreadfully boring this resort was and how the food was horrible and quite frankly, we all tried to get out of our vacations early and go home. Iy was that bad!

Also if you do not speak spanish, you won't make it here. I constantly was using google translator, which was quite annoying. I get it we were in their country, but considering you have people from all over the world coming to their resort, you would think to have some that spoke more than a few words in English.

The beach is not a few feet away, so you either have to walk about a half mile, or get them to drive you down. We are huge beach people, and that's where we wanted to spend most of our time, but it was quite annoying and inconvenience that it wasn't easily accessed.

Do not think you you're going to come to this resort and have a fun time in the pool with pool parties or a fun swim-up bar! I would just save yourselves some time and go buy a blow up pool from your local store, grab your own alcohol and play your own music in the comfort of your own home before you're going to enjoy the pools there. Again, there was no excitement partying, or any kind of enjoyment at the pools there at the adult resort.

There are many different restaurants that you can go but you have to make reservations for breakfast, lunch and dinner!! There was a pizza place but that is on the family side of the resort, where there is also a buffet, but good luck to you!

The drinks were bland, and don't expect your frozen drink to be delicious!

The nightly entertainment did not exist!! They had a singer for an hour, they sung in spanish, and they would do a small show that lasted a half an hour in spanish as well. If they were to translate in English, it would be so fast you would not understand what they were saying. We actually met a couple from London, who said,"they've had more fun at a funeral then at this resort.

There are however five people that were extremely nice, and demonstrated great customer service to both my husband and I.

*Catherine at reception was a sweetheart. *Luis at the bell station was very funny, and he always had a smile on his face. *Christopher was one of the bartender/servers when enter the resort. He was very friendly and knew what my husband and I wanted after we told him the first time. *Darling was also a bartender/server and he was very sweet and knew what my husband I wanted to drink as well. *Luz at the snack bar was very sweet, and she even tried to learn some english from us, and she was teaching us different things in spanish.

If you are one to research a resort before you book it, I really hope you take our WARNING and DO NOT book your vacation at this resort.

I promise you'll thank me! Well unless you want food poisoning...

We had a wonderful stay at this hotel from December 19th to 26th, 2024. Overall, it was a lovely experience, and we would definitely consider returning. Here are the highlights and areas for improvement:

What we loved:

Location: Perfectly situated, with easy access to the beach and other amenities. The airport shuttle was on time and the driver was very friendly. takes about (1) hour to get to the resort from the airport.

Staff: From the front desk to the beach bar, all associates were kind and accommodating. Special shoutouts to Erizon at the beach bar and Ronaldo, who served us during a special dinner on the beach. Both made our experience even more memorable. Food: The best meals came from Beloved. The food quality was fantastic, and the breakfast above the lobby was also impressive, especially with the addition of fresh honey to the buffet. Beach and Activities: The adult-only section of the beach was well-maintained, and the water was stunningly clear. There were plenty of activities, both in and out of the water, which kept us entertained. Room: We had a walk-out pool room, which was great. The service was impeccable with daily room care and turn-down service.

Areas for improvement:

Food & Beverage: While the service at the restaurants was good, the food quality and consistency were lacking. One dish I ordered was supposed to come with an espagnole sauce but was covered with a mushroom soup sauce instead. For a company that is from Spain you would think that one of the mother sauces (sauce espagnole {tomato based with a veal stock]) that the culinary industry was based off on it would have the proper items on what is listed on the menu.

Also, the Italian-themed restaurant had issues with their POS system not aligning with the online menu, and dietary requests weren’t properly handled (my vegetarian pizza came with the wrong ingredients). It was frustrating experience pizza order as simple as it is! When I had ordered the vegetarian pizza, I had asked not to have a specific ingredient on it so that I can share it with my wife. The response we received from the associate—"well, it's vegetarian, what more do you want me to do?"—is not helpful or professional, and it doesn't address to the concerns about the mix-up. The items that were to be on the pizza were not there, and the items that were not to be there just miraculously showed up even with items that were not on the menu just showed up on the pizza.

Menu Translation: There were several spelling errors in the translated menus, and in some cases, translations were quite off (e.g., “goldfish” as a protein). It would be great if these could be double-checked to avoid confusion.

Despite these small setbacks, the overall experience was positive, and the hotel's great staff, beautiful beach, and stunning surroundings made up for the minor issues. We would happily return and look forward to seeing improvements in the food and beverage area.

Would I return? Yes! The positives far outweighed the negatives, and with some tweaks to the culinary experience, this hotel would be a top-tier destination.

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