Iberostar Selection Hacienda Dominicus

“9.6/10 7 night stay September 2025”

We give it 9.6 out of 10. Beach extremely clean, lot's of sun loungers and plenty of room between them for privacy. Variety of drinks available at the Lighthouse on the beach. You can even take the drinks in the sea as plastic re-usable cups! The sea was crystal clear, beautiful. With your head a… more

We give it 9.6 out of 10. Beach extremely clean, lot's of sun loungers and plenty of room between them for privacy. Variety of drinks available at the Lighthouse on the beach. You can even take the drinks in the sea as plastic re-usable cups! The sea was crystal clear, beautiful. With your head above the water you will be able to see each other's feet! Caribbean sea was like a hot bath, you can get into the water instantly! Even at 8pm it was extremely warm. You can see fish in the sea at two locations, one as you get into the water on the far left, and another a bit further in. There was plenty of fish there but not a huge variety from what we saw, but we still really enjoyed it. Buffet food always 10/10 big variety to choose from. Service is always fast and your waiter will take good care of you. You can even get sparkling wine at breakfast! Fruits here were incredibly fresh and juicy. No matter which time you arrive everything is always fully stocked up and ready to eat. We went to 3 different al Carte, Italian- steakhouse, Japanese and Mexican. We enjoyed Japanese the most, the chef cooks in front of you and it's very entertaining! Food and service was 10/10 for the Japanese and steakhouse. Sadly our experience at the Mexican wasn't so good we give it 1/5. Whilst waiting to enter we noticed Spanish speaking couples sitting there had drinks but we were not offered any. When the waiter came to invite us in despite us arriving before another Spanish speaking couple they were invited in first, seated first, and served their food first. This was poor service by the waiter. When we sat down we were immediately offered the expensive wine menu and not told about any house wine. You will find a huge variety of alcohol at this resort, cocktails, rum, beer and many more! The lighthouse bar and the pool bar were our favourites! The hotel itself and the grounds were beautiful! It was a joy to walk around the resort each and every day. The place was kept very tidy and the gardens have been well looked after. The vibe of this hotel was very Dominican and fun! There was a variety of evening entertainment every night including live shows, music and dancing. One night a Michael Jackson act performed, if you have the chance to see him whilst you are there do NOT miss him! He was absolutely amazing! So why do we give this hotel 9.6 instead of 10? We have a few recommendations for improvement as follows: 1) During our 7 night stay we saw on two occasions third party vendors come to the resort and stay for what seemed like hours. They were very pushy and made it uncomfortable to walk around the hotel as you couldn't really avoid them due to them setting up in multiple popular walkways around the hotel. It would be better to have them in one area only so that if guests do not want to be bothered by them we can simply walk another way. As there are local markets very close to the resort I think it's best that vendors do not come on-site. 2) Sargassum was present on our beach for two days during our stay. Whilst we appreciate so much the hotel cleaned the beach we found the workers to be extremely slow. Workers were talking way too much and moving so slow. 3) Some tables were not sitting flat on the floor which resulted in the table moving a lot whilst eating. We appreciate the staff did their best to fix this by placing paper underneath however the issue persisted. We hope this issue can be fixed before someone spills a drink. 4) It's advertised on the resort as "free kayak" near the pool area and on the hotel official website however when you go to enquire about this at the diving centre non motorized water sports are "free" but you must pay 20 dollars first. The price is actually fair as it's a one-time payment and you can use 1 hour per day I believe however we did not like being mis-led and lied to like that. Please change how this is advertised asap. Tips: Bring USD ONLY on this holiday. Everyone prefers to be tipped in USD and even the local markets and at the airport the prices are in USD. If you don't speak Spanish make sure that you fully understand what your concierge is saying to avoid any misunderstandings and miscommunications. If the hotel offers you a free gift such as free dinner on the beach or massage(as we are getting married next month or for some people might be any other special occasion ) you will need to allocate at least half an hour of your time to listen about the hotel chains other resorts whilst eating breakfast with the hotel staff. This wasn't specified prior to us accepting the gift so we ended up cancelling after as we did not want to have breakfast with the hotel staff as this made us uncomfortable. You can negotiate a lot with the local vendors in price. Make sure to get a fair price! We got bitten on this holiday more then any other we have been on. Please bring whatever you need to avoid bites. We think they were ants. Please don't leave food on the sun loungers!!! It will attract ants and the peacocks will eat the food which is unhealthy for them. You can find artwork in the <15 USD range if you are looking for this as a souvenir. Locals will sell magnets, cigars and many more.

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“5 stars until I got sick”

this is from our two weeks trip to DR. one week in Punta Cana with Majestic, the second week at Iberostar H. Dominicus. Naturally i will compare the two hotels. check-in - it was a little underwhelming compares to Majestic. a little hiccup in the beginning and got solved. sales pitch - at Maj… more

this is from our two weeks trip to DR. one week in Punta Cana with Majestic, the second week at Iberostar H. Dominicus. Naturally i will compare the two hotels. check-in - it was a little underwhelming compares to Majestic. a little hiccup in the beginning and got solved. sales pitch - at Majestic we were not asked about buy membership etc. Felt really relax. At Iberostar, constantly someone came to ask you to go to Spa. I was told that we will have a concierge and we can only make restaurant reservations w our concierge. Our concierge came to greet us but he will meet with us the next day at 3pm in the lobby. What? NO, i am not coming to the lobby in the middle of the day. we ended up booking the restaurants on the app. the front desk never mentioned that. Afterall, the so called concierge is a sale rep trying to sell you the club membership. the room and the hotel ground is very well kept and nice. no complaints about that. restaurants food are not as good as the Majestic Elegance restaurants. the buffets on the other hand is better than the restaurants food. So if you cant go, you are not missing out a lot. The biggest selling point of this hotel is the beach. it is absolutely beautiful. nothing beat this. If i am going back, it will only for the beach. it was a 4.5 stars experience until i got sick at the end of the trip. my husband did get tummy ache but wasn't as serious as me. I got upset stomach and vomited for a whole day. I never got sick at Majestic and any other Caribbean resort. So do not tell me bc i am still adjusting. I avoided green salad at both places., but i think the biggest difference was the water. Majestic provides bottle water but Iberostar has their own water filter system. I had no choice but to use their fountain. I understand it is more environmental friendly and sustainable but unfortunately bottle water is still the safest bet for North American tourists. And they give you two glass bottle to go get water from the fountain is also quite a stupid idea. the bottle is not big enough, we had to go get water at least twice a day if you are using it for both drinking and brushing teeth. it is kinda ridiculous. i guess you can drink beer all day long. Will i go back again? i will go back for the beach, but not the hotel. if i can find another beach as nice, i will not come back for the reason that their water, IMO, is not safe enough for N.A stomach.

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