Bahia Principe Grand Aquamarine

time visit to Dom Rep. I Was always a little hesitant to go there, having heard mixed reviews. But how wrong I was and am already looking forward to revisiting. The Aquamarine is one of 7 Bahia Principe hotels in a vast complex. You can essentially walk between all 7 as they share the same site, although you cannot necessarily use the facilities of all. Each hotel has its own lobby bar, with varying entertainment and theme nights. You can use each of the bars as far as I could tell. We regularly visited 4 different lobby bars. There are also pool bars, a large Sports Bar (open until 2am) and night time bar near the beach. Note that the Aquamarine isn’t beachfront. It is a 10/15 minute walk (depending where your room is situated) through the grounds but don’t let this put you off as there is a continuous buggy style transportation system that takes you to and from anywhere in the complex. Our room was immaculate and fresh. It was also very large, had a king size 4 poster bed, lounge area and a whirlpool bath. We stayed for 10 nights, were entitled to 10 Ala carte dinners, from a choice of 16 restaurants across 5 of the 7 hotels. Our favourite was M.E.A.T., situated at the Luxury Ambar. The rib-eye steak was absolutely wonderful. We chose to eat in 10 different Ala carte restaurants and the quality ranged from very good to excellent. Each hotel also has its own buffet restaurant. The beach was cleaned and swept daily and is picture post card beautiful. The water was warm and inviting. Note that Punta Cana is actually facing the Atlantic Ocean as opposed to the Caribbean Sea, not that that mattered. We didn’t use the pool facilities too much as we prefer the beach. However the pool area was extremely pleasant when we did use it. The staff are generally lovely, friendly, welcoming people as were those we met outside the hotel on excursions etc. We did 3 trips; a full day to Sanoa Island, half day trip to Monkey Adventure World and a half day buggy tour through the countryside, which also involved a wonderful swim in a cave and a short stop at Macau beach. We booked all three through the guy on the excursion desk in the hotel lobby and the prices were pretty good and comparable to those on Tripadvisor, Viator, TUI and the sellers on the beach. All three were great value and a lot of fun. Just a few negatives which hopefully the hotel management will pick up and act upon: 1.) guests continually ‘reserve’ sun beds by placing their towels etc on them. Some get up at 5am to do so but don’t actually use them until the afternoon! This was an issue both by the pool and beach. There are signs requesting people don’t do this but they are ignored and management do nothing to enforce it. 2.) it was not uncommon to get your drinks served in plastic tumblers. This is of course essential by the pool and on the beach, but not in the lobby bar of a five star hotel. I like to drink my cocktail or beer out of a proper glass and we didn’t always get this. By the way, if you like to drink your cocktail/long drink through a straw, you’ll need to bring your own as there aren’t any at the hotels. 3.) Although the grounds in the complex and front entrances are immaculately maintained, once outside, the streets and highways are full of litter, which is most unsightly I have to say. I don’t understand why the hotel chains and local authorities can’t work together in addressing this problem. I accept that all three of those negative comments also apply to many other destinations I have visited so it isn’t a direct criticism of the Dominican Republic. I also emailed ahead to advise that it was my wife’s 60th birthday on our day of arrival and requested the possibility of a small celebration cake. Unfortunately they didn’t provide one (I would have been happy to pay for it). We saw many doors decorated with ‘Happy Birthday’ banners added by the hotel staff, but for some reason we had a banner on our door saying ‘Welcome Home’. Not a huge issue, rather amusing actually as we had never stayed there before! 🤣