Iberostar Selection Hacienda Dominicus - All Inclusive

Customer ratings & reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

13369 reviews

• 

  Amazing holiday & will return, 5*

  We are from the UK & booked 2 weeks with British airways, we were there 28 Jan - 12th February. My boyfriend had been to this hotel 20 years ago and said it was amazing so we thought we’d try it! I wondered if it would be as good as he said it was 20 years ago, but he said it was better this time! Our private minibus transfer took 50 min from the airport, I booked with Holiday Extras which was very reasonable value and they were easy to find at the airport. On arrival at the hotel our first room wasn’t good (Block 3), noisy overlooking the restaurant & broken curtain / air con! We went straight back to the reception and were moved to a gorgeous renovated room in block 7 (7219) which was amazing and right by the pool/close to beach, so definitely make sure you book a renovated room. I can’t fault the hotel - it was perfect. Everything was amazing - the food, the drinks were top brands not local, all the A La Carte restaurants were excellent and we ate in one every night - once we’d used up our allocation on the app we just went up to Concierge each day & they booked more for us. We only ate in the breakfast buffet, and had freshly cooked food on the beach for lunch. The coffee shop is top quality - Starbucks style coffees & delicious cakes - all included! They have soya milk as well. It’s open 24/7 so my boyfriend would go up there early in the morning. The clientele is French, South American, and USA. I think we were the only British people there in 2 weeks. We tipped a little, but it doesn’t seem expected, most people were not tipping & the service was still great. The resort is quite small compared to some of the huge resorts you find in Mexico & Caribbean - you can walk one end to the other in 10 min. It’s really well kept, clean, & pretty - gardeners are constantly trimming & tidying up. There are beautiful peacocks wandering around, parrots, turkeys, ducks in the pond, it was lovely!! Hardly any bugs. I didn’t use bug spray and was bitten just a couple of times, during the day. My partner wasn’t bitten at all. Also the hotel really goes to great efforts to keep pigeons away from the outside food areas / buffet - they have a women who visits with a trained Bird of Prey (Hawk) which chases all the birds away, we thought this was very effective & I’ve not seen this at other hotels. The beach is absolutely stunning, gorgeous white sand and hardly any seaweed. The beach does get very busy, whereas the pool was a lot quieter. We spent a few days at the beach but preferred the pool as it was so much quieter and easy to get a sunbed in the sun at anytime! At the beach you needed to be there by 10am to get a sunbed. Just 1 full day of rain in 2 weeks, a few showers here and there but the weather was perfect otherwise and 28-30 degrees. The gym is great & very well equipped. Very heavy weights / bench press / pull ups rig available if that’s what you want. There are lots of classes & personal training available included. I did yoga/stretch every morning, the class was the same every day and easy if you already do yoga, but it was a good stretch & worth doing. I booked a Saona island trip with TUI and this boat goes from the the hotel next door (you can walk 2 min along the beach rather than bothering with the bus transfer!) and it was an amazing day, definitely worth doing. There are a couple of improvement points for the hotel but very minor things! - Add some little tables by the pool, there’s no where really to put your drink or bag. - Allow more bookings for restaurants to be made on the app for ease. - Add a small path at the beach restaurant between tables - the waiters in the evening really struggled through the sand in their shoes with the food/drinks. - The bingo at the pool in the afternoon could be a little quieter on the microphone, it was very loud. We’ll definitely be coming back to this hotel the next time we visit Dominican Republic. 5*

  Feb 18, 2025
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  All inclusive - including severe stomach bugs that caught half the hotel guests

  I went with my family to celebrate my mother's birthday. On the second day at the hotel, we all started falling down with a really bad stomach bug. One by one, leaving none of the bad symptoms behind. All 5 down. Started hearing other people talking, pretty much every group we interacted with had people who either had been sick or were sick. All the way through, hotel staff would say "how strange you are sick" pretending nothing was wrong (at an all inclusive where everything you drink or eat is given on site). Mysteriously at the hotel shop there were selling overpriced medicine for vomits and diarrhea - coincidence? Can't say what it was but the quality of the food is definitely not 5 stars, and you can count on big plastic containers sitting outside the fridge with meat for long periods of time, local ice melting quickly (bad quality) in every glass and averagely cooked food all-around. Other than that, get ready to go to an all inclusive where they'll keep hassling you constantly to pay for things, upgrades, membership, spa, you name it and in the most intrusive way possible - we even have hotel staff standing next to us, saying no word at all, just staring at us. Beach is pretty, rooms are they've done an amazing job taking good photos of the property, gardens are beautiful but it's something about how it's being ran that makes it a no go for me. Had heard good things about Iberostar before - not sure I'd give them a second chance. Needless to say I wouldn't go back and would seriously encourage anyone to think about it twice before heading there.

  Feb 16, 2025
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  Colonial Restaurant and Juan C

  We are repeater and we love coming at Iberostar Dominicus, it never disappoints. One person that really need to be mentioned: Juan C from el Colonial restaurant. This person is beyond professional and friendly person. Hope he will receive the congratulations on his good job.

  Feb 16, 2025
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  Theft, food poisoning and ambivalent staff. NEVER AGAIN!

  Our holiday was booked to incorporate diving with Dressel Divers and a ceremony for my wife and I to celebrate our recent marriage. The group consisted of 11 persons. We experienced, the worst check-in ever – one of the rooms, for whatever reason, was not on the hotel system and the receptionist didn’t have a clue what to do. She was rude, abrupt and utterly uncommunicative. She wandered around between the front desk and the desk at the back of the reception area not having any sense of what to do. At one point she suggested that she email the office in Miami and wait for a response. At that point the time in Miami was 8.30pm! Check-in took almost 50 minutes for 6 of us (the remainder of the party arrived later) with the understanding that the missing room would be sorted the next day. It took more than a week to sort out the price for the missing room; we were asked to pay the wrong amount twice before it was finally corrected. Three of the party suffered food poisoning, which led to two of the party being unable to scuba dive resulting in 8 missed dives.The dive masters at Dressel were unsurprised and commented that dive parties often miss dives due to food poisoning at this resort. One of the party had their credit card details stolen from their wallet, which was in a pocket of a pair of trousers in their room. Basically, the trousers were searched by a member of staff who tried to use the card details to order takeaway food. They then tried to use the card to buy lingerie, twice. Thankfully, the card provider stopped the transactions. The food in the Greek restaurant was appallingly bad quality, it was inedible. The staff there had no interest in providing any sort of service. The Italian restaurant was little better. Our experience in trying to organize our wedding celebration was terrible. Our contact at the hotel was Greysi, who was uncommunicative and was either incompetent or ambivalent. We had to chase constantly to get her to respond and provide information when we requested certain things, e.g. the music to be played at the ceremony. This was incorrect when we checked two days before the event. The ‘Officiant’ at the ceremony was a young lady called Towanda. She was rude, abrupt and could not have showed less interest in her task if she had tried. She was chewing gum during the ceremony! We paid £1,730 for the ceremony, which was a complete waste of money. Overall, whomever is in charge at this hotel needs firing. The attitude of many of the staff is one of complete ambivalence to the guests. It’s almost as if the hotel is providing a service for their benefit, not for the benefit of the guests. It was not unusual for staff to start dancing to music when they were supposed to be attending to guests. Often when we would arrive at the bar to be served and the barman would walk off even though we were the only people standing there. There are many aspects of the hotel complex which are excellent, the hotel grounds were magnificent and the pool area was very nice indeed but a great many of the staff need a completely different attitude. I have written a similar review to the one above when I was sent an email from Iberostar asking for feedback on the holiday. I have heard nothing in response. I also emailed this review almost a month ago to Sabina Thienemann, the CEO of Iberostar resorts and have heard nothing. The disdain for guests goes right to the top.

  Feb 10, 2025
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  Nice hotel with pleasant staff

  Nice hotel, beautiful garden with a pond, fish, ducks and peacocks. Very pleasant and helpful staff. Simply furnished room, but everywhere is clean and tidy. Solid food, interesting themed restaurants ala carte. Clean sea and beach. We were very satisfied and will definitely come again.

  Feb 03, 2025