Viva Dominicus is a beautiful hotel: impressive open-air reception, lush gardens, beautiful beach and nice distribution of the hotel where you can walk always on a beach walk.

Run by Italians, the actual employees are not Italian but mostly Dominican and are slow and lazy to work and help you when you need them, sad to say because I love the people in central-south America.

Upon arrival, after more than 15 hours travelling, we spent almost 1 hour at the reception because they said that they had given our room to somebody else; when we finally arrived at our room, we found sand and hair on the floor and a dirty bathroom.
I used the phone to call reception to send someone to clean but didn't come. One of the 2 keys was not the key for the room, we called a 2nd time and we took advantage to tell them that the terrace room was broken and that mosquitos were going to eat us alive. After another half hour they sent someone to see the problem of the key, he never came back with the 2nd key....but took advantage to flirt with us and ask if we had boyfriends...
So the first night was a little frustating, the least to say....

The food is quite good, good variety, quality average, but the place is great, you have your meals looking directly on the beach and the seaside. There are 3 other restaurants but you have to be in the superior area/room to be able to eat there, otherwise you have to pay....

There are beautiful beds with "roofs" very close to the water which makes it very romantic. The water is crystal clear and always warm. You can see some fishes while snorkeling.

The problem is that 95% of clients are Italian, so there is no international atmosphere so people don't mingle, don't try to chat or make friends, everyone stayed in their little group, so I almost felt like in Milano, and not in a warm open country. Pity!

The place is far from any place where you can go to sight see or mingle with the locals. 30Km the nearest village! la Romana)and there is nothing to do/see there, so you are obliged to stay at the hotel and see the same faces every single day, so no room for a real get in touch with the genuine character of the people of the country, I felt like in a Italian buble!

Then, the beach is great but you cannot relax due to the constant music and the entertainers yelling from the swimming pool with microfones, even at the end of the beach you still hear the yelling and the techno music! It doesn't fit with the paradise look!

The place is beutiful, but you will not be able to appreciate it all due to other factors.....

First let me say that this resort is 22 years old and really shows it. This is the Motel 6 of high-end resorts and should only be considered if you are ready to overlook a lot of nasty stuff. We purchased this trip through Wannado vacations on Ebay. It was a good deal at $85 per person per night. You have to take a 90 minute vacation club lecture but this was not unpleasant (but a VERY hard sell!). As for the resort itself? Good and Bad. We'll start with the good:

LOBBY/STAFF: Gorgeous. The front desk staff, and all the resort workers were wonderful. They really seemed to like their job and almost all spoke some kind of English. The architecture was amazing and finishes glamorous. Really, the whole feel of the place was expensive.....until you got to your room that is. That's were the luxury ended.

BEACH: Gorgeous. We really enjoyed the 'Beach' side of this resort which was much like Negril is some areas. You could walk out about 100 yards and still touch the powdery white sand underfoot. Waves were light depending on the time of day and weather. Plenty of shade. Chaise lounge chairs were old but still reasonable. Don't count on a cocktail waitress: get your own. Music is not too loud. Really, pretty pleasant.

FOOD: Wonderful. We love fish and it was fresh and tasty every day. Salad bars had arugula and waiters served coffee wine and beer. Surprisingly, the island's own beer El Presadente was excellent and the house wines passable ....but I'm no expert. We ate at the Italian, Asian and Continental restaurants. The Continental was really wonderful but only because it was out on the pier under a free-form tent. All the foods in these places were little better than the buffet and if you can't get a reservation, hey- don't sweat the small stuff. Poolside grille had espresso and lots of cold side dishes that even the most picky vegetarian would love. Drinks were average. Pina Colada's were watery and every liquor tasted flat. They had some call liquors way back out of sight but nothing really nice.

POOL: This COULD have been nice if not for all the kids. This (and all the DR resorts) sell passes to the locals who flood the place on weekends. In one room we saw 6 children and 3 adults. Needless to say the pool gets extremely crowded with screaming children and nonplus parents paying absolutely no attention to them. I saw one small DR child (maybe 6) with his bathing suit down around his knees peeing into the hedge at poolside.....right in front of everybody. No thanks! I'll stick to the ocean. Too bad because the chaises were really nice there.

ROOMS: Ugh! ASK FOR A NON-SMOKING ROOM if you have any olfactory senses left in your brain. They are to the right of the resort if you are looking out towards the water. And even these rooms were not up to Motel 6 standards. Everything that couldn't be nailed down was gone. The toilet leaked after you flushed and a huge roach crawled out of our sink drain (we closed the drain from then on). If you forget about the 'don't drink the water' advice they give you when you check in, don't worry. There is a big red sticker on the mirror in front of the sink to remind you. If you forget that you can't walk through glass, don't worry. There are big red stickers right in the middle of your view out the sliders to remind you. If you don't like sleeping of concrete you can request extra bedspreads and double them up under the base sheet. Nothing you can do about the pillows except bring your own. Furniture was old and ugly. TV got a few US channels but all were fuzzy.

SPORTS: Don't book through the resort. Go into Beyahibe (about 8 minute taxi ride) and deal with the locals. They will bargain with you and you can save as much as half the price off what the resort wants. We went Scuba Fun and dove the St. George Wreck. This was absolutely amazing and not to be missed. I don't know about any of the resort programs. The animation crew approached us and seemed upbeat but we just wanted to relax.

That's it. Hope all this helps you make a decision. If you go, definitely buy through Ebay and take the lecture. It was a big savings.

We have been to the Carribbean and Mexico over 25 times and many times to all inclusive resorts. The past three years we have chosen three different resorts in LaRomana D.R. because the airport is small and 20 minutes from the resorts, the beaches are excellent and the quality of the resorts is excellent.

Iberostar - 2006
Casa Del Mar - 2007
Viva Dominicus Palace - 2008

The Iberostar has the highest quality of rooms and common areas and their food and restaurants were very good (need reservations). The beach was not as good as the others and not as many shaded (palms) areas as the others. I noticed on a walk through this year that there was a distinct stagnant water smell between the pool and the beach. There is no snorkelling off the beach. There is a nice lunch place near the beach so you don't have to go all the way to the buffet. The overall cleanliness was top notch and service was very good.

The Casa Del Mar initially gave us the worst room we have ever been in in all our trips. A couple of trips to the front desk the next morning solved the problem and the room we moved to was delightful. The beach was the best of the three with lots of shade, a variety of views and some quite nice, shallow snorkelling off the rocky end of the beach. Food and restaurants were excellent and no reservations were required (I hope this has not changed). There was a delightful restaurant / lunch cafe at the end of the beach (also the threatre area) and a pier where you could book a private dinner on the water. Once a week they put on a huge dinner buffett on the beach with many food stations for and lots of choices it really looked great.

The Viva Wyndham Dominicus Palace (a twin resort with the Dominicus Beach) is 'next door' to the Iberostar on the same beach. It is highly favoured by Europeans, especially Italians and French. I only heard one or two english conversations during our week which we enjoyed as it felt like we were on a beach in Italy. A bonus was that the resort catered to those with espresso and capuccino tastes and the pool bar/cafe served real good coffee and pastery from early morning until late night. The Palace is slightly upscale from the Beach and seems a lot less busy, noisey and crowded. The lobby of the Beach is very disappointing in comparison the the elegant look of the Palace. The Beach side is a lot bigger and appeared to have quite a few 'time shares'. There were sales folks on the paths who were a little bothersome.

The Palace had a great beach. Lots of Palapas and there always appeared to be dozens, if not hundreds. of empty loungers - shaded and sunny. The best palapas where usually taken by 7:30am, but there were plenty of good spots. We liked the fact that the activities staff was not bothersome or over friendly althought all of there music was pounding techno beats which can be a little tiresome. There was some snorkelling off the beach, not very interesting, but plenty of colourful little fish.

The room was simple, clean, quiet and the service was good (TV and shower fixed within four hours). The food was good (if you couldn't find some tasty things at the buffet you must be a pain to cook for at home). Restaurants needed booking, but we tried a different one each night - the Viva Cafe and the Grill both on the beach were delightful. Mexican and Italian were good as well.

Overall the Palace was very good value for the money. We booked last minute, but got a good room and no worries during the whole trip. The Iberostar and Casa Del Mar were several hundred dollars more expensive and were probably only half a star better. I would NOT go the the Beach (too frantic) but I would recommend the Palace.

We were in the Dominican Republic from Feb. 16-23. It was our second trip and it was fantastic. Last year we stayed at the Dominicus Beach and this year at the Palace. The Palace is much quieter and just a walk away from everything going on at the beach. We took our son and daughter this year and went with another couple and their daughters. Everyone found things to do and be entertained. The weather and the beach were fantastic. The people were very polite and extremely accomodating. If we asked for something we got it. The food was great. We tried Bambu this year and were very impressed. The dive shop had very skilled, helpful instructors. We will definitely be back.