This is a beautiful resort and the food is above average for an all inclusive. Our vacation, however, did have some problems. As many other reviewers have said, our reservation was mixed up. Despite calling and verifying the day before we arrived, when we arrived we were told that we were not booked at the Barcelo Bavaro Beach but at another hotel up the road. It was a twenty minute and $22 taxi ride away. That didn't cut it for us since, besides verifying it before we left home, we had all of our excursions set up to pick up at this hotel. Anyway, we ended up getting a room but the front desk was not sympathetic and pretended not to speak english.

Another day, I needed assistance in calling one of our tours. Needless to say, the front desk did not help and would not make the call for me. I ended up doing it myself and - luckily - the tour operator had someone that spoke english who answered the phone.

I would stay here again but, keep in mind that the service is not as friendly as others I have seen. You should speak Spanish to go here. Many of the wokers did not speak english and I think we would have gotten better service if we spoke their language. I think they avoided talking to us at all.

The rooms are clean. They have tile floor and have that carribean smell that most hotels have in the humid carribean.

The food was great and the beaches were beautiful.

I caution you, though, to schedule your tours in advance as we found it almost impossible to get a tour operator even though they were supposed to be stationed at the hotel. Also, note that the Dominican Republic seems to operate on its own time table. Our taxi - scheduled for 11:00 - showed up at 12:00. Our tour for 6:30 a.m. showed up after 7:00 and our bus to the local zoo for 2:00 showed up at 2:45. As long as you know this going in, it won't stress you out.

The BEACH / CARIBE resorts are Great !!! they are a solid 4 star and the beach is wonderful. The food is good, but as far as the a la carte restaurants are concerned the only one we enjoyed was the steak house, so we went 3 times. We ordered the meat sampler platter for 2 and shared it.

Rolling Black outs - Be aware that it is farely comon for there to be power outages while you are there, there is not enough energy to support the whole island so they share power and occasionally at night the power will go off. The resort is very well exuiped and versed in dealing with this though and the pull out back up ambiance right away. The only inconvenience is the disco is not open. We used this oportunity to share a romantic candle lit dinner and get to know some of our neighbours in the resort.

Excursions - We did the day trip to Saona which is an un inhabited island , getting there was half the fun, a great excursion all round.

I stayed at this hotel/resort for 2 weeks and found it to be average in all aspects. It should be noted that the Barcelo Beach Resort is currently rebuilding 4 of the 5 buildings. Although they have a large fence around the construction site to reduce dust/dirt, this does not reduce the noise of the construction project. The construction project will not be completed until December 2008.
The noise of the jack hammers breaking concreate goes on from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day, 7 days a week. The construction firm is under a strict deadline. Therefore there are very few people at this location due to the fact that buiklding 5 only has 200 rooms. It would be much better to stay at the Barcelo Bavaro Casino or Golf Resort which is located 1 block away within the same compound. Although many people were complaining about the noise, there was nothing that the barcelo staff could do as often the other hotels (Casino, Golf, Caribe, Palace) were full.
Also, it sould be noted that in June & July 2008 there will be several thousand Cuban-American residents from Flordia who get a special price and the resort is completely CRAZY with everyone drunk due to all-inclusive package and free booze.
This is not a good time to go if you are looking for rest and relaxation. It is GREAT time to go if you like to drink from 10 a.m. until 5 a.m. with crazy party people. Also, take your own TUMS, Roid Aids, sun screen, sun lotion, etc. Everything is 4x more expensive than in the USA due to resort prices.

spent 5 days 4 nights in this hotel.

pro:
beach is nice.
variety of soda , water provided in the hotel room.

con:
room smells like a basement.

other than swimming, there is no other water sport activities on site, you need to take a shuttle to another hotel in order to get those sort of thing. Even snorkeling causes extra $$$.

I know at least 4 people in my group gets either upset stomach or diarrhea after eating foods there.

Don't order grilled lobster, it is mushy.

Most waiter / waitress does not speak English.

If you sleep early, don't take any room from block 3. It is right behind a band, which sings every night until 11:30pm.