Ifa Villas Bavaro was a wonderfull week in paradise ! The Hotel was beautifull and the staff were all very pleasent and friendly. This was my family's first vacation to Punta Cana and we plan to return to Ifa Villas next year but will go for two weeks insted of one. Ifa's beach area was beautiful and located on either side of our beach were flea markets where bartering for treasures to bring home was fun and an experience that we won't soon forget.
Anna who works at the pizza bar located at the central pool , was a very lovley women who took a shinning to my 6 yr. old son and blew kisses to him every day and made sure that he had all the ice cream (with unbrella's) that he could eat.
We enjoyed the kids show with all the children up on stage dancing, and singing.
The buffets were good but didn't offer to much variety, when in doubt have the made to order pasta, my children's favorite!
Over all we didn't want to leave when the week was up, we miss the sun and sand already and can't wait to return next year!

We had originally reserved two rooms due to the fact that we had 5 travelers. A day later the 5th traveler dropped out and we no longer needed the 2nd room. We called hotels.com and requested that we change our reservation to one room with four people in it. They said we shouldn’t cancel our reservation but they would call the hotel and tell them we would have a fourth member attending and told us it would be an extra $74 a night. We called the hotel looking for a shuttle service from the airport but they didn’t provide one, thus made it confusing when departing the airport.

Once we finally arrived to the hotel we embarked a mayhem of people standing around the entire hotel counter trying to do a series of requests all at the same time with the same receptionist. Once the receptionist attended my family she did not understand that we had a fourth member with us. She kept telling me no problem and handing me three of the hotel wristbands and three towel cards and two door openers. I kept explaining to her no we have a fourth person in both English and in Spanish. FINALLY she understood that the fourth person was with us and then sent me to yet another person. I waited in that line again to then be told that the rate is $88 a night per extra person. I told them that hotels.com had spoken to a Jon Carlos Tieba and that he told us that it would be $74. The receptionist then proceeded to tell me that person didn’t even work there. She then told me to move over to the next guy who does the billing and charging. He then was about to ring up all four people and told me the charge would be $770. He thought we were paying for all four people. That made me furious to realize that we had paid SO MUCH more than we should have but we didn’t really have a choice because we were already charged on my American Express Gold Card form Hotels.com. We had paid over $904.75 OVER what we should have paid. So I said we have already paid for the three people which we were already charged $1,234.75 and just need the fourth person. We took the $88 a night coming up to an additional $70 for the week than it should have been. It came to a grand total of $1,674.75 It took over an hour and a forty-five minutes to check in and another fifteen minutes to get to our room. This pricing became outrageous because we could have had two rooms for a difference of $22 a night. Instead we were crammed into tight corridors in one room.

Upon getting to our room we only had two room keys. One room key was needed to keep in a holder to keep the electricity on and the air conditioner running. Two keys for the four people in the room because a tremendous hassle. It became an even more hassle when fellow room neighbors began kicking on doors for 5 minutes at a time to be let into their hotel room between the hours of 2AM and 5:30AM. We never were able to sleep well during our stay due to the banging on the doors to be let in. We were never able to go out of the hotel room comfortably without being worried who would keep the hotel key.

The size of our rooms were crammed. The beds were extremely small for two people, the shower and bathrooms were open and visible to anyone walking around in the room leaving absolutely no privacy to any of us. The bathroom was extremely small for the average person to fit into. There were never shower towels available because the cleaning service would take our dirty towels and wouldn’t leave clean towels. This then required us to call over and over again until we finally stalked down a maid to get towels from her.

On Wednesday morning I discovered a cricket in our room and was able to catch it and discard it. By the night time we discovered a spider as large as my hand crawling in the corner of our room. We quickly called the front desk and they said they would send someone over immediately. About fifteen minutes later someone showed up and bug fogged the area the spider was in and finally caught it. The bug spray in which they fumigated our room was labeled outdoor use only. This type of spray is illegal in the United States and we were forced to then sleep in this poisoned room. Leaving my younger sister and mother with an awful headache and my aunt who has asthma to have severe asthma attacks. Later that night we found a water cockroach crawling in the corner of our. From that moment on we were unable to sleep properly in the hotel room because we were so stressed out by the bug infestation and the horrible fumes in our room. This made our stay extremely stressful because we were unable to change rooms due to the fact that the hotel was already fully booked.

On a side note the hotel guest information never aided us with any tourism information; we didn’t even know where anything in the hotel was and never was able to make reservations to the restaurants on their property. This was extremely disappointing because we had to find things on our own and if I hadn’t researched a snorkeling excursion prior to departing the USA I would have never known about it. We were also NEVER able to make a reservation at one of the restaurants on the premises and never were able to eat there.



On our last full day on Thursday at the hotel I ate breakfast at the buffet. By 1pm I began to feel horrendous pains in my stomach. An hour later I began vomiting every half-hour to an hour continuously. My mother went to the front desk to notify them of the food poisoning and they acted completely non-sympathetic and non-responsive as if it was not their problem and denied any possibility of food poisoning. By 8pm that night it had turned into convulsive vomiting and diarrhea simultaneously. By midnight I was unable to bear the sickness and sharp pains any further and required emergency medical attention. The doctor arrived to our hotel room and proceeded to check my symptoms and gave me two IV injections and five other medications. She requested that I go to the hospital and that the hospital would be able to cancel my flight. I didn’t want to be stuck in a 3rd world hospital so I refused to go to the ER in the Dominican. This sickness due to the hotels poisoned food caused us to incur a $294 doctor bill.

In conclusion the service received at this hotel was horrendous.

Unless you speak fluent spanish dont stay here. We experienced
problems with our air conditioner and no one could fix it because
they couldn't understant what we were saying at the front desk!

We finally got our room changed to another one finally after freaking out. where we found the T.V. didnt work and the furniture
had no cusions. The rooms were disasterous and infested with cockroaches, crickets, and little centipede creatures but after what we went through with front desk we gave up complaining as it gets you no where there. There was a gigantic spider the size of a Trantula in the hallway out side our room not a nice experience seeing that.

The drinks there are terrible one type of beer, no bottled beer or any type of hard liqure I have ever heard of. Bacardi or anything like that $7 a drink considered Premium!

Food was good and service there was pretty good. Thank God
because with out that this Hotel is a true expensive Joke!

When we made our initial reservations with hotels.com for the IFAL Villas Resort Well our journey to the IFA Villas Bavaro Resort we had reserved two rooms due to the fact that we had 5 travelers. A day later the 5th traveler dropped out and we no longer needed the 2nd room. We called hotels.com and requested that we change our reservation to one room with four people in it. They said we shouldn’t cancel our reservation but they would call the hotel and tell them we would have a fourth member attending and told us it would be an extra $74 a night. We called the hotel looking for a shuttle service from the airport but they didn’t provide one, thus made it confusing when departing the airport.

Once we finally arrived to the hotel we embarked a mayhem of people standing around the entire hotel counter trying to do a series of requests all at the SAME TIME WITH THE SAME HOTEL RECEPTIONIST. Once the receptionist attended my family she did not understand that we had a fourth member with us. She kept telling me no problem and handing me three of the hotel wristbands and three towel cards and two door openers. I kept explaining to her no we have a fourth person in both English and in Spanish. FINALLY she understood that the fourth person was with us and then sent me to yet another person. I waited in that line again to then be told that the rate is $88 a night per extra person. I told them that hotels.com had spoken to a Jon Carlos Tieba and that he told us that it would be $74. The receptionist then proceeded to tell me that person didn’t even work there. Then he was about to ring up all four people and told me the charge would be $770. He thought we were paying for all four people. That made me furious to realize that we had paid SO MUCH more than we should have but we didn’t really have a choice. So I said we have already paid for the three people and just need the fourth person. We took the $88 a night coming up to an additional $70 for the week than it should have been. It took over an hour and a forty-five minutes to check in and another fifteen minutes to get to our room.

Upon getting to our room we only had two room keys. One room key was needed to keep in a holder to keep the electricity on and the air conditioner running. Two keys for the four people in the room because a tremendous hassle. It became an even more hassle when fellow room neighbors began kicking on doors for 5minutes at a time to be let into their hotel room between the hours of 2AM and 5:30AM. We never were able to sleep well during our stay due to the banging on the doors to be let in.

The size of our rooms were crammed. The beds were extremely small for two people, the shower and bathrooms were open and visible to anyone walking around in the room leaving absolutely no privacy to any of us. The bathroom was extremely small.

On Wednesday morning I discovered a cricket in our room and was able to catch it and discard it. By the night time we discovered a spider as large as my hand crawling in the corner of our room. We quickly called the front desk and they said they would send someone over immediately. About fifteen minutes later someone showed up and bug fogged the area the spider was in and finally caught it. Later that night we found a water cockroach. From that moment on we were unable to sleep properly in the hotel room because we were so stressed out by the bug infestation. This made our stay extremely stressful because we were unable to change rooms due to the fact that the hotel was already fully booked.

On a side note the hotel guest information never aided us with any tourism information, we didn’t even know where anything in the hotel was and never was able to make reservations to the restaurants on their property. This was extremely disappointing because we had to find things on our own and if I hadn’t researched a snorkeling excursion prior to departing the USA I would have never known about it.

On our last full day at the hotel I ate breakfast like normal. By 1pm I began to feel horrendous pains in my stomach. An hour later I began vomiting. My family members went to the front desk to notify them of the food poisoning and they acted completely non-sympathetic and non-responsive as if it was not their problem. By 8pm that night it had turned into convulsive vomiting and diarrhea simultaneously. By midnight I was unable to bear the sickness and sharp pains any further and required emergency medical attention. The doctor arrived to our hotel room and proceeded to check my symptoms and gave me two IV injections and five other medications. She requested that I go to the hospital and that the hospital would be able to cancel my flight. I didn’t want to be stuck in a 3rd world hospital so I refused to go to the ER in the Dominican. This sickness due to the hotels poisoned food caused us to incur a $294 doctor bill.

In conclusion the service received at this hotel was horrendous. It was not a vacation but rather a sleepless, non-relaxing, and remembered with horrible food poisoning experience.