Ocean El Faro - All Inclusive

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

9476 reviews

• 

  Great experience - a fabulous hotel

  We’ve just returned from our first visit to the Dominican Republic. We stayed at the ocean el faro hotel in a standard junior suite, staying all inclusive. We have had an amazing time. Room Junior suite with 2 x double beds. Huge bathroom with jacuzzi bath and separate shower. All toiletries provided and replenished daily. Tea, coffee and mini bar replenished daily with no additional cost. Fully furnished balcony. The room is very comfortable and the housekeeping team ensured everything we needed was provided. Food The buffet is lovely with everything you could want. We tended to use the buffet for breakfast and the restaurants for evening meal. The bread is all baked in site and is delicious! Restaurants Blue moon - our favorite delicious meals - the salmon and asparagus was particularly delicious!! Dolce vita - Italian, lovely meal with standard Italian dishes - this restaurant needed to be booked in the morning Route 66 - diner style burger joint! Run of the mill but a nice change from a la carte Margarita - Mexican - nice meal and some variety for spice wimps!! Steak house - nice bbq style meals with decent sized portions Mike coffee shop is amazing with delicious coffee and fabulous cakes and cookies! Their still lemonade is divine!! A real gem in the hotel! Snack bar - by the pool for something quick for lunch by the pool. The fries are lovely. Hotel The hotel is beautiful, well kept, clean and in a nice location. Pools Lovely and spacious, plenty of room for swimmers and those who like to just sit. Floats are allowed Cleaned daily Plenty of sun loungers - we did not have any issues with getting a lounger - we did. Not witness any sunbed wars!! Lazy river What an experience!!! Far from lazy! But lots of fun!! They do have floats available but in busier times it may be wise to bring your own. Beach In 2 separate parts, the initial part of the beach is rocky but beautiful to the left of the light house is a lagoon section which is calmer and suitable for swimming and paddling. I’d recommend shoes though as the rocks are sharp. I’d highly recommend getting up early one day to see the sun rise as it is spectacular from the beach! We made our way down there at 5.30 to watch it and we are so glad we did, definitely not to be missed Staff The can not do enough for you and are very helpful. We had a lovely young lady in block 8 (floor 2) for housekeeping and although she could not speak English she went out of her way to ensure we were happy and did all she’s could to communicate with us - in our opinion she is an asset to the hotel ( I wish we had got her name now!) Shop Has a good selection of clothes, snacks, souvenirs and essentials like medications etc, it’s slightly higher priced than average but I’d expect that

  Nov 02, 2025
• 

  Bad experience at Ocean El faro

  Though check in officially at 3 pm I was delayed about 30 min to get the room. I had a problem with the safe in the room and requested service at 9:45 am the person showed up at 12:30 pm to fix the safe and my morning was just wasted waiting for the service. Their technology doesn’t work if you want to book a restaurant through their app there is no way to get through. If you call from the room front desk or guest service there is no answer.

  Oct 28, 2025
• 

  Honest review.

  We have visited many Caribbean islands and this was by far the worst in terms of hotel and customer service. When we arrived we were met by a grumpy man at reception, he was unhelpful to say the least. When we kept saying that we was unaware that we had been booked into the family part of the hotel which means we were unable to use the adult only section he just kept saying that we needed to pay and extra £60 per person per night, shoved our Green wrist bands on us as walked away! When we arrived at our room it smelt moldy and felt damp. There's also a smell of sewage in the bathroom every morning until we flushed the toilet and turned the taps on in the sinks. The furniture needs updating and the decor needs serious attention. We were told that the hotel was built in 10 months which you can tell from the building work in the rooms. We were correct in thinking that the room was smelt moldy as there was a mushroom growing out of the wall in the toilet. The whole room was just not clean enough and this made me feel very uncomfortable for the whole trip. The food was not the best, the buffet was ok but never ‘wow, that was really nice’ the steak house was nice and so was the Italian restaurant. Route 66 was serving food from the Mexican restaurant which was terrible! The waitress in route 66 was the worst we had, it took her maybe 15 minutes to serve us and when she did that when we found out that they were serving from the Mexican menu. The restaurants also keep you waiting outside for 5/10 minutes even though you have booked and the restaurants are never full, this is really uncomfortable in 29 degree humid heat. There’s also not much choice when it comes to snacks during the day. There’s 1 hut that you can get hotdogs and burgers from and there the buffet but nothing else unless you want cake and coffee. I think this is where most people ended up as the queue was always really long. The pools that we were allowed in were clean. The pool bars don’t open until 10 so if you want even water you can’t get it until then. The drinks are majorly watered down to the point where there’s not much point in drinking them as they are just flavored sugar water! Try and escape the time share talk. They do not leave you alone until you go saying that ‘we don’t get a wage we only get commission when you say that we have sent you’ this is obviously not the case, this is their job as the same men are always there by the buffet waiting to scoop you up and pressure you into going for a 20 minute chat that at least turns into an hour. We only got away because I said that I had a belly ache! The beach is nice, we didn’t spend that much time there. My main thing was the food and the room and on those points I wouldn’t go back there.

  Oct 27, 2025
• 

  Take the advice or take the loss

  Pro’s: Staff friendly and Attentive Con’s: Everything Else Coming from a hospitality background working as a General Manager and Hotel Manager across multiple brands means that I do my thorough research into any hotel I stay at. This hotel is the prime example of an extremely overpriced 3 star experience. Primarily let me start on the rooms. In our party we had 2 rooms and both came with major flaws showing that no supervisor had signed off the room as being clean for the check in. In my room (8225) there was a broken TV, Stained Bedding, Torn Headboard and a rusted fridge. In our second room (8226) the front door was split from top to bottom meaning that the door would not close, there was a severe damp smell and we were missing the swing which was advertised in the room specifications. On top of this, both safes in our rooms were faulty and required them to be swapped out. Credit due where it’s due, we contacted the Guest Service Supervisor, and he immediately got to work with resolving these issues, however most of these issues should not have occurred if the correct housekeeping checks were completed prior to check in. Secondly, food and beverage… where to start on this one. Never in my life have I refused someone a minor request of asking for BBQ sauce or Chips (fries). This is the first “claimed” 5* resort which has not offered chips in their buffet selection. For a hotel that caters for not only the Latin American population but also the British and other European countries, the lack of comfort food for those fussy eaters is definitely a miss in the buffet. The route 66 restaurant is generally a safe bet for food, so I would personally rely on this more than the buffet. The steakhouse: Now when we asked for a small pot of BBQ sauce, to then be told no we don’t do that is unacceptable from a 5* property. A very small ask and a lack of customer service is clearly visible in these areas. Finally, understandably when writing this review we are current guests in the hotel and we were affected by the Hurricane Melissa and its adverse weather. However the adverse weather is not an excuse to not do any daytime entertainment. there is sufficient space and time to organise entertainment in the public areas such as the reception and theatre however in my first 4 days at this property I have not seen a single activity other than one 30 minute match of water volleyball. To think that we were on the verge of planning a second holiday here with extended family and friends, estimated to cost about £17,000, this experience has truly shown to us that we’ve dodged a bullet by waiting until we return home. For all English, American and Canadian tourists, Save your money go elsewhere, may I recommend a RIU, Melia or Bahia Principe.

  Oct 25, 2025
• 

  Low quality food

  I am at present staying in this hotel with my husband and son .I don't usually write bad reviews but in this occasion I think it's important to let people know. The hotel itself its beautiful we had some issues with our rooms on arrival and Angel from guest relations put things right straight away my issue with this hotel its the food I am not at fussy eater but the restaurants and buffet are simple awful. I can eat almost anything but straight away I will tell you that this hotel doesn't cater for Europen guests .there is so much rice beans and cream potatoes one person can eat .the food is of very low quality I asked for chips and the answer was go to the burger place by the pool you can get them there .I had never had this issue specially as there is many children in the hotel and I am not asking for anything out of the ordinary. The evening buffet on our first night was also awful the food was cold and considering the size of this hotel it looked more like a staff canteen than a hotel restaurant facility. We went to the steak house on the second night and asked for barbecue sauce and it was met with no we don't have it .this is not the response I expect. Last night route 66 restaurant was not better the food was dry and cold we went early so I believed it was cooked hours in advance. My advice is if you are looking for the food standard provided in Europe avoid this hotel.

  Oct 25, 2025