Catalonia La Romana

We went with my wife and two kids for a 4 days Thanksgiving getaway from NYC. It is perfect for families and everything is really convenient and effortless. The beach is astonishingly beautiful. The pool wide and clean. The staff friendly and the room clean and comfortable. The restaurants are OK, and nothing more than OK, but good enough for not having complaints about the food at all. As a Catalan myself, I appreciated the details of having some Catalonia specialties in the menu such as coca de recapte or bread with tomato. We will repeat!

The resort has a great beach. Nice sand, no rocks, and blue water. If you are here for only the beach, Catalonia La Romana is good. There are better values on the same beach. Catalonia La Romana will try to get you to upgrade to their Privileged rooms. This includes coffee, restocked mini bar with soft drinks, and a little nicer room. My experience was, we received a free Privileged upgrade due to no choice rooms. Nice, but it did not include any of the upgrades I’ve listed. I had to go to guest services to have the water replenished in the mini bar. Being in the Caribbean and told water is available at the bar and not in the room by the front desk, is not a pleasant experience. Guest Services did correct this issue but it should never have happened. Overall, the service staff is great. Bartenders, hostesses, and morning omelet cook were great. Always with a smile and did their best to understand English. Their English is better than my Spanish and we did communicate at an acceptable level. My wife and I did have a nice vacation but would have liked more general services for our money. Too much area on the beach is reserved for their Privileged and Exclusive individuals.

first off, if you speak english once you get past the front desk be prepared to use sign language. I don't think I dealt with more than 5 workers who spoke English. as far as other tourist out of around 400 I only ran into 2 who spoke English. my main dissatisfaction was with the room. first off as soon as you enter the room there are 2 closets in hall with folding doors, buth were stuck open and would not close. 2nd, toilet wouldn't flush because someone shut valve off because it would not stop running but it was fixed in a timely matter. 3rd, on 2nd night our AC would not cool but we were told that's as cold as units get so we sweated all night. luckily the next 4 nights it worked correctly. 4th, on the 3rd night we found out our patio door would not lock so we called front desk. a couple hours later they sent a maintenance man who didn't speak English so we went thru the motions to show him problem and he left never to come back. 5th night topped it off. at 2 AM our power went off and air stopped working and we woke up to hearing a commotion outside. when we looked out there were a ton of people with kids wearing robes all leaving but since they spoke another language we had no idea what was going on. turns out they were all told to go somewhere but no one told us anything. we finally saw a security guard with a flashlight and I yelled whats going on with my hands up. he didn't speak English so he made a slashing movement on his throat to say power was out. luckily we were packed the night before so we didn't have to do it in the dark. as far as food goes it was pretty good. the beaches were great. we paid an extra 150 dollars for an upgraded room with a fridge and ironing board but when we went to beach on first day we sat in a black lounge chair and were quickly told we can only use the white ones and had to use beach farther down. it was very humiliating but those rooms are another 250 dollars. on a 1 to 10 I would rate it a 5 if my room didn't have all the problems. maybe you will be luckier.

The resort was good but customer service was something to be desired. Maybe because all reception personnel was very young with no customer relations experience. I was very dessapointed or maybe expected to much from this trip. I had been in many resorts and cannot help but compare and this one will go in the bottom of my list. In the other hand the beach was nice and clean the same with the pool. The entertainment crew was outstanding and courteous. I heard a few people complaining about customer service and the food. I would not be coming back or recommend this resort to anyone.