Why I Went Back to the Dominican Republic — On My Own Time

I inspect hotels for a living. Five hundred and counting, on more islands than I can comfortably list, and the honest truth is that very few places make me want to come back without a notebook. The Dominican Republic did. I went in September 2025 to work, my seventeenth Caribbean island, and came away so impressed that this October I went back for five nights of doing absolutely nothing: my first proper holiday in three years. When you spend your life inspecting hotels, the place you choose for your own time off says everything.

first visit, 2025: casa de campo, w punta cana and eden roc

I started at Casa de Campo Resort & Villas near La Romana, the sprawling, legendary estate built around its golf, its marina and its private villas. One night in a Premier Suite with a patio, a full tour the next morning, and I understood why families and anyone who likes space and things to do keep coming back to it.

From there, two nights at W Punta Cana in Uvero Alto: adults-only, all-inclusive, the first all-inclusive in the W portfolio, and unmistakably W in its playful, design-led way. It is the one I would send couples and groups of friends to when they want a lively, social week with the ease of everything included.

I finished with four nights at Eden Roc Cap Cana, the elegant, intimate Relais & Châteaux property inside the gated Cap Cana enclave. If Casa de Campo is about scale and the W about energy, Eden Roc is about polish, and four nights gave me time to see how deep it goes.

They had arranged a sound-healing session in a cenote, which is not something I expected to write in a Caribbean hotel review; an Italian omakase dinner, the chef cooking course by course in front of us; and a private beach barbecue at sunset. I walked the golf course and the villas, inspected the kids’ club, and then there was the spa. Heated, reclining massage beds, and hands down one of the top three massages of my life, sitting just behind the Fijian bobo massage and the four-handed massage at Ananda in the Himalayas. This is a world-class resort, and it is the stay I would build a honeymoon or a milestone anniversary around.

In between, ten site inspections in 48 hours across Punta Cana and Cap Cana: the Hyatt Ziva and Zilara, the Excellence portfolio, Secrets and Dreams, and St. Regis Cap Cana, a personal favourite. Exhausting, and exactly why I can now match a client to the right resort here with real confidence rather than a brochure.

second visit, 2026: five nights off duty

This time I arrived as a guest, not an inspector: five nights in Punta Cana at one of the leading all-inclusive properties along the coast. After three years without a proper break, five days of a long white beach, the sea a few steps from the room and nowhere at all to be, was exactly the point.

I did, inevitably, slip out for a look at one property worth knowing about. ZEL Punta Cana is the Mediterranean-styled, all-suite resort created by Meliá with Rafa Nadal, open since March 2025 on Bávaro beach and about half an hour from the airport. What sets it apart is next door: the new Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre, with five tennis courts, four padel courts and six pickleball courts, and coaching in the Nadal Academy method for adults and children alike. For a family with a tennis-mad teenager, or a couple who want their mornings on court and their afternoons on the sand, it is the most interesting new idea in Punta Cana.

the service, and the dining

Two things set the Dominican Republic apart from much of the Caribbean, and both held up on the second visit. The first is service. In every resort I inspected or stayed in, from the big all-inclusive portfolios to the Relais & Châteaux and St. Regis end of Cap Cana, the standard was consistently warm, attentive and well drilled. I cannot say that about every island (sorry!).

The second is the food. If your idea of all-inclusive is a buffet and a swim-up bar, this is where that idea gets rewritten. The better resorts run several à la carte restaurants apiece, with established chefs, proper wine lists and cooking I would happily pay for outside a hotel. Put that alongside prices that still sit below Barbados or Antigua for the equivalent room, and you have the reason the Dominican Republic is so often my answer when a client asks for the best value in the Caribbean.

how to choose your area

The single most important decision here is not the hotel but the stretch of coast. Get the area right and there will be a resort on it that suits your expectations; get it wrong and even a superb hotel will feel like the wrong trip.

my tips for the dominican republic

• Choose your area first. Cap Cana is exclusive and polished, Uvero Alto quieter and more secluded, La Romana the one for golf and villas. The hotel comes second.
• Consider a two-centre stay. A few lively nights in Bávaro or Uvero Alto, then finish quietly in Cap Cana. The contrast is half the pleasure.
• Use a good transfer company. Distances are longer than the map suggests, and a comfortable private transfer sets the tone for the whole trip.
• Fly direct. Direct flights from the UK take around nine hours, and Punta Cana airport is only twenty minutes from Bávaro and Cap Cana.
• Go between November and April. The dry season: low humidity, reliable sun, and the natural winter-sun alternative to Barbados and Antigua at a gentler price.
• Know about sargassum. The east-facing coast, Punta Cana and Bávaro included, can get sargassum seaweed washing in, and it is at its worst from August through to November. Resorts clear it daily, but if the beach is the point of your trip in those months, I would steer you away from Punta Cana and towards Miches or Samaná on the north coast instead, which are far less affected. Outside those months it is not something I would worry about.

Thinking about the Dominican Republic? Start a conversation and I’ll design it around you.