Excellence El Carmen

This was our first time to a all inclusive property and it exceeded our expectations. We were greeted by Miguel when we arrived with champagne and check in was very smooth by Ingrid.We had a excellence swim up which was perfect. We went to the spa for the 40 min hydro-therapy massage and were greeted by Eva and Ava and along with Milagros.They all did a wonderful job making us feel relaxed. David and his manager Jorge in the magna restaurant were terrific.David and Cassandra by the beach area had our chairs and drinks ready everyday.My real connection came in a strange way with a young 20yr old pool boy named Jordino who I spoke with in my broken spanish alot of days. I am hopeful his career grows with excellence el carmen and hope to see him on return. Tipping is really appreciated and not expected.Finally, forget about what you have heard about doom and gloom in punta cana and go see the wonderful people at excellence el carmen. Y ou will not be disappointed.

We arrived for a two week stay on the 23Aug / 6 September. Two couples, we had all stayed at Excellence hotels before, our first time at El Carmen, we each had our own expectations. We had booked sea view rooms, on arrival we had been upgrades to Excellence club rooms without the club benefits. Having done club and non club before we didn’t feel we were missing out. The drive up to the main door it’s beautiful, the doors open and WOW It is stunning, so beautifully designed very modern and spacious. The grounds are so well kept with plenty of greenery for such a new hotel. Our rooms in building 5 were in a great place only a few steps to the beach and all the restaurants. Love the layout of the rooms with the fantastic walk in wardrobe, fab having all our stuff out of the way. Over the first few days we had a few little problems, witch on there own were nothing but put together we’re starting to annoy us. I had a few polite words with one of the managers who arranged a meeting with us all. We explained our concerns and was reassured they would do their best to correct them. Which they did. If you have concerns about anything please tell Excellence so they can try and fix it, the staff are not mind readers, they need us to tell them if we are not happy, or having issues. The beach is beautiful with lots of sun beds and shade, there is a fab beach bar with great staff, who go out of their way to help. Also delivering drinks to your beds. It also has a good restaurant which makes fresh food while you wait, with fab ingredients for salads and nachos just to name a few. We used the pool a few times but to be honest a mixture of music and Bingo at the pool every day were not for us. Not what we expected from a 5 star resort. Chez Isabelle is amazing beautiful design and fantastic service and food. The grill had a more relaxed ambiance and fab food. In fact we tried all the restaurants and loved most of them. We had a crazy night in the disco and drank a little to much lol, but that was easy done with the fab bar man, Francisco he’s a star. The next day we spent a few hours at the spa. It was so nice and the massage with the hot stones was so relaxing, just what we needed after the disco. We like to thank all the staff for all their hard work, from the gardeners up to the management team. In fact most of the staff were fantastic, one or two were a little slow. Not sure if that was the language barrier or they were new and not really confident at their jobs, I think it was a mixture of both. We had such a good time we were packing to go home before we were ready. A sign of a great holiday. Will we go back, Yes in a heartbeat 💗 We are looking at next year already. If you are thinking of going here on holiday, but put off because of all the rumours going around. Go and have a fantastic holiday here. We did and don’t regret it. We would like to give a special Thank you to IVAN and Jose who went the extra mile to make our stay perfect. Veronica and Dave.

Having stayed at other Excellence resorts we thought we knew what to expect. The resort itself is stunning but unfortunately was let let down by the lack of service we received. We booked Club Level as we usually do but found that the only difference was a seperate restuarant/lounge and a sectioned off part of the beach where the bar service was poor until the last day or so. The resort boasted to have 12 restaurants but 3 or 4 of them were shut on a nightly basis. The Piano Bar didn't open at all during our stay. We usually find that one restaurant is closed each night but not as many as here. On complaining we were told the resort was only 50% full as the Americans were staying away from Dominican Republic. We paid good money for our holiday and didn't expect a inferior service just because there were fewer Americans there.