Excellence El Carmen

We had a wonderful time at our stay at Excellence Punta Cana. Our second time and still was amazing to us The staff is remarkably hard workers, super friendly & makes you feel welcome & like family.. Philipe Paulino left our room amazing Adelso Garcia on lobster restaurant Milagros on spa .victor on the martini bar Brigida on the beach ..José ..Aurelio and they all are amazing The restaurants are all very good and within walking distance of rooms. The beach, pool, nightly shows & services they offer are all wonderful...We will be back again

So far, the winner at this resort are the rooms, they are HUGE! We are staying in the terrace suite with a plunge pool and it is actually pretty spectacular. The room is modern, very clean and well appointed. The terrace/balcony is also big, has two day beds and a nice sized plunge pool. From our balcony we can see more than half of the entire resort and can see the ocean! The food has been... good. On a 1 to 10 scale we would give them a 7. Sadly, the best food has been at the Kitchen Table which is their buffet hall style restaurant. The variety of fresh food, meats, fish, cheeses, and more has been very good. However we have yet to find a better-than-just-good meal at any of the other restaurants. Our favorite thus far has been Basmati... hope you like Indian food like we do. The couple of casual dining areas offer mediocre hamburgers, hotdogs, tacos and nachos with cheese from a can. 🙁 Another challenge for this property is the staff. The service-level across-the-board could also be qualified as just good. In our opinion, a lot of it may stem from the simple response you will get by asking anyone “how are you?“. The mandatory response is “excelente!” (I know... shocker). It comes across so insincere that I think it permeates across the attitude of the staff. The vast majority of them are just doing a job and do not appear to genuinely care if you are really happy with your stay. One day I spent 10 minutes just trying to find towels around the mail pool. It was 3pm and there was not a fresh towel to be found. Further, you rarely see anyone working around the pool with the exception of the one or two girls delivering drinks. When I finally did find someone at the beachside restaurant (the one service cheese from a can), she did go and bring us two towels. I kindly thanked her but then tried to explain that we were not the only ones looking for towels in that rather than getting me two towels it would’ve been more helpful had she gone and found a manager or someone who could restock the towels around the pool. One more area of mediocrity is the entertainment. While we only attended one show, we left after just 20 minutes as the dancers and singer were just that bad. Also, there is an overall lack of activity/entertainment each day. Sure, they have the resort-customary pool bingo and beach volleyball every afternoon, but there are almost no unique activities on the property. For example; at Secrets in Maroma Beach, Mexico, one evening there was an art show where you could buy some local art. Another evening there were wine tastings and other unique things to do. Thus far, we haven’t found anything like that here. So in conclusion, our initial impression of this brand of all-inclusive resort is mediocre to fair... we will not likely return. *** Special Note: We are here in May 2019 and there is a massive construction project right next-door to this property. So just about all day long, every single day, you will endure the noise of large trucks, bulldozers, cranes and other large construction equipment while they construct whatever it is they are doing right next door. ***