Catalonia Gran Dominicus Rating: 3.5 Pearls

La Romana, Dominican Republic

Guests dancing at El Merenguero

Originally a set of private time-shares managed by an Italian company, Catalonia Gran Dominicus was reopened a few years ago as part of the Spanish-owned Catalonia chain of resorts; the largely Italian clientele (50%) still remains. Spanish-style pastel villas quickly give way to a buffet restaurant with its own focaccia station and event bulletin boards with Italian translations at the top.

Despite its 400-plus rooms, this resort has an intimate feel. Guests meet and remeet each other every day around the pool, buffet, and main bar. After a few days, it’s easy to recognize the people from the buffet last night or the group from the beach the other day. After dinner everyone knows where the action is -- at the main bar, conveniently located smack in the center of the resort. Young couples (mostly Canadian and Italian) join packs of middle-aged parents to salsa around the bar and sip cappuccinos and top-notch mojitos. Guests I talked with by and large enjoyed their stay, and Catalonia Gran Dominicus is ranked No. 1 among the 11 La Romana resorts on TripAdvisor.

This easygoing resort is mostly couples and families; very few singles party here. By day, parents gravitate around the shallow end of the main pool where their infants can wade safely, or they run around filming their kids playing soccer in the sand. By night, attractive young women in miniskirts and heels walk on the arm of their equally good-looking boyfriends (not surprisingly, the high Italian population tends to make this resort a little sexier than most hotels in the D.R.). The pairing-off gives the resort a mellow feel, almost too mellow for the group of young, single women I met, who had clearly wandered into the wrong place. The language barrier between the Italian contingent and the second largest group, Canadians, means that getting to know the few singles here can be difficult.

Cocktail server at El Taino

Service at Catalonia was very friendly and beyond helpful. On arrival, the check-in receptionist went out of her way trying to get me a reservation at any of the à la cartes. When I accidentally locked myself out of my room, one of the housekeeping staff immediately ran down to let me in -- and later helped me fill out the oddly confusing laundry form. When I needed water, all it took was a call down to reception and three small bottles of water came to my door in about a half hour.

The guests I interviewed had only good words for the entertainment staff. The staff members try to engage guests in dancing and beachside activities throughout the day, but they never get pushy (unlike some of the staff at rowdier all-inclusives).

However, like many all-inclusives, it can be difficult to get reservations at any of the à la carte restaurants. Bookings can only be made between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. When I arrived at Guest Services around 3 p.m., every restaurant was booked solid for the entire week.

View on a Larger Map

Catalonia Gran Dominicus is on the beaches of Bayahibe, a former fishing village close to La Romana, in the southeast of the Dominican Republic. It is one of a cluster of six all-inclusives along the resort-laden street of Dominicus Americanus, and right next door to Iberostar Hacienda Dominicus (another megaresort). Two big gift shops are outside the resort, but short of this, the street just serves as a connection between the all-inclusives.

Until the 1990s, Bayahibe was just a little fishing town where locals from La Romana and nearby villages caught crabs on the beach. Since then, a deluge of development has hit the area, with six megaresorts cropping up in recent years. Still, its small-scale nature is the draw: It's not as insanely jam-packed with tourists like Punta Cana.

There’s not much in the town itself, but it’s a good outpost for access to the beaches, caves, and dive sites of Parque Nacional del Este. Plus, the beaches are calm and beautiful. A 10-minute drive from the resort takes you to the gorgeous Altos de Chavon, an exact replica of a 16th-century Italian village with beautiful views of the Chavon River.

Though most guests fly into La Romana airport (which doesn’t have direct, international flights) only 30 minutes away, the resort is 1.5 hours from Punta Cana International Airport and about two hours from Las Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo. Both taxi rides should cost between $100 and $120 each way.

Lively clear-water beach

This stretch of Bayahibe has beautifully clear water that’s ideal for snorkeling.Only a bit of sediment gets stirred up when the waves hit the shore – there's no debris or algae anywhere. I spoke to Helene Marcotte and Mathiue Theriault, a young couple from Montreal who particularly enjoyed the opportunity to snorkel right off the shore and look at the fish between the enormous underwater vases the resort planted to encourage aquatic life.

The beach stretches far back to include a volleyball court and mini soccer field, but the sands are kept trash-free. Lounge chairs were a little hard to come by around the beach, and there could have been a few more bathrooms nearby. The one beach bar doesn’t have toilets, nor does the snack bar on the beach. For the nearest bathroom, guests have to leave the beach area and walk past the El Patio restaurant, a few minutes away.

Water sports are handled through the on-site Pro Marine Diving Center. All nonmotorized sports are included, like a one-hour catamaran rental if a guest knows how to use it (it's a $20 lesson if he doesn't), a one-hour kayak rental, and a one-hour rental of snorkeling gear (with a $30 deposit). Thanks to a cool setup at one part of the beach (the underground vases for fish to swim in and around), there actually is a bit to see right off the beach. Scuba-diving lessons are given for free by the pool from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; they last about 10 to 20 minutes.

Optional trips are available at an additional cost, including a half -day excursion to Catalina Island and a half-day trip to the River Chavon. Guests can also participate in sports such as banana-boating, deep-sea fishing, parasailing, and waterskiing. Diving lessons and PADI certification are also available; prices vary depending on experience, number of dives, and whether the guest has his own equipment or needs to rent.

Terrace at the Villa Room

The Catalonia Gran Dominicus has 400 standard rooms, six basic suites, and five honeymoon suites. The standard rooms, all with king-size or a pair of full-size beds, are separated into 16 villas named after provinces and islands in the Dominican Republic. Suites offer a separate living area and have a garden view from the top floor, but this is pretty much the only difference; upgrades aren’t worth the extra cash.

The real separation at Gran Dominicus is between the recently renovated rooms in the Romana villa and the rest of the rooms that haven’t been renovated in a while. If booking a stay here, request a room in the most recently redone Romana villa, which doesn’t cost extra. Romana's new marble bathrooms with enormous standing showers make a big difference. Good to know, as most complaints I heard about the resort stemmed from the older rooms in the other 15 villas, where the paint in the bathrooms was chipped off and the grout needed redoing.

I found the room to be well-sized, with a huge bed and ample closet space, but the bathrooms were in need of renovation. The king-size beds are fitted with basic white sheets and pillowcases and a thin cotton blanket. This is not the world's thickest mattress -- it felt just a few inches thick versus the hefty pillowtop-plus-Serta combo one has come to expect in upscale domestic hotels -- but it's adequate. For a better bed, check out Dreams.

The room can feel a little muggy, and the lack of windows in the bathroom area probably doesn't help. The air conditioner cools the room well, but the thermostat setting doesn't seem to matter; it pretty much has three settings (low, medium, and high), regardless of what temperature it is set to.

Sizable Panasonic flat-screen TVs have been added to every room. They sit on the large white desk, which still has plenty of room left to spread out travel gear and a laptop. While most of the channels tend to look grainy on the satellite service, some English-speaking channels did get decent reception during my visit: BBC World News, Fox News, and CBS. The Spanish Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and MTV also come in nicely, a plus for kids. There are no pay-per-view movies.

The bathrooms are cute, but in most of them there’s chipped paint behind the sink and the grout around the toilet has almost completely worn away. Each has a sink that’s hand-painted with blue flowers and green leaves -- a design echoed in the individually hand-painted tiles that line the bathroom walls. Bright kelly-green tile work in the sink countertop contrasts the blue-flowered sink. A semi-circle-shaped wall partition encloses the circular shower. The part of the shower that is not enclosed by a wall is fitted with a wraparound shower curtain. Unlike most resorts, leakage is minimal.

Beyond the sliding glass doors, all rooms have a view of the resort’s manicured grounds. Balconies are only in half the rooms and the ones on the second floors of the villas (mine was not). Sturdy wooden lounge chairs, painted a forest green, sit on light-blue tiled floors. A very cute royal-blue fence separates guests from their neighbors next door, giving an air of privacy (but not much). I stayed in the yet-to-be-renovated Saona villa. This villa is closest to the pool and beach, but like all rooms at Gran Dominicus, it’s separated from the Caribbean Sea by the restaurants and pool.

Large, zero-entry pool

Gran Dominicus has only one pool, and it's filled with children. But it's sizable and clearly meant to serve the needs of three smaller pools. On one end, there’s a net for water polo, and from here the pool extends to a central bar area (where there is table and poolside service, but no swim-up bar). Beyond this is the shallow end (most popular with families). The pool is very well-maintained, but it gets a lot of use and kids are usually splashing about in half of it. Located in a raised section next to the pool, the Jacuzzi doesn’t see much action. Like many Dominican resorts, the Catalina doesn’t turn the heater on during the day.

Wi-Fi is not actually available in the rooms, though the hotel’s Web site claims that it is. Wi-Fi (and free Wi-Fi at that) is available in the lobby, but the quality is still very poor and I had problems connecting.

Guests make use of the Internet center, which shares a building with the photo center; it's centrally located near the main bar. Use of one of the four, well-maintained computer stations, which cost $3 for 15 minutes, $5 for 30 minutes and $10 for an hour.

The Alegria Spa offers a full run of services, with a particularly broad array of massages (from $30 to $100, which is pretty cheap by resort standards). My interest was piqued by the lymphatic drainage massage ($65). Massage with four hands ($90) almost seems like too much of a good thing. Unlike many resorts, they’ll also wax your entire body for only $80.

To the left of the lobby, the sports center at Gran Dominicus includes a fitness center, an archery range, a soccer field, a basketball court, and two tennis courts. The soccer field is made of dirt, but the benches that run along the side of the field are a nice addition (especially considering the highly European crowd). This field sees considerably less use, however, than the makeshift soccer field on the beach. The name-brand tennis equipment is in good shape, meaning that unlike most resorts, the racquets aren’t rusted.

There’s no air conditioning (or even a fan) in the average-size, thatched-roof fitness center (open 8:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.). The weight equipment is a little worn, but still very usable. There's not very much cardio equipment, just three bikes, one stair stepper, and one treadmill.

Kids playing at the Kids' mini club

The spacious standard rooms here can easily fit a rollaway or crib, and come with either a king bed or two double beds. Also, 49 of them are triple rooms with an additional double bed.

There are also 40 connecting rooms in the hotel. But there’s no real advantage to getting a suite here over a standard room -- the couches in the suites don’t pull out. All bathrooms unfortunately come with showers and not bathtubs, and just a single sink.

While the Catalonia Gran Dominicus lacks the extra frills available at larger resorts, families here seem perfectly satisfied with the standard kids' club and the shallow kiddie extension tacked onto the adult pool. The lunchtime pizza parlor helps too.

I spoke to Melissa, a parent from Ontario, Canada who was delighted that this last part was shallow enough for even her babies to crawl around in. The lack of a separate children's pool here was actually an advantage -- guests like Melissa didn't have to leave the adult pool or the pool bar to play with the kids.

The kids' miniclub is just a one-room building near the beach with a sand floor and an enclosed playground that closes by 4 p.m. every day. For older children (8 to 12 years old), the entertainment staff organizes tennis, archery, and soccer games. A kid's minidisco takes place every night from 9:15 p.m. to 10 p.m.

High chairs are available at all restaurants, and the food is fairly kid-friendly at each, including chicken fingers, nachos, and several varieties of pizza fresh from a wood-burning stove.

My room was pretty clean. There was no dust or dirt on the tables or TV, and the shower was one of the cleanest that I've seen in the DR. But the long outdated rooms have worn-away grout around the toilet, chipped paint, and tiles yellowed with age.

Dishes and glasses are all swiftly picked up from the bars and restaurants, and the tables are regularly wiped clean. The pool, which sees a fair amount of use, is free of debris.

El Patio Pizzeria

Though Gran Dominicus management is no longer Italian, nods to its still-largely Italian clientele are everywhere -- and most notably, with the resort's cuisine. Every day is Italian day at El Taino, the international buffet, which features its own focaccia station and a selection of sandwich fillings to make a grilled panini. The selection of cold meats and salads includes sardines, an olive selection, and sopressata. At lunch, there are usually at least two to three types of grilled Mediterranean fish. Catalonia Gran Dominicus also has by far one of the best pasta stations in the D.R. resorts. Eggplant marinara, penne arrabiata, and a daily clam spaghetti are all a nice change from the usual, basic meat-or-no-meat sauces at other resorts. But the fruit selection is pretty limited (basically just pineapple).

El Taino really plays up its themed dinner nights with frequent cocktail stations and installations that represent the culture of the respective country. A Mexican flag hanging up in the entrance, tequila shots outside the restaurant, and a group of animation staff recreating a mariachi-band scene signal the arrival of Mexican night.

In addition to the El Taino buffet, Gran Dominicus boasts six restaurants: one pizzeria, one snack bar, and four à la cartes (Italian, Mexican, steak, and seafood). Restaurant and bar spaces in this smaller resort do double duty. An à la carte Italian dinner restaurant La Toscano becomes pizzeria El Patio during lunchtime and late at night, serving up pies fresh from the wood-burning oven and topped with a variety of meat or veggies. Jacaranda restaurant, where guests can enjoy à la carte lobster dinners on the beach, is the beach snack bar during the day with made-to-order grilled sandwiches. It's amazing what white linen tablecloths and candlelight by the beach can do.

Drink selection at El Gato Borracho

There wasn't enough time to sample all the great drinks (I had to do some work at the hotel) -- but unlike bartenders at most resorts, here they can actually mix up tropical drinks from scratch and execute old-fashioned favorites like the Sidecar.

All drinks are made with well liquor, but top-shelf booze like Johnny Walker, Absolut, and Remy Martin costs an extra $4 to $10 and can be purchased at cigar bar El Gato Borracho.

Several infused homemade rums rest on top of the bar at El Merenguero -- in case anyone wants to try a shot. It was a nice extra touch -- the sweet but potent coconut and vanilla liqueur, made with white rum, liquid sugar, and crème de cacao is a personal favorite.