Royalton Splash Punta Cana, An Autograph Collection All-Inclusive Resort & Casino

My initial review was based on my first day experience. Here is now a review on my overall stay. There are some workers who are nice and pleasant, such as the bartenders by the pool. However other workers are pleasant only when they are attempting to have you buy something. You feel almost harassed after a while. The Italian restaurant sends you straight to the rest room, no real flavor on their food but not sure why, immediately after you feel sick. The Mexican restaurant is just not good, and the buffet is probably your best choice but not such a great selection. The only time I had a good meal through my whole stay was when we paid for a private party. We were a group of 70+ who attempted to try our best to enjoy our stay since it was our first family vacation. However, I do not think our standards could of been brought down any lower. There were many "creeps" (married men who seem to leave their wives at night in order to harass men or women), unfortunately there is no security so your left to just fend for yourself. Some of my male cousins were asked for money for sex at night as well by women who seem to also seem not all there. Just a very weird place that attracted even weirder guest.

Now that we are finally home, we are all SICK with rashes, come to find out we all have sea lice. DO NOT go into the beach water!!

My family and I (wife/ husband/ 7YO daughter/ 10YO daughter) stayed at the Royalton Splash Punta Cana from Aug. 23 to Aug. 30, 2024. We stayed in the Luxury Family Room (1 king size bed and bunk beds for the kids - separated by a partition/sliding door).

Customer service is nonexistent! If you don’t speak Spanish then the staff look at you like you’re trash. I think some of them pretend they don’t understand and give you a nasty look. Even the ones that do understand English, they aren’t very helpful.
We are from the West Indies which means our expectation is that West Indian hospitality would be present especially where the staff customer service is concerned here in the DR (part of the West Indies). It was the complete opposite. Rude and dismissive was their attitude. One or two of them were actually nice and helpful but most of them were not. If you know what I’m talking about when I talk about West Indian hospitality then trust me when I say the DR does not adhere to this “hospitality policy”. At least that’s the impression we were given at this resort.
The first 2 days the “concierge” staff (that basically just sit downstairs in the buildings and are supposed to assist resort patrons), are super friendly to you. Until of course you refuse to entertain their “offers”. Their first offer is to have breakfast at the high end side of the resort where they try to pressure you into buying a prepaid vacation package directly from their resort brand. These packages are expensive and the whole presentation (sales pitch) takes up most of your first or second day of your vacation. Happened to us at the last resort we stayed at in a different country. The second “offer” is for you to book tours through them. Not sure how safe that is so we have always booked our tours through our travel provider (in this case it was Sunwing). After you refuse, the concierge staff ignore you. I asked for 2 extra pillows. Still waiting…
The bar staff are slow and will only perk up to serve you if they see money in your hand. Which apparently should be every time you go to the bar even if you’re ordering non-alcoholic drinks like juice.
There is one bar staff at the pool that goes around picking up empty glasses and only serves guests that manage to flag her down. Otherwise she walks around looking away from guests and she doesn’t help anyone a the Bubbles swim-up bar.
There’s no lifeguard at the pool.
One day we couldn’t get pool towels. All done - no indication of when towels would be available.
Our overall experience at this resort was awful and disappointing. Worst all-inclusive experience ever!! I’d give it zero stars if I could. This is my second time in the DR. The first time I visited was 15 years ago and the customer service experience was bad then as well. I will never visit the DR ever again. Not even another part of the country.

This is part 3 of my experience:

The attendants for these areas were great. Be advised, you must take the trolley or walk over to the Punta Cana side of the resort to enjoy these amenities. If you choose to have dinner on the PC side and you are not Diamond Club they will shove a credit card machine in your face and demand payment of $49 dollars which was done twice to members in our party. Those that weren't DC understood the requirement to pay however, due to a particular treatment received or more than one occasion it became insulting. We've never had an issue with payment nor tipping. To watch other tables receive drinking glasses all around us while we dined was awful. It was deliberate and they knew that we knew it. THEY DIDN'T CARE! The only person that cared enough to treat our entire party as if we mattered was Eddy and Juan. The conclusion of our stay ended with lack of assistance with checking out. BD EXPERIENCE didn't send transportation to accommodate our entire party. They sent separate transport vehicles and even left one of our guest to travel alone. The gag is, they NEVER sent her transportation and when my brother attempted to leave the resort to bring her to the airport in his rental car his departure was refused. CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY HELD HIM AGAINST HIS WILL? He along with our butler, tried to explain the situation however they feared he wouldn't return for check out so "permission" to leave was denied until an email confirmation was received of some sort. This "vacation" has left me feeling sad, hurt and humiliated! If you are black traveling from the US... STAY HOME!

TL;DR Disappointing experience overall.

Unfulfilled room requests, limited restaurant availability, inflexible room credits, security concerns, long walking distances between amenities, lack of shade, and secondhand smoke were all drawbacks. Friendly staff was a bright spot, but not enough to recommend the resort.

Here we try to detail the shortcomings of our recent stay at the Royalton Splash. While the staff was friendly and helpful, several aspects of the resort fell short of expectations.

Disappointed with Service: Requests made during booking weren't honored, minibar was rarely stocked, and restaurants were constantly booked. The credit system for room service was purposely confusing

Safety Concerns: A staff member entered the room unannounced, and smoking was allowed throughout the resort. Additionally, hallways are dark (lights off) during the day and you'll find employees walking around without any regard for professionalism or your experience. Rooms are rundown with busted furniture and flat pillows the norm.

Limited Entertainment: Most activities ended at 10 pm, and we had to travel to Royalton Punta Cana for late-night entertainment whenever the hotel tram decided to show up...

Bright Spots: The friendly service staff (We ❤️ Juana) tried their best to make our stay enjoyable.

Compared to other Punta Cana resorts, Royalton Splash offered a poor value proposition. There are more attractive options available that provide a better experience for a similar or lower price.

The staff at Royalton Splash is overall so friendly and helpful. They go out of their way to do what they can for you. Jonathan was my go-to guy at the front desk and he was great! The food is...fine. The pools have swim up bars and entertainment for kids. There's a lot to do on premises. It's a ways to get to the beach, but not really a deterrent. There's a really fun escape room and the staff member handling it was fantastic! Our daughter was scared so she sat with him in the control room and gave us clues - we all had a blast (not included but I'm glad we paid for it). The "arcade" is just an air hockey game and two pool tables. They have croquet and ping pong and other activities throughout the day. However, a lot of the staff just doesn't have accurate information. We were often given incorrect or incomplete information about where we could eat as part of the all inclusive package and where/what time certain events were taking place. Towels ran out at the pools by mid/late afternoon most days. Our room wasn't ready for 3pm check in. And unlike most hotels, they don't have a computer system that can just move you to a room that is ready when you're there and let someone coming later use the room that is still being cleaned. Instead the rooms are assigned on pieces of paper in the morning. We were told that because we booked through Marriott we were getting a "nice" room so they couldn't switch it. The room was a disaster. The mattresses must be original, never replaced since it opened. The shower head fell off the wall. The towels in our room were visibly dirty with remnants of the prior occupants (as if they were just folded and put back on the shelf, not even put through the laundry), there were contacts left on the bathroom vanity, and the TV didn't work which was the only way to get a schedule of events for the day so we missed a lot of fun opportunities for our 6 year old. The staff did offer to fix some of the problems in the room but they came pounding on the door at 10pm to do so when we were already sleeping. In sum, the rooms are a dump, but the resort itself is great and if the room was just a bit more tolerable it would be 5 stars all around. We ended our trip a day early.