Hotel Riu Palace Punta Cana

Teresa1312 wrote a review October 2025
Nottinghamshire, England

Amazing stay

Absolutely fantastic holiday it was our 2nd time staying and couldn't fault it again. All staff very helpful and friendly.
Food great only issue we had was food wasnt very hot but plenty of choice.
Loads of sunlounges no issue u don't need to reserve them or go early.
Definitely go again .

Date of Stay: October 2025

Darlo1957 wrote a review October 2025

Riu Palace Punta Cana

Just spent 2 fabulous weeks at Riu Palace Punta Cana. October 25. Although the room was a little tired it was clean and the bed was comfortable. The staff couldn't do enough for you and a special shout out to Joel and Luis in the restaurant. Espinal and Emanuel around the pool who looked after us during our stay.

Date of Stay: October 2025

chefdanac wrote a review October 2025

Thumbs up! 👍🏼🇩🇴🌴⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Took a five day (10/19-10/23) mother/ daughter trip to PUNTA CANA and stayed at the Riu palace. Excellent, attentive, and friendly service, beautiful landscaping of the property. I also highly recommend the Riu Party themed pool parties they have a few times a week. Had so much fun! Housekeeping was great! My only complaint is the food quality, could have been much better although I loved the pork chops from the Italian restaurant. No seaweed in the water, this hotel also offers a complimentary taxi to the casino at the Riu Macao next door. Casino there is very small. Did the monkey land and Bávaro Adventure park (Polaris rental) excursions, awesome! Couldn’t do the Saona Island excursion unfortunately due to a tropical storm. Great beach, pool, nightly shows and activities. I suggest bringing some extra cash to tip the employees. 8/10

Date of Stay: October 2025

669darranh wrote a review October 2025
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England

2 weeks of Hell

When we checked in the hotel said they had no record of our booking a great start to any trip, eventually they found our booking told us that they upgraded us.
Our room was overlooking the central gardens and fountains ,the safe didn’t work paint was peeling off in the shower and the bedding wasn’t clean. All the drawers were broken or stuck shut even had a sunscreen bottle sticker holding the TV remote together!!!!
Food in the restaurants is cold and bland not much choice best out of them was the steak house but it was nothing special, Antonio in the main restaurant looked after me for two weeks every morning for breakfast and in the evening truly impeccable service. Sadly this was the high point the other staff were standing around just laughing and joking with each other ignoring guests not doing anything while the managers looked on !!! I have never seen anything like this in the 10 years i have been using Riu hotels.
The Pool areas have plenty of sun beds most are broken and worn out broken lights in the pool, the area wasn’t cleaned in the morning and litter from the previous day wasn’t removed. The beach was cleaned every day and is a fantastic asset to the hotel didn’t see any lifeguards but saw plenty of people get into trouble in the sea on a daily basis.
The entertainment staff are rude and ignorant not one spoke to me or asked if i wanted play in any games, the entertainment at night is none existent it doesn’t start till 9 at night and goes on till midnight this is supposed to be a family resort!!!.
This is the worse Riu Hotel i have ever stayed in been using there hotels for 10 years i am a Riu Diamond member this hotel is no palace don’t book it the Macao and Bravaro are a 100 times better the Riu Management should hang there heads in shame!!!

Date of Stay: October 2025

harielysj wrote a review October 2025

AWFUL

I wish I could give a 0. Under no circumstances would I EVER recommend this resort to my worst enemy. I have been to a handful of all-inclusive resorts, and I was horrified at Riu's. First off, the food is gross. I think I actually lost weight being on vacation. Second and most important EVERYONE (minus maybe three people) is extremely rude and would completely ignore my family and me. I hate to say it's because we didn't know Spanish, but it seemed like they would help anyone else but us, even if we were next in line or waiting the longest with US cash.
We were lied to about what activities/parties they had going on each day. For example, we called in the morning to ask if the white party was that night and they said no when in fact it was that night. Our room smelt like dirty socks and the safe didn't work. We complained about the room, and they were able to switch us but then the next room the safe also didn't work and there was a leak from the ceiling into the bathroom and the room to the outside porch didn't open.
The bathroom by the theatre/pool didn't have any electricity so we had to use our flashlights (and no this had nothing to do with the expected hurricane) to be able to see and had large cockroaches flying around.
They ran out of towels for the pool/beach. Kept saying 20 minutes then 40 minutes then back to 20. There was dried throw up on one of the towels, the others were ripped and when we returned them, we were questioned if we were the ones who did that ....
I could go on for hours ....... please do not waste your time and money going to this resort. This resort has ruined the DR for me, I will NEVER go back.

Date of Stay: October 2025

Reesh_13 wrote a review October 2025
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England

Not the best Rui we've stayed in!

We have just returned from a two week holiday at the Rui Palace Punta Cana Hotel in the Dominican Republic. We've stayed in two other Rui hotels in Mexico and this didn't compare very well to them.
The hotel itself looks very grand from the outside, big, impressive with lovely gardens and landscapes and right on the Beach Front. On first impressions we thought this is great. The process at Reception was a bit chaotic and after a 30 minute wait we managed to check in. As we had waited for quite a while we got "upgraded" to room nearer the beach. It was spacious with a generous balcony but in need of a major overhaul. The shower needed a deep clean, there was pee stains at the side of the toilet bowl and the flush on the toilet was faulty (even worse after the plumber had repaired it) so we repaired it ourselves.
The room smelled very damp as did most areas in the hotel. Entering all the restaurants in the main building took your breath each time with the smell of dampness.
The loungers around the pools and the beach weren't in the best condition either, some torn and with bolts missing. This needs addressing as some were dangerous.
We thought the food in the buffet restaurants was okay, with plenty of selection and the baked beans at breakfast were very similar to our own styles at home in the UK (a first anywhere).
The A la Carte Restaurant's we tried were hit and miss. The Steak Restaurant was ok with lovely ribeye. The Italian was poor the first time except for the best tomato soup I've ever had anywhere. The lambchops were supposed to be medium rare and came out well done with raw fat almost, not the best. The second time around they were perfect. The Krystal Restaurant was excellent. The Bodega Restaurant food was poor with poor service unfortunately. Staff at the buffet restaurants were very polite, pleasant and helpful most of the time. In the Restaurants the staff were too laid back and not attentive.
The cleaning staff and maintenance staff were really friendly and helpful too. The Bar Staff and entertainment team were also friendly and polite.
The party place was ok but even though the theme changed we thought it was repetitive, similar music etc. It was okay but I'd advise going into the pools because nobody got out to use the toilets...!
The pool bar at the hotel was a real party place, supposedly adults only but small children were often in the pool with drunken, partying adults and staff rarely asked them to get out of the water. Again not many people left the pool for the toilet very often.
All in all not too bad but we wouldn't go back to that hotel again. We did visit the Rui Macao which was much, much better with lovely rooms.

Date of Stay: October 2025

peterrO7002JT wrote a review October 2025

Not what we paid lots of money for

We have just returned home from our Honeymoon that was a holiday of a Lifetime at the Riu Palace Punta cana.
Everything was going great until the 3rd day 13/10/2025 when we at 5pm they had a power cut in the resort, all the power went off and we were left literally in the dark. The restaurants were unable to cook any food and at about 7pm they made a make shift sandwich bar in one of the restaurants lit by candle light, We went down to have a look and the meats and cheese because it was out in the warmth of the night it was around 35degrees that day so as you can imagine it looked very moist and sweaty so was not worth the risk of eating the food so we went back to the room to wait for the electricity to be turned back on. We sat on the balcony and some parts of the resort the rooms eventually got there power back on. Ours remained off and the main entertainment area and reception were still off, so we sat in the dark on balcony until around midnight and then decided enough was enough and tried to get to sleep, as you can imagine it was in the 30s we had no aircon or fan it was unbearable and a restless nights sleep as we were waking up in pools of sweat, whilst laid on top of the bed. Then to make matters worse the Beach restaurant had got its power back on but the main buffet restaurant in the reception block that served breakfast had not, so at 3am in the morning the staff starting taking all the breakfast stuff on trolly's past our room outside on tiled floors to the beach restaurant. every time they passed our room it sounded like a train passing our room every 5 mins. this went on until at least 7am so not much sleep was had. The next day we went to see the Tui rep to ask if she had any idea when then the power in our block was going to come back on and she just shrugged her shoulders and said No they are working on it and that is all the information she could give us, we asked what the problem was with our block and she said she had no idea. She was pretty rude in the way she addressed us. We asked her how we were going to manage at night with no lights or aircon in our rooms and she said to use the torch on our phones, we reminded her there was no power so we were unable to charge our phones that had now gone flat. No help at all. We decided to get ready early that night and go down to lunch before it got dark and also the hotel only had the beach restaurant open with limited foods to serve the whole hotel. Later on that night and 30 hours from first going off the electricity to our relief came back on.
The next issue we had was staff in the hotel. If you were from a Spanish speaking country the staff definitely looked after you better, unless of course you tipped well.
As well as our Honeymoon, we also went with my sister and brother in-law for his 60th birthday and my new wife's 50th birthday. When we were going for Dinner each night the waiters would put on a great show for the Spanish guests singing happy birthday, playing instruments and presenting them with a cake. We asked customer service staff how we could get this to happen for our celebration and they told us to speak to customer care in reception, we did this and the girl who was customer care told us that she was unsure if they could do this for us and that it was up to the manger of the restaurant if they would do it for us, she reluctantly took our details and said she would call us to let us know if that was ok, we are still waiting to hear back from her two weeks later sat at home.
Fortunately I tipped a very nice waiter and on the day of the Birthday he decorated the table with our stuff we brought from home got his friends to sing and brought us a cake, if we hadn't be friended the waiter it would not have happened.
The Hotel itself was lovely the beach and pool were nice and clean and tidy we were just let down by the customer service team in the resort by Tui and The Riu Hotel

Date of Stay: October 2025

kikjuju123 wrote a review October 2025
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

Lovely beach

Just came back from 7 days at this hotel and I will say the beach is amazing. The vendors in the beach are very annoying tho. Massages sunglasses tour guilds. Men selling cigars and other stuff too. We counted 20 in a space of 15 minutes. You say no thank and 10 mins back asking you again. And the Parrot men try to charge you a lot of money for a few pics. 100 dollars for a couple of photos with your own phone. The hotel is big and the restaurants and food were good. Always plenty to chose from . Loved getting an early morning coffee in sports bar as we like early walk in beach . Room nice and clean and large which is nice and air con very good. Did walk to the other Riu hotels and all had different things to offer you. Will say the evening wasn’t so good in ours for adults . The main bar in hotel was to bright felt like an airport . Could do with an evening bar outside to give it more atomphere. Staff were friendly enough and will say lots of drinking to be had in the pool bars. Had a nice time and will come back but maybe try another Riu hotel next time.

Date of Stay: October 2025