We were at this Resort Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 2011. This was our second visit to a Palladium Resort (Vallarta Nayarit in 2009) and cannot recommend either of these Resorts. Pretty poor service at both.

Let me start by stating that we enjoy travelling and make the best out of our vacations. We don't look for negatives or talk bad or complain about a resort while there. This does not help anyone. We have come across rude, obnoxious guests that constantly complain or raise their voices to be heard by all. We do not do that and it definitely does not help or solve anything. We have had excellent results at most resorts. The Palladiums however, have not sparkled.

We like to stay positive and look for good things in a resort, but had to search long and hard to find one here...Hemingway Bar..That's it.

We kept tipping as we always do so as to not receive any worse service. It did not help though.
We kept our unhappiness to ourselves until check-out. That is where I will start.

My wife went to check-out and I called for a bell-hop thinking I would be joining her within a few minutes..I waited over 20 minutes and called again..waited another 10 minutes and decided to take the luggage myself. My wife had started to walk back to the room and met me half way wondering what was taking so long. When I got to the reception area, there were 4 bell-hops standing around talking to each other. She told me they were standing there the whole time she was there waiting for me.
I voiced our displeasure privately and quitely about this and our whole experience..Reception response, or lack there of was as if they had heard this before..They just brushed us off. Not even an "I'm sorry to hear that". I asked to speak to the manager, but my request was denied.

Two days before leaving, we asked our concierge about late check-out. He asked our room number and he said no problem. "Just come back tomorrow afternoon and I will take care of that for you". We did as he asked, but this time, it was a problem. After he went through his well rehearsed, and I am sure over-used explanation of why we couldn't have late check out, I asked to speak to the Manager. The concierge was so kind (sarcasm) as to do this for me. He went into the office for a couple of minutes and came back with a "Too Bad" attitude. The manager was busy and could not come out, but he assured me that he confirmed what the concierge had told me.
Meanwhile, another guest, same concierge, was requesting late chek out and was granted the request. I asked how he could get late check out..he said he was with a different tour company...that was not true.
That guest came in on the same flight, had the same Transat Rep at the airport and was on the same hotel shuttle as us. I called him on it, and the stories just kept getting grander.

So, here we are sitting in the reception area, and the time-share rep comes over and asks us when we will be returning to the Palladium. First time I have ever heard a time-share rep without a comeback. He just turned and walked away. I then noticed him talking to our concierge. Perhaps he should have talked to him first.

The Palladium Bavaro has some of the worst overall service and concierge we have encountered in over 20 vacations.

Now to the beginning.
We booked through Transat Vacations. As others have written, the service you receive is awful at best. Perhaps this resort does not like the Transat brand.
When you book through them to stay at the Bavaro section, you end up in the Punta Cana section of the resort.

The first morning we asked our concierge to show us how the property was divided. He drew lines on the resort map to indicate the sections. We saw that our building was actually in the Punta Cana section and mentioned this to him. He then proceeded to draw a curve on the map that included a couple of buildings from that section and he told us that those were actually part of the Bavaro section..our building included. How convenient for them.

Cold coffee, anyone. You can get hot water, but not hot coffee. Not a great start to the morning if you enjoy a good, hot cup of coffee. The only place to get hot coffee is Hemingways...At night. This is where we would have a couple of after dinner drinks. We are not "big" drinkers.

Overall, the food was not bad at the Buffet, but the A La Cartes..totally different story.
I am not a fussy eater but the food at the a la cartes was cold (except for the Japanese) and unappealing.
We went to the Steak House twice. I tried the tenderloin the first time we went..they should really take it off the menu. Medium well means red to raw inside and cold, and it was not really tender. Had trouble cutting it with a steak knife. Anything but tender. I ate around the edges. My wife had the ribs..they were mostly fat.
Next visit, I tried the Grouper...It was terrible. Not sure how you make greasy, tasteless fish, but they did. Once again, could not finish it.
Not once, on either occasion did any server come over and ask how our meal was. They take your order, bring you your drink, if they remember, bring your meal and then vanish.

Same story at the Oriental Restaurant.

At the Mexican Restaurant, I received my food, my wife got hers over 5 minutes later. It's coming soon..She does not like seafood so I could not share my meal with her as she waited. I waited for her meal to come before I started eating. Her food came, wrong order...she ordered a dessert and we left after that.

The Japanese (Show) Restautrant was okay. Only reason the food is hot is because they cook it in front of you. Couldn't get a beer to wash it down, though. Asked repeatedly for one. Once again, too many servers. If you didn't drink wine, you didn't get anything but water. They did remember my beer at the end of the meal.

At every restaurant, I would ask for a beer with my meal when ordering. Sometimes it would come before the appetizers, other times I had to ask 4 or 5 times. Sometimes it would not show up at all.
The servers are not designated an area in the restaurants, so they are all involved in the process. I believe this is why they fail miserably with service in them.

The beach is large, but you better get up in the middle of the night to get a lounger. I would get up at 6:30 to walk the beach and saw that people had already started gathering 4-5 chairs under the huts and throwing 1 or 2 towels and the occasional sandal or magazine to hold them. This is not directly the resorts fault, but they should really implement some sort of time rule. Those chairs were not utilized until the afternoon. I guess they go down when the Disco closes, place their towels, go to bed, sleep til noon and then go to the beach.

The room was nice. It was cleaned at different times every day. Somewhat inconvenient. Towels are a very hard thing to get. You put 2 for cleaning, you get 1..you have to call to get the second one back. Ask for an extra one, it comes the day before you are leaving. Don't even try to ask for a face cloth (take your own). The pillows are pretty thin. They do have a pillow menu. Fairly pricey. We are pretty active during the day, so falling asleep (even on a wafer-thin pillow) isn't a problem. It was nice to have the extra shower/tub in the room.

The pathways are poorly lit, if at all in some places..be careful. Take a small flashlight with you.

Even the train broke down the day we decided to ride it. We were at the furthest point on the property (the Royal section) from the Bavaro when this happened.

Now the good. Hemingways Piano lounge. Nice lounge chairs and love seats. Smoke-free. Good drinks (even bottled Miller beer), and service.

Ratings:

We believe service is what makes or breaks a vacation. Poor at best.
The value for the dollar was average. Brought down to poor by the service.
Sleep is never a problem if you are active during the day.
Generally, the resort was clean.
Almost any resort on Bavaro beach is in a good location.
The room was spacious. It's a room. How much time do you really spend there.
Not big drinkers as mentioned, but they had Baileys for my wife.

We travelled with family to this resort there were 8 of us in total 4 adults & 4 children. We booked through Air Transat & got the "Junior Suites with Imperial Club". Our rooms weren't even in the same block, but thank-fully weren't to far from one another. We did ask to move to be ALL together, but they could not accomodate that as they said they were "over booked"!!

ROOMS:
Our room was beautiful....very spacious, we had a king bed, pull-out couch very large bathroom with a jucuzzi tub, shower, etc......but the coolest thing of all was that off of the bathroom there were glass sliders to an outdoor shower room, all inclosed with a garden and a beautiful hammock....we did not use the shower inside once!!!! sooo cool!! we were in block 30 room 1304.Our room was also right next to the beach, so it was a bit windy. The others we tralleved with had a nice room as well, but not have the "outside shower room" they were in room 1222. The beds i found were a little on the hard side, & the air-conditioner seemed to be pointed right at the bed so after the first night, we just turned it off at bedtime as it was just to cold. The cleaners did a great job as well!!
We also liked the "turn-down" service we got in the evenings, the bed was turned down for us and she always left flower pedals on the bed....my daughter thought this was amazing!!!

Restaurants:
Tried to book a-la-carts but we could not really get the times we wanted, everything was available at 10pm...but who wants to eat at 10pm?!!! We did end up just going to the steak-house, at 5;30 and seeing as it was my sister-in-laws 40th birthday that day, they did accomodate us! They also gave her a birthday cake & sang to her!! very nice. Be prepared though if you want lobster, you'll be billed $35.00(american).
The food over all was ok, there was alot to choose from the buffets, and they had food like hamburger,fries,hotdogs,nachos & cheese, if the kids didn't want to try anything new.

We decide to let the kids go swimming with the dolphins, just a heads up, if you are going to the one in the ocean, WEAR A WET-SUIT!!! there is a $5.00 rental fee but well worth it!! The kids frose in the water for that long ( 45mins-1hr) also they say 8 yrs old they can go by themselves, I wouldn't advise this, my daughter is 8, but couldn't really understand ALL the instructions given to her at once. In my opinion....8 is still a bit younge.
We also went on one of the "glass bottom boat" tours.....another heads up,....if you get nauseous easily......DON"T GO!! It was pretty rough when we went, and there were a few of us that were "green" the entire ride (2.5-3hrs.). There were 18 of us that went on this rinky-dinky little boat, was NOT worth the $$$!!!

The resort over-all was beautiful, very large...lots of walking, there is a train that runs every 20-30 mins. that you can ride & get let off at designated stops. The shows were good at night, when we were there, they had a "micheal Jackson" show, a "pop divas" show, acouple others I can't remember, but the best one was the "circus" show.....Amazing!!!! They seem to rotate the shows between the 3 resorts so if you miss one you can always catch it at one of the other ones.

The beach was really nice, we took a walk down to the "beach market" a few times, be prepared for how aggresive the vendors are!! It was a little over-whelming!!

The pools that we found were really nice & ALL the bar staff we encountered were exceptional!!! We found everyone to be very friendly.

I would go back to this resort & would reccomend it to anyone!!

We stayed at the Grand Palladium Resort for 2 weeks (24 Jan - 8th Feb) at the Punta Cana part of the resort (refurnbishment was taking place around the Punta Cana pool but this did not affect us very much). The resort grounds were very well maintained and there were lots of restaurants to choose from, all serving good food. We didnt find it a problem getting into any a la carte restaurants, if there was a waiting list, we were given a beeper and were beeped when a table was ready for us, this was no problem as we would go to the lobby bar and have a few pre-dinner drinks! There were plenty of lobby bars to relax in and we especially liked the Hemminway bar, it was great, nice and relaxing and served a fantastic selection of drinks. All the staff were wonderful and always greeted us with 'Ola' and a smile. Overall this resort is good value for money however if we stayed here again we would definitely upgrade to the Royal Turquesa Suites. Just a couple of negative points: Our room was shabby and in desperate need of updating. We had to get up really early in the mornings (before 7am !!) to get a sunbed with shade around the pools, most of the beds had been reserved before 7am !!!! there were plenty of beds on the beach, but again, all the sunbeds under the palapas on the beach were reserved very early in the morning.

We arrived at the resort at midnight after a long flight from Toronto. We were supposed to be in a junior suite (imperial club) but when we arrived they didn't have any left (we had booked with Transat in July but apparently that means nothing). We were travelling with two other couples who had been to this resort a total of 14 weeks each. Their room was wrong as well. We were put in a regular room at the Punta Cana (not even the resort we booked at). These rooms were out-dated and musty smelling. The next day Louis at the front desk (awesome guy) looked after us and upgraded the other two couples to romance suites (very nice) and us to a renovated junior suite. The food was excellent. We ate at most of the a la carte restaurants. The steakhouse was amazing!!! There seems to be some problems with this whole restaurant reservation system. We were asked if we had reservations and didn't but were let in anyway as the restaurants didn't seem busy. When we tried to make reservations the only time that seemed available was 8 and 10 but when we went to the restaurants at 6 there was no problem getting in. There was great variety in the food. The sports bar has amazing pizza. Internet is a little bit slow if trying to communicate back home. It was windy when we were there but the weather was still pretty good. The beach is amazing!!!! You can walk for miles and it is so beautiful and warm. We met a guy from the Dolin Dive Center on the beach named Alexander. This kid is amazing. He would come talk to us daily and always had an interesting story to tell. The grounds at the resort are beautiful and well kept. The staff are very friendly and make attempts to communicate with you. There are numerous sports that you can play. Although we didn't travel with our kids there was a lot for kids to do. Our kids have decided that instead of going to Disney next year they want to go to this resort. We will return. Although we had a few bad experiences nothing really terrible happened that would deter us from going back. We did have some issues with our Options Plus from Transat. Our baggage was supposed to be first off the plane (a service we paid extra for) and both in Punta cana and Toronto our bags were almost last off. None of the services that were supposed to be offered on the plane were offered. We had horrible, cramped seats on the flight home. Our flight time was changed 3 times before we left on holidays.