Small but comfortable and friendly hotel. No luxury but you feel like being in your friend's house . Rooms are very spacious, beds are large and comfortable.
Very good French food, the breakfast is copious and included in your fees.
Directly on the beach and you have miles of virgin Caribbean landscape just from your doorsteps.
Reasonable prices and charming staff.

We spent our 3rd Xmas vacation in a row at the Acaya hotel and were still as enchanted as the first time. The hotel is simple. The location is great. The hotel is practically on the beach - seperated from the beach by a small path - which has been unfortunately paved since last year - but progress is inevitable... The Playa Bonita lives up to its name. It is a narrow beach fringed with coconut trees. It is a well known surf spot so there are a lot of waves but if you walk to the end of the beach it is calmer and good for swimming.
The Acaya is a place to relax and unwind. The rooms are in 3 different buildings surrounding a lawn with coconut trees. There are "superior" air conditioned rooms, "standard" rooms with ventilators and then a few older rooms that are used when the other rooms are full. Our first year we stayed in the superior room and then the last 2 years, as we reserved last minute, we stayed in the standard rooms with ventilators. We did not need to use the ventilator at all this year. The rooms are simply furnished with basic furniture. They could do with an extra chair and better lighting for reading in the evening.

Breakfast every morning is fruit juice, plate of fruit, eggs and bread. We ate there practically every meal time as the food is very good and reasonably priced. My favorites are the guacamole salad, the ceviche and the linguine mariscos. The chef, Dany, does a really good chocolate dessert ! One night we had a paella for 15 - I have never seen so many lobsters in a paella.

Maxime, the charming French owner from the South of France, makes everyone feel at home. There were quite a few single ladies staying at the hotel. It is the kind of place where a woman can go by herself and feel at home.
In the evening guests mingle at the bar drinking and dining together.

The Spanish speaking staff (except maybe one !) are all very welcoming. Marie the receptionist speaks French. Maxime speaks a smattering of English.

We hired a car on internet from Santo Domingo airport and drove to Las Terrenas. It takes around 2 hours as there is a good motorway. Car hire in the town is unreliable as other guests had problems renting cars and quads (they were not delivered on time). I would recommend transport while staying there as it is not within walking distance of the village of Las Terranas. Las Terranas itself is a sprawling town - not the most attractive of towns - but with character. If you are into night life - you will have to go in to town at night as there is not much to do at the hotel besides watching the waves while having a drink.

For those of us who cannot quite get away from real life, there is a free WIFI connection which is handy as there is no televison in the rooms - accessible in the bar area.

The Samana peninsula for sure was one of the highlights of our trip. A variety of amazing and tranquil beaches, the lush vegetation, rolling hills, all these shades of green and blue and sooooo many palm trees!!! And just outside of Las Terrenas, away from the huzzle and buzzle, we found this charming little hotel at Playa Bonita . Our rooms were basic but comfortable and tastefully decorated ( we chose the no ac option ) and we just loved the conopy bed and the creative towel rack in the bathroom. And the manager Maxime and his assistant Mery were great to talk to and very helpful.
I would not recommend Playa Bonita to night creatures, but it is truely magnificent for nature lovers, beachwalkers, romantic couples, relaxation seekers... and gourmets!!!
The few small hotels all have restaurants and I would have loved to stay much, much longer just to try more of the fantastic food of Hotel Acaya, Casa Grande and Atlantis.
Great cuisine directly under the stars, palm trees rustling and the surf breaking in the background...just magical!!!!

My girlfriend and I just left Hotel Acaya and have mixed feeling about it. First, the good stuff:

The hotel's location is beautiful, steps from the "beach" (although the beach is very narrow here), with a sprawling front yard that abuts the lounge and restaurant area, which becomes the common area for all the guests during the day. The proprietor, Maxime, is attentive and genuinely tries to create a family atmosphere by ensuring everyone joins him for a drink each evening and often a meal. At the price (65 dollars for our room), it's a bargain compared to the other hotels on Playa Bonita and the restaurant is also reasonably priced and quite good.

Now, the downside:

There are three buildings with rooms to let, but only one was renovated. We booked late and wound up in an unrenovated building, which is in pretty shabby shape. For the price, we didn't expect much and we didn't get much. The shower head needed to be replaced twice, hot water was sporadic at best, the bathroom was pretty grubby overall, and the bed was the hardest, most uncomfortable bed I've slept in since my youth hostel days. There was also a crawl space above the room, accessed by a door above our door on the outside. The latch on that door was broken and once the winds came up (which they did with a vengeance), it banged against the side of the building all night long. Their attempt to fix this entailed jamming a stick into the door, which actually worked for a night, but I wasn't able to point out that it probably wouldn't last because no one -- including the security guard doing the jamming -- speaks any English there. Sure enough, by the second night of winds it was banging loudly all over again.

That's the bad stuff. A few other notes:

-The hotel, and seemingly all of Playa Bonita for that matter, appears to be primarily a family destination. We saw maybe two other couples the five days we were there, but the area was packed with little kids.

-If you're driving yourself and can swing it, an SUV is recommended. The road from Las Terrenas to Playa Bonita is riddled with gaping pot holes and huge puddles after the rain. We drove a small Nissan and beat it up pretty badly. If you're not driving yourself, you'll want to rent an ATV or a car once you're there. Playa Bonita is pretty isolated, and it's too far from town to walk.