Hotel Riu Republica – Hotel Review March 2020

Hotel Riu Republica, Adults only Hotel, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

My husband and I arrived here on March 5th for our week-long vacation in paradise.

It was paradise. Beautiful and gorgeous paradise.

Ambiance

This resort is huge! We arrived very late because our flight from Toronto was delayed for 4 hours. It was quite horrid but still, I was excited, I’m on vacation and I didn’t care so much. It is what it is.

Check-in was painstakingly slow. I was surprised to see only 2 staff members checking in the latecomers.

We were all pretty tired and hungry and just needed our rooms.

The lobby was spacious and as we were guided to our rooms, the resort even at night when all was still, the white buildings were elegant and gorgeous. The layout of this resort holds true resemblance to the last resort we stayed at Riu Playa Blanca in Panama. You can check out the resort here.

Room

The first room we were given was not up to par and of course, I stated that and they moved us quickly into another room that was just perfect. It was facing the courtyard where I can people watch and I was hell satisfied, yay!

As I normally do, my first room to check for cleanliness is the bathroom. It was clean and I was hell happy!

The room was spacious and bright and I was very content. Thank you.

Hotel

This beautiful hotel has :

• 8 swimming pools, 4 by the beachside and 4 by the adult waterslide. (yes, I said adult waterslide!!)
• 9 bars for drinks
• 9 restaurants
• A Jerk chicken hut by the beach! They open at noon and just hurry up and get your piece already!
• Splash world which can be hell scary!
• Spa – which we had a couples massage! (are you noticing a lot of exclamation marks?!) Ha!

Staff/Service

The staff here were amazing, attentive, very positive and kind. They are awesome hard-working people and I loved all that I interacted with on a daily basis.

Food

We mainly ate at the main buffet but did try 2 a la carte restaurants.

The Taj Mahal where we spent 10 minutes trying their food and simultaneously got up, left a tip and headed straight to the main buffet. (yup)

Our second last night we tried the Tarantella Italian restaurant. It was so pretty here and the food was good, so try this one! The a la carte restaurants are all first-come-first-served basis. No reservations needed. For the Indian one, we just walked in, for the Italian one, we were given a pager and you can walk around until it goes off. That was great!

La Altagracia – Main Buffet

Pools/Beach

We spent our entire vacation here. Okay, I spent my entire vacation here. He, on the other hand, liked to hide either in the shade or in our room until the sun was less sunny. Does that even make sense? LOL

I took advantage of the outdoors every chance I could get. Solo lounging is my thing. I don’t care if its hell hot or its raining, I stayed out there all day!

I mean seriously, why would you not? Vacation means getting out there early and staying there and relish and soak in everything like it’s your last time. I can’t understand why he likes to chill first and relax in our room when all this beautifulness is at your fingertips. My hell.

 

This hotel had many fun things for their guests:

• Riu Party (dress all in white) held at night
• Riu Beach Party (it was loud as it should be, awesome) held at night
• Riu Pool Party (didn’t get a chance to go, we were in Santo Domingo) held during the day

Excursion

We only went to one which was a day in Santo Domingo. It was about a 2.5 hours drive from our resort.

We’ve been to Punta Cana about 7 times now and we have done and seen what we’ve wanted to.

The trip was really nice but in my opinion, dragged on to places that we didn’t want to be stuck in for so long.

For example, when we visited the cathedral, I really didn’t want to know every story behind the pictures on the wall. It took so long to get out of there.

We had lunch at a restaurant where it wasn’t organized properly and you mainly had to look around and see what other people are doing in order to know whether: are drinks being served or is it self served.

It was self-served and you needed to be aggressive or you’ll never get your turn to get a drink before it runs out!

(take a wild guess who got our drinks?) Me, I’m hell aggressive. LOL

Final Thoughts

As you can tell from my pictures and videos I truly had a great time and enjoyed this resort. It was beautiful and clean and well laid out and a gigantic resort.

The animation team was awesome, the entertainment was well executed.

I highly recommend this hotel for all its amenities and its everyday events and all its loudness, it was truly an alive and vibrant place to stay.

The Riu chain never fails me and this one truly is one of my favorites!

You need to go here!