Catalonia Royal La Romana – Adults Only

Catalonia Royal in La Romana – Adults Only on the southeastern shore of the Dominican Republic is on what we consider the best beach in the Caribbean. It’s tucked in between two more well-known resorts, so it manages to feel like a secret paradise. While it may be too quiet for vacationers who go to all-inclusive resorts to let loose, we loved this hotel for its small size, updated rooms, and friendly service.

• The resort has an overall relaxed, upscale vibe, with a spacious central area that includes the lobby, buffet, pool, and a couple of bars and restaurants.
  
  
• It’s next to the family-friendly Catalonia Bayahibe, and guests of the adults-only Catalonia Royal have access to all of the pools, restaurants, and beach areas of that resort.
  
  
• The family-friendly resort is situated closer to the beach, so it’s a 5-minute walk to get from the farther back adults-only villas to the water. There’s a straight path at the edge of the resort or a winding path through the resort you can take if you want to walk, or you can hail a golf cart along the straight path.
  
  
• We recommend staying in Villa F if you want to be as close to the beach as possible or Villa A or B if you want to be nearer the pool and bars.
  
  
• You’ll wear a wristband while you’re here with a plastic chip on it that also doubles as your room key. It’s incredibly convenient to never wonder where your room key is!
  
  
• We never had a problem getting as many towels as we needed for the beach and pool. The only drawback is that the towel stand is all of the way at the beach, but sometimes the housekeeping staff will bring fresh beach/pool towels directly to your room.
  
  
• The water here is amazing. In the morning, it’s the calmest, clearest water you’ve ever seen. In the afternoon, some waves will appear from time to time but are usually very light. Because La Romana is on the south side of the Dominican Republic, it doesn’t get any of the big waves of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also basically in a cove created by the natural curve of the island, so there’s no seaweed here. And no rocks!
  
  
• There’s a man-made reef under the buoy line at the edge of the swimming area for the resort where you can snorkel. Fish have clearly been trained by people bringing bread from the buffet, because they come right up to you if you get close to the reef!
  
  
• While the water is only neck-deep or less all of the way out, there’s a fairly steep drop-off as you step off of the beach (about 6″-8″). It can be a struggle for older people to get out of the water, and we saw some people using the buoy line rope to pull themselves out onto the beach.
  
  
• The beach is on an incline in the middle section, which can make it feel like you’re sliding toward the water when you sit in some of the sun chairs. We still saw many people sit in the center chairs, but your best bets for a flat beach are the chairs with umbrellas right next to the water or the chairs under the palapas (open-sided huts with thatched roofs) a few rows back where the beach levels off again.
  
  
• There’s an adults only side of the beach, a family side of the beach, and a Privileged club members area in between. It’s all one large swimming area for everyone, but it really is very big, so it felt uncrowded and children rarely came close to us.
  
  
• There’s no way to reserve sun chairs (unless you’re a Privileged member sitting in the separate Privileged beach area), and the brochure they give you at check-in says they’ll remove any towels placed before 6:30am. We would usually arrive at the beach at 8am and always got our preferred spot. Even well after 9am, there were plenty of seats with shade available!
  
  
• The sun chairs and palapas are spaced nicely, no overcrowding here.
  
  
• Security watches the beach all day and won’t let vendors approach. They’ll call to you if you’re in the front row of sun chairs, but you won’t be bothered by anyone if you’re a row back.
  
  
• The main pool with the swim-up bar is very small. There’s another small pool between two of the villas, but it doesn’t have a swim-up bar. But we found that there were only a few people in the pools at any given time, sometimes none at all, so the size was never an issue, and we loved how quiet it was. You can also use the much, much larger pool at the family-friendly resort if you crave noise and action.
  
  
• There are private plunge pools available in the top-level rooms of one of the villas that would make for an amazing private sanctuary. There are also two kinds of swim-up rooms available, those that combine with main pool (if you want easy access to the swim-up bar) and those that are separate.
  
  
• The buffet is very small at the time of this review because one section is being rebuilt, but the buffet near the beach has a much bigger selection. It’s shared with the family-friendly resort, but there’s a separate entrance and seating area for the adults-only guests with nicer views and prettier decor.
  
  
• You make dinner reservations via a mobile website for Toscana (Italian), Tao Cat (Asian), Siwichi (Peruvian), and BLoved (seafood/vegetarian). The reservations open up a few days in advance, so you’ll be able to book a Sunday dinner on a Thursday. We found that only the Italian restaurant filled up quickly, but our opinion was that the pizza was the best part of that restaurant, and we could get all the pizza we wanted at the buffet! I saw some older people complain about having to use the website in reviews, but we loved being able to handle it ourselves, and the concierge in the lobby will always help you, if needed.
  
  
• Tao Cat and Siwichi are upstairs from the main pool/central lobby area and are open-air. Toscana also has open sides. You might miss the air-conditioning in June, but it’s so nice not to be locked in the windowless restaurants you’ll find at a lot of resorts. Choose BLoved or the adults-only buffet if you crave A/C!
  
  
• There’s a food truck on the adults-only side of the beach that serves things like hot dogs, burgers, and fries during the day, and the beach bar serves sushi. Back by the adults-only swim-up bar, there’s a snack bar that serves things like tacos, mozzarella sticks, and nachos all afternoon.
  
  
• We found the food in general to be fine/good, very typical of resort food. There was plenty of Dominican food but a lot of things like pasta, meats and cheeses for sandwiches, pizza, and French fries to please most palates. We thought the desserts here were more interesting than usual, with flan and cheesecake and chocolate molds filled with mousse. There was also, of course, self-serve ice cream available at lunch and dinner! Breakfast was our favorite meal thanks to the wide variety of sausages and bacon, the fresh omelet station, and the mangu (mashed savory plantains).
  
  
• The room service menu is pretty small but is therefore delivered quickly! We enjoyed burgers, quesadillas, salads, and sandwiches for lunch and dinner and loved how the breakfast room service came with coffee and milk.
  
  
• Which is good, because there’s no coffee shop at this resort! You can get coffee at the lobby bar starting at 9am and the beach bar at 10am, but unlike other resorts, the buffet is the only place to get coffee before that. We don’t usually eat breakfast but love a 7am coffee, so this was a small miss for us.
  
  
• We’re just going to say it, the cocktails were weak. We’re not sure we ever felt even slightly tipsy here except when drinking beer. We’re not looking to get drunk at an all-inclusive, but in the heat and with how attentive the service is, we’d expect a little buzz. The sparkling wine served at dinner was laughably 2% ABV. I’m sure they don’t want any drunken accidents, but it felt like a cheap way to treat adults.
  
  
• The minifridge in our room was restocked with a few cans of beer and several bottles of soda and water. There weren’t full bottles of liquor in the rooms like at other resorts, and you can’t order drinks with room service, so expect to have to bring drinks back to your room from the bar. 
  
  
• The rooms were updated and higher-end, with a giant shower with two rainfall showerheads and two detachable showerheads. There were full-size bottles of shampoo and bath gel in the shower, and housekeeping left conditioner and lotion for us upon request. There’s a pillow menu on the same website where you make dinner reservations for ordering extra soft, hard, or feather pillows to your room.
  
  
• The staff were all wonderful. Everyone said hello to us as we passed, they were quick to seat us at dinner, they remembered our cocktail orders, and they smiled. The beach service was especially attentive and friendly, and we used it often even though there was never a line at the bar. A concierge was available via WhatsApp for those of us who don’t like to talk on the room phone.
  
  
• We saw reviews complaining that the staff doesn’t speak English, but that wasn’t our experience. Most of the other guests are from Spain with just a few other Europeans and Americans, but the staff almost entirely seem to know English, anyway. We used our high school Spanish as much as we could, but the staff would usually switch over to English immediately. We liked that we felt truly relaxed because we couldn’t even listen in to other people’s conversations if we tried!
  
  
• There are 110V outlets in the rooms, no adapters needed for Americans!
  
  
• Enjoy activities such as dancing and water aerobics at the beach and nightly entertainment in the central lobby area with comfortable, padded seats. You can see the live singers from the restaurants as you eat dinner!
  
  
• The grounds are very beautiful, with tons of lush plant life. We only saw one resort cat, but there were tons of lizards, and the butterflies were out of control! We literally had thousands pass us by one day on the beach.