Casa Marina Beach Hotel

We have visited this resort several times now, and we really enjoy our holidays here. We are returning in may 2008.
We have always had a great holiday, and always look forward to returning. Having read some of the comments I do feel that some people do expect the world. We first visited this resort in 2001, and have paid the same amount to go this year as we did in 2001, which for a trip to the Dominican republic, is not expensive.
The staff are always excellent, friendly, and efficient, we have always found that they are always happy to assist and help.
The food in our opinion has always been good, we especially like the Italian. The buffets are always varied, with plenty of choice, and they cater for every taste at breakfast. All of the restaurants are outside, which we think is nice, some people don't like the fact that birds can fly in, personally it doesn't bother us. Try the omelettes at breakfast, you pick your own ingredients, and it's made for you as you wait.
My only negative point, and it is a small one, is most of the rooms that we have stayed in, could do with 'modernising', but to be fair they are always clean and tidy, and the beds are comfortable, and it's air conditioned, at the end of the day you don't go on holiday to stay in your room all day.
The bars are always well stocked, we have never had any problems getting drinks, yes they are generally locally produced, but are fine. The soft drinks are all branded, and are always available.
Wine is not one of the drinks that is widely available all inclusive, so we like a glass of wine in the evening, so we buy a bottle from one of the pay bars.
We tried several trips on our first visit, and can highly recommend the trip to sauna island, it does seem expensive, but well worth it.
The sea can be a bit rough sometimes, but it always amazes me how many people ignore flag warnings!, other than that the beaches are great!.
Everyone is different, we love it at Casa Marina, not everyone will, but it depends what you want from a holiday.

Wow! what a place! All inclusive hotel in the Caribbean!
This was a truly fantastic holiday; Sun Sea and Rum.
Hotel is a 3 star hotel which is ideal for kids and families.
Bars are all open 10am - 11pm and are of course all inclusive in the holiday price providing a wide range of local drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.
Food is out of this world, they have 3 restaurants, a seafood, Mexican and an Italian and also a buffet restaurant which has a large selection of food for you to help yourself to; they theme the buffet restaurant each night so you won’t get bored! Again, all included in the price.
Three pools, and cold water Jacuzzis overlooking the sea! magical at sunset! Get a drink and get there first!
The hotel is literally minutes from the beach where you can sunbath all day and fight the waves which is great fun! Get snorkelling kit and have a look at all the fish there!
Staff are friendly and will do anything to help, although as typical Dominicans - this can take some time as life is so relaxed out there!
The facilities are shared with the Casa Marina Reef hotel next door, but this gives you access to their pools and bars too!
Thomson trips are well worth doing, especially Saona! FANTASTIC!
This is a great hotel for people wanting to experience the Caribbean without spending loads of cash, it is great for the kids as they can pretty much entertain themselves all day long.
We thought it was that good, we are going back a year later!

We are just back after a fortnight's honeymoon at this resort and we wouldn't be rushing to recommend it. It was ok in some respects, the rooms were cleaned every day, not sure how often the beds were changed but they seemed fine. Neither of us smokes and every morning I could smell cigarette smoke in the room, I think it must have been coming through the air con.
Every morning at breakfast there was a bird sitting on top of the squeezy bottle of maple syrup merrily drinking away at it undisturbed. It was always something to watch while the toaster took about 10mins to brown your toast. I had an omelette a few mornings and I wasn't convinced they were cooked properly.
The evening meal was supposed to be from 6.30pm - 10.00pm but really after 9.15pm you can forget about it, most of the decent stuff has long gone. They only serve wine at tea time in the restaurants, it's not available in the free bars and it kept running out.
We tried a couple of their speciality restaurants - waste of time, not to mention money. We went to the Seafood one and my husband has a real passion for seafood so he splashed out and ordered lobster. They just brought one over, we expected to be given a choice, they never told us what weight it was. At the end of the meal we got the bill $34 and apparently it was like rubber!
I had the runs for the full fortnight and after the first few days I noticed that there were quite a few flies around the food, that's the drawback with any buffet I suppose.
The actual "town" itself is quite a dump really and quite scary, there are a lot of security guards about which was quite reassuring (in a way).
I couldn't stand the way there were some many local lads hanging about the beach, they were very forward and cocky (another word for very cheeky!).

Being lucky enough to have numerous holidays per year and having travelled to numerous holiday resorts, my partner, his 14 year old son and I did our homework and booked this resort.
To say we were confused with the comments made by others on the internet is an understatement to say the least. Although we were delayed at the airport for nearly 12 hours we arrived at the hotel in the early hours of the morning and were promptly attended to by the reception staff, and the porters took our suitcases immediately to our room. We were on the top floor.
We found the room to be clean and tidy and generally in a good decorative order. The bathroom was basic but clean and there were plenty of clean white towels and soaps etc.
Also in the bathroom were 2 bottles of water. Having read comments by other visitors I am amazed why they are complaining that they felt the need to refill their bottles of water daily. There were plenty of bars and restaurants serving drinks and food surely they could have had enough drinks to see them through from 11:00pm until 7:00am the next morning.
Our maid was fantastic - the room always thoroughly cleaned and mopped using bleach. We did have incidents with the shower / bath flooding the bathroom and the toilet blocked once, but we just reported it to the reception and within 10 minutes the whole situation was sorted with no problems at all. We found the staff to be extremely hardworking and helpful.
I do believe that some people go on holiday with a poor attitude towards hotel staff and this is just wrong. These people work extremely hard and are always smiling but what do people expect if you grunt at them...they will grunt back. As I said, we had no problems at all. There were plenty of bars and they stocked an excellent range of soft drinks and spirits (real Coca Cola!) and never a problem for a person getting the drinks for the family (as is the situation in many all inclusive resorts being 4 and 5 Star!).
Food - again we are amazed as to what people complain about. If you want pukka pie and chips then stay in England! When in Rome and all that malarkey...We found there to be always plenty of choice and nobody got the dreaded deli belly. Infact it was a regular occurrence to see the kitchen staff with a digital thermometer checking the temperature of the food - attention to detail was excellent.
We dined at the Fish restaurant, the Mexican and the Italian twice and every time thumbs up. Never any problems getting a sunbed whether it be on the beach, by the pools or even by the fantastically refreshing rock pool Jacuzzis.
Somebody raised a point that you have to pay for umbrellas on the beach - this is correct 3 dollars (approx £1.50 per day) but there are plenty of palm trees to lay under if you want to keep out of the sun. Also some people have moaned about the waves - well that is hardly the hotels fault and besides if you walk to the next beach (2 minutes at Casa Marina Reef) the waves are a little calmer and if you walk for another 5 minutes you will arrive at Sosua beach and there the waves are calmer still and there are plenty of beachside shacks to do your shopping.
There is also a beach flag system green Ok to swim, yellow caution, red is a no no. There is also a staff member who will wave and shout for you to come out if he thinks you are at risk.
Remember to haggle and you will get some amazing bargains on trinkets. There is a tour man in the hotel who will arrange all your tours and also just outside the hotel is Mel tours - there is not much difference in these 2's prices and both are excellent - I would add that they are nearly half the price of the Thomson Rep and it is exactly the same tour. We were booked on a catamaran (same one as Thomsons) and they were told that they couldn’t go due to the weather which was rubbish as we still went and the weather was fine.
After speaking to numerous people within the resort they had booked with Thomson and were severely disappointed as most of their trips had been cancelled for one reason or another and they missed out on doing the things that they wanted to do.
Lesson to be learnt - save yourself some money and don’t miss out on the trips, recommend Monster Truck Safari; Ocean World is a must, Catamaran! Can’t comment on the entertainment at the evenings as we were shattered by 9:00pm and think the entertainment started at 9:30pm ish.
The entertainment board showed entertainment all day long, including activities on the beach, volleyball, football, general games. Boules, darts water games, step aerobics, dance lessons etc etc etc and there were also activities in the Casa Marina Reef Pool too.
We were in the DR in May 2007 also and stayed 4 star plus and this hotel was better than that! We paid just over £500 each for 14 nights and was excellent value for money - even a 14 year old lad said it was good and that’s just amazing! Those that are complaining should have paid £1500 and gone to the Bahamas!
Bravo Casa Marina Beach - will be returning in 2008!

I really don’t know which disappointment to start with.
My wife and I decided we would go to Casa Marina Beach for a week, and that’s when it started. We requested a ground floor room due to the fact I have had back surgery, we were promptly given a room on the 4th floor (all stairs). Two days later they finally got us a room on the ground floor if you could call it a room and we moved downstairs.
There were a lot of broken tiles in the bathroom and there seemed to be a lot of little ants (so take some Raid). When we checked in the room had 2 bottles of water to drink and that’s what you get for the week you just need to keep filling up at the bars. Approximately 30 minutes after getting in the room I came out of the bathroom and not noticing that the floor had flooded in the last 5 minutes I slipped and wrenched my shoulder (so much for any tours).
Maintenance came to the room to repair whatever was wrong and 3 hours later we were finally moved in. While they were repairing whatever was wrong they had to remove ceiling tiles that’s was when we noticed all the mould in the area above the ceiling in the bathroom and closet.
The weather was relatively poor this week, which I can’t blame on the resort, but other resorts we have been to usually have had activities inside to entertain the customers if it was inclement weather, not so at Casa Marina.
Maybe that’s because there is no inside areas, although covered all areas are outdoor even the buffets and a la carte restaurants.
As for the bars there are 3 bars open during the day, all of these close to the beach, so if you want a drink near the pool you must go to the beach area to retrieve it.Two other bars are open in the buffets during meals, 3 others in the a la carte restaurants. There are 2 others that open at 11pm and are cash bars and one of the beach bars turn into a cash bar after 11pm all others close down.
Although the food at the food at the a la carte restaurants are included, it’s just basics If you wish a bigger better dinner it will cost you. The variety of food at the buffets did not change that much except for the meats that were being prepared. Over all the quality of the food was 2 out of 5.
Now between the 2 resorts Reef and Beach the cold whirlpool tubs are located along the water’s edge built into the old coral, there is a lot of broken glass and garbage in these areas. We never got down to the beach of the reef due to the long stairway down, it is nice idea that it is secluded.
The beach at the beach resort where we stayed was a little dirty with cigarette butts, the lounge chairs need to be replaced and if you want shade on the beach be prepared to rent the umbrellas $3.00 US a day.
Overall I'd rate it a 2 and won’t be going back.

We had a fantastic time at the Casa Marina Beach.
The food was A1, the drinks long cool and plentiful and the sun scorching. We went 4 star to Tobago 3 years ago and this was on a par with that!
The staff could not do enough for you and were always friendly (apart from one girl at one bar who always looked like she didn't want to be there).
The room was clean and tidy and the air con was a welcome relief from the heat.
The only negative would be the roughness of the sea and the fact that the whole complex was a little scruffy and could benefit from a lick of paint, however it was always clean and tidy.
If you want a cheap Caribbean break this is the place to go.

This is the second time I have been to Casa Marina Beach, and like last time I loved it.
The staff were very very friendly and I really enjoyed my time there and I will defo go back there for a third time .
The rooms are very nice and well kept, the maid cleans the rooms every morning and changed the sheets every day.
Dominican Republic is the nicest place I have ever been to and I really enjoy it every time I go. I highly recommend this resort.

We found hotel to be in a nice setting - nice pools, beaches etc. However, the attitude of some of the staff was moody and we had damp in one of the rooms that wrecked some of our clothes.
We found the attitude of some of the Dominican guests in the hotel very odd and off putting. Some of them seemed to think they had the right to walk in front of you in food queues and some of the bar staff would serve Dominicans first.
Also, Dominicans were allowed to stay in the swimming pool later than other guests and we would be asked to leave the pool while Dominicans remained. When challenged on these points in the limited Spanish we had they would give in and stop what they were doing.
All 4 adults had upset tummies at times and we suspected they had not covered basic food hygiene.
Sosua at night is completely over run with prostitution. There was one restaurant we went to outside at night. There are virtually no tourists outside hotels at night, except for a few single men! We were travelling as 2 couples with young children and nightlife was generally seedy and boring.
Sosua beach is very pretty and a nice place to spend time, but beware the hard sell of endless stuff you don't really want at crazy prices you can feel obliged to pay once you've started to barter.
We have travelled in Africa, South America, the Far East, Europe and other Caribbean islands and New York and would return to all these places, but would not return to the Dom Rep mainly due to attitude of some of the people.
On the positive weather was lovely, lots of hotel based activities in day and Ocean World Dolphin experience lovely. Was good family time together, despite general atmosphere we did have a nice time anyway as our first holiday with our baby who enjoyed being in the pool every day.

We stayed at the Casa Marina Hotel for two weeks. Overall the hotel was not quite up to the standard I was expecting as I've been in nicer 3 stars in Mexico and Jamaica.
Not really suitable for the less mobile as there are no lifts in the hotel and also there are steps to the bars which could be a problem for the less mobile.
The food was very repetitive, who wants to eat fried bananas for breakfast and stewed beans and beef steak.
The a la carte restaurants were a nice change from the buffet. We really enjoyed the Italian, pizzas and the ravioli was gorgeous. The Mexican admittedly was not that nice. We went to the seafood restaurant; it also serves steaks and chicken for those who don't enjoy seafood.
The entertainment at night started at 9.45 which I felt was a little late especially for families with young children. But the staff do work really hard to give you a good show.
Overall the staff were very good, always helpful, and friendly. Rooms were spacious and clean. Highlight of the holiday was going to Ocean World. The dolphins and sea lions are a must.

Loved the complex we stayed in beautiful place. Jacuzzi by beach lovely idea, the staff were brilliant but felt trapped.
The complex was a safe haven in a not so safe feeling country.
People outside not quite so friendly some almost rude a few very nice especially when buying from them. The hassles from people selling stuff made it not worth going out, so we tended to stay in complex.
The entertainment staff were fantastic but it was definitely Butlins in the sun.
Unless got a fantastic deal would not go there again, going back to Barbados this year.