Zel Punta Cana

Our group of 9 adults and 5 young children experienced a truly wonderful and relaxing vacation at this resort. The staff were consistently friendly, attentive, and made us feel welcome from the moment we arrived. The property is beautiful and well-maintained, with plenty of pool space so it never felt crowded. We especially appreciated the covered cabanas (free, and a great shade option) and being able to grab towels as needed for the kids. We also loved the easy access to the gorgeous beach—it was absolutely stunning and we appreciated having food and drinks readily available there. All of the resort's food options were excellent, with good variety and quality throughout our stay. Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and we would highly recommend this resort to anyone looking for a memorable and stress-free getaway in Punta Cana.

Great location and Sevice @ a reasonable price! Food was excellent and registration went very smooth!

The service, amenities, and food were excellent. I am grateful we went with Zel Punta Cana. Great bang for the buck - truly a special stay. Only knock is that our sleep was disrupted a couple nights by noisy neighbors. Zel staff addressed the issue satisfactorily.

I went with a group of friends for an all inclusive week’s stay at Zel Punta Cana and here is my review following our stay there. Let’s start with the positives: (1) Beautiful resort, lush well kept gardens, clean spacious rooms comfy beds with excellent housekeeping service and mini bar refreshed daily. (2) Lots of space around the huge pool area, plenty of sunbeds and free Bali beds. Lots of shady spots from the sun. (3) Regular shuttle service to beach and beach bar takes less than 5 minutes or it is a 15 minute walk to the beach. (4) On site spa is on the expensive side however a worthwhile treat if you can afford it. (5) These particular staff made extra effort and went out of their way to provide excellent service and deserve a mention: Yunior, Cairo, Gabriel, Florinda, Socrates, Yasmel, Maria, Juan Louis, Emmanuel x2 (beach spa sales and beach bar), Alvero. Unfortunately, there are many areas that a hotel of this calibre needs to address. For these reasons I would not go back or recommend this hotel. It is clear there is a lack of proper managerial oversight and guests keep reporting the same issues that are not being addressed. The responses I have seen on TripAdvisor are too lighthearted and flippant and suggest a lack of taking things seriously by the current manager at this hotel. Even though there were supervisors on the floor, they just chatted between themselves and did not greet guests to check in on their stay, ask how the food was etc. This resort needs to invest in proper training of staff in what great hospitality actually looks like as I believe it will greatly improve the guest experience. (1) Check in process. The check in process could be better. The hotel should offer the guests the option of either doing it themselves or being assisted instead of just handing tablets and expecting guests after a 12 hour journey to do it. On the night we arrived, Warner was at check in and all four of us concluded that he was unhelpful, unwelcoming and bordering on being rude. Allocation of rooms and forward planning. We booked this stay four months ahead of our arrival as a group of four for two rooms and the hotel put us in completely different sections of the resort and despite our polite requests would not move us to be closer. Moreover we paid the same amount for the stay but the rooms were vastly different one being ground floor and having a large garden with cabana and one being on the 2nd floor with a small courtyard only. When we pointed this out to Warner who checked us in, his response was a very unhelpful “well you have come to a wellness resort” implying that we could benefit from the distance between the rooms. (2) Food and Beverage. Food in the buffet style Parda was variable depending on what time you went- fresher at the beginning but at the end of service dry and inedible especially for the dinner service. Oats and a lot of the food were warm to lukewarm even at the start of breakfast service. Teapots were brought to the table covered with a saucer plate instead of their lids, no jugs to bring cold milk to the table. Cocktails were terrible at pretty much all the bars in the resort. The hotel needs to invest in teaching their staff cocktail making with a proper mixologist. Too much use of sugary pre-mixed alternatives instead of fresh ingredients. E.g. making strawberry mojitos with no real strawberry in the actual drink???? Booking of restaurants in the resort is through terminals that did not always work. At check in, it should be made clear that some restaurants cannot be booked 24h in advance. (3) Customer Service. It was clear throughout our stay that customers speaking Spanish seemed to get a quicker and friendlier service from staff compared to anyone speaking English. The level of customer service was extremely variable and mostly poor. Most staff do not greet guests on encountering them in the corridors, on entering the restaurant, standing at the bar etc. Reception staff were not always very helpful but frequently four staff standing around chatting between themselves instead of tending to guests. (4) Hotel pools. Pool area run out of towels more than once during the stay. The hotel was full so they should have planned for a high demand on their towels etc. Need a pool service so customer can order food and drink from their beds/ cabanas rather than having to go to the bar each time. (5) Beach Facilities. Food at Neguri beach bar was variable . We ate there four times and twice we noted that the prawns need to be deveined properly, calamari and croquettes were soggy and inedible. For a resort their size, more and better sunbeds and umbrellas are needed at the beach bar. Beds are limited and I saw guests getting up early to go to hold them with towels so they wouldn’t pay the exhorbitant $130 fee for a private Bali bed. Toilets at the beach bar were not checked frequently so ran out of toilet paper, dirty floor, overflowing bins. (6) Activities. Information given at check in by Warner was not complete as not told about activities or how to access information about this so missed out on some activities we would have wanted to participate in. The hotel need to advertise activities better and also plan for the popular activities so they don’t run out of materials e.g. macrame class was popular one day and some guests had to be turned away. Need a bigger space for some of their more popular activities too like the macrame class, fan painting class which is done on one table in the bar area. No one told us about FunRepublic and how to get there until the last day we were there. (7) Use of QR codes. I am not against the use of technology however there is too much use of QR codes around the resort for everything. Guests should also be given printed out information as an alternative or be able to book in person at reception. (8) Room service food. The food offering is mediocre and needs a major overhaul as one of this resort’s priorities. (9) Hotel needs to provide shuttle service off resort to nearby shopping mall.

Overall 7/10. Check-in and check-out were easy. Resort was beautiful. Beach front was lovely, but could use more lawn chairs. Food was a disappointment - mainly buffet which always had same food and quality was not great.