Zoetry Agua Punta Cana

Had a great time in April 2018 at Zoetry w/ “Carlos our Butler�. He was available to make our stay a pleasant one and to ensure all our needs were met. He arranged for our Spa, horseback riding and plenty of beverages!! Plus he was everywhere on the property!!

I spent a week here over spring break and it was just lovely. The grounds, pools and beach are impeccable and the service for the most part is very good. My room was kept spotless by Margarita and the evening woman whose name I cannot remember. She spritzed my bedding each night with a calming scent. The towels, linens and bedding are wonderful. I go on vacation for the ocean and did not make use of the pools although they were very inviting. A new hip replacement made it impossible to exit using the ladder available. The swim up bar was always active with many guests and music. The beach is wonderful and you can walk for miles. The reef offshore makes swimming very easy and delightful. If you want shade and a chaise lounge you have to do the 6am "chair steal" which disappointed me because that is not my game. There are many shade palapas but they have beach beds underneath, which I find uncomfortable. I had the luxury of ocean front so it wasn't too bad not to be directly on the beach every day. The food was very good, some dishes were better than others. The ceviche is superb! I would like to see snacks available as I am not a 3 meal a day type of eater and the lunch menu for me was akin to dinner. I would love to see the beachfront Indigo restaurant open all day with perhaps a lighter fare menu. I had a couple of aloof waiters and 1 rude hostess but other than that the service was very good. Some employees were indeed outstanding. Room service is exceptional but the dishes are very limited. Again, I would like to see lighter fare available for breakfast (perhaps a bagel etc). Food arrives in your room quickly and the wait staff are truly superb and professional. The spa is lovely, I had an hour massage and the 20 minute included one. The spa exudes peacefulness and tranquility. Most evenings there is entertainment at the lobby bar and included singers of different genres and a folklore show. It was a destination after dinner if you wanted to chill with some music. A bonfire on the beach with a saxophonist was also nice. It is not for the party crowd though. I took part on the horseback riding excursion and a catamaran trip and I enjoyed both. I am disappointed I missed the painting class after reading about it and never timed the yoga or water exercise class right to take part in those. I have a difficult time relaxing, even on vacation, and after 2 days I found my zen. I may return here for this very reason and I normally move on to try something new for each vacation. I bungled the whole "butler" thing. My butler was very nice and great at his job, but I was very reluctant to ask him for anything. My advice to you is -use your butler! They are there for that reason and enjoy their jobs. The reason that I did not rate Zoetry a 5 star may seem petty to you but some things I find bothersome. The blinds in the bath area were broken and needed to be opened and closed one slat at a time, the patio doors would not close and lock at times, and it was difficult to get waited on towards the end of a meal time (lunch). Sometimes there is no hot water and other times there is no cold. The rooms and some furniture are dated and could use a refresh. Not deal breakers for sure but annoying nevertheless. When I pay for a deluxe ocean front 5 star suite my expectations are different than when I take students to Costa Rica for example. All said, Zoetry Agua Punta Cana awarded me a luxurious relaxing vacation and great conversations with some employees!

We stayed at the Zoetry Punta Cana for our honeymoon in April 2018. We absolutely loved everything about it! The food and alcohol were amazing. The treatment and service were awesome. We had plenty of activities offered to us and enjoyed some of them (the sauna, horseback riding), but mainly preferred to lounge on the beach and hang out by the wet bar. The ONLY thing that could have been better would have been eliminating the ants from our shower, but even with that, I loved the experience and I would go back in a heartbeat!!

We stayed at Zoetry Punta Cana from April 15th to 22nd for a one-week getaway from Toronto. The resort is beautiful and extremely well maintained, as is the beach. This is a vacation for people who want to spend their time relaxing in a peaceful environment, instead of filling their days with activities. Each room is assigned a “Butler�, and as we discovered, this is the key to your stay. Our Butler was Carlos and we could not have asked for anyone friendlier or more attentive. He did everything he could to make our stay the best it could be. Anything we needed, we texted him and it was taken care of immediately. We even addressed with him a couple of issues we had, which were completely beyond his control, but nonetheless he did everything he could to address them. Carlos delivered the best customer service we have ever received at a resort. In general, the other staff were also very friendly. Apparently Zoetry is known for its food, but we found it fairly mediocre. Nothing bad, but nothing special at all! The rooms are very spacious, clean and nicely furnished. We had a swim-up room with a spacious and private terrace. There are two infinity pools which overlook the beach but with a swim-up room we didn't had no need to go to the larger pools. The beach was a one minute walk from our room. The very tranquil hydrotherapy area and full-service spa (and gym) is a great way to spend a relaxing morning. A word of caution... When you check-in, you are given a paper key, which you bring back to a desk in the lobby in order to obtain $200 worth of vouchers for things such as the spa and discounts on full bottles of wine. This is an attempt to get you to attend a 90 minute presentation about their VIP club, which they ask you to bring your credit cards to for a lucky draw using the last 4 numbers. We realized then that this was likely to be a hard sell, and we were feeling suspicious and did not attend the presentation. We talked to other couples that did, and the presentation was 3 hours and was a hard sell and essentially a waste of time unless you want a membership to get discounts at their hotels for a fee of varying levels from $80,000 to over $200,000. You do not need to attend the presentation to get the vouchers, so you can still get the discounts.

The rooms at the Zoetry are beautiful, furnished to a very high standard, with fully stocked minibars and complimentary rum on arrival. However, due to terrible mismanagement during and following hurricane Irma, I would not return or recommend this hotel to anyone. One point first about the hotel itself: there is a good choice of restaurants at this hotel, however whilst the food was ok, it was not of a 5 star standard and I have had far better food at other 5 or even 4 star hotels. There was no continuity of service, it was very usual at each meal to be served by a number of different waiters and a lot of the time they didn’t seem to know what was going on (what you had ordered, if you had been given cutlery etc). There seemed to be no management of staff at these restaurants, we were never introduced to a head waiter or saw anyone who appeared to be in charge of the service. The bar staff, however, were excellent, and the premium spirits selection was fantastic. When hurricane Irma approached the island we really saw the terrible the management of the hotel could be. We received a note in our room one night explaining that we would be evacuated to a ‘sister’ hotel the next day. Whilst I appreciate that this was necessary for guest’s safety, the way this was handled was appalling. We were all put on a coach to the other side of the island, and from then on until we flew home almost a week later we heard nothing from the Zoetry, despite numerous attempts to contact them. We didn’t know when, if at all, we could go back to the Zoetry, even days after the hurricane had passed, and so had to assume (correctly) that we were staying put. We had to pay extra ourselves to rearrange our transfer back to the airport from the new hotel. The hotel we were sent to (Dreams La Romana) was far, far cheaper than what we had paid for the Zoetry and offered none of the service we had paid for. Dozens of people packed into a very small adults only pool area with loud music, cheap spirits, very standard ‘big resort’ type hotel rooms, no laundry service, I could go on. We did not enjoy the remainder of the holiday at all. The manager of Dreams was sympathetic (and this situation was no fault of Dreams, their guests get what they pay for). He gave his view that, if he was the manager of the Zoetry, he would be offering refunds/free stays as gesture. However, Zoetry has refused to offer anything at all (not a penny) in the way of compensation or free nights at the Zoetry. In response to my formal complaint, they have said that the hurricane was ‘force majeure’ and they therefore are not contractually required to give compensation. Whether contractually bound to or not, at a resort of this price and which holds itself out to such high standards, I would expect far better. It would be basic customer service to offer something to their customers as compensation. As a previous reviewer has mentioned, one would expect a resort such as this to be insured for these events, and the amount they will have paid Dreams to host us will have been significantly less than what we paid for the Zoetry. For those travelling in hurricane season, I would recommend steering clear of this hotel - save your money and go somewhere cheaper or find a hotel whose management offers assistance to their customers rather than bus them away to a cheaper resort and wash their hands of them.