Hilton La Romana All Inclusive Resort is a popular resort in Bahayibe, Dominican Republic. Hilton took over Dreams La Romana in 2018, gave it a multi-million-dollar facelift, then split the massive property into two resorts: Hilton La Romana Adults Only Resort and Hilton La Romana Family Resort. We stayed there to bring you an exclusive Hilton La Romana Resort review.

An hour drive from Punta Cana International Airport, Hilton La Romana is located in a remote area away from the crowds on an intimate beach. Both the family (412 rooms) and the adult (356 rooms) resorts are side by side, literally on the same grounds, and guests can go back and forth between the two. However, children are not allowed over on the adult side.

The resort is all-inclusive, excluding spa treatments. With your room rate is all food and beverage (including alcohol), day and night activities and live entertainment, free mini-bar (soft drinks, water and beer), 24-hour room service, free Wifi (which was surprisingly super fast) and everything else a resort offers (like concierge). There is also an adults-only nightclub, a very small casino (about 15 slot machines, roulette, and three or four table games), fitness center, water sports and various dining/snacking stations throughout the property.

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All-inclusive resorts in Dominican Republic have a certain reputation, and Hilton knows this, too, so it attempts to win over luxury travelers with Premium Club at either resort. When you upgrade to a Premium Club room, you have access to various exclusive amenities, including a private beach area, restaurant, lounge, better room options and more. It only costs approximately $75 more to upgrade, so it’s worth it. I’ll discuss further below since I booked Premium Club.

Here’s my review of Hilton La Romana Adults Only All Inclusive Resort. Because my friend and I checked into the Adults Only Resort, I’ll mostly go through my experience there below, but I’ll also include what the Family Resort is like, since we spent time on both sides.

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If you plan on traveling to Dominican Republic, make sure you know what to expect. I wrote a story on 7 things you should know about traveling to Dominican Republic, so definitely open it in a new tab so you can take a look later. If you’re curious about VIP Service at Punta Cana Airport, boom: here’s a review of that too.

Take an exclusive look at Hilton La Romana All Inclusive Resort in Dominican Republic.

As soon as you arrive at Hilton La Romana All Inclusive Resort, your driver will take you to the Hilton La Romana Adults Only entrance or the Hilton La Romana Family entrance. Remember, they are separate properties, but on the same land. My friend Kris and I were dropped off at the Adults Only entrance, which isn’t very different from the Family entrance in terms of style. The al fresco lobby is quite striking, with a soaring ceiling, columns, marble floors and plenty of seating areas. The check-in is to the right.

To the left is the adults-only bar: 18 degree, 68 degree. Remember, this resort is all inclusive, so all your alcoholic beverages are included. You don’t have to sign for anything. The lobby was the main hangout area, since there was a live band or performance here every night as well.The lobby is also home to Aroma, the coffee shop and bakery. Usually, at an all inclusive, little bites and coffee are served in one place (like the bar), so I appreciated that Hilton offered this separate coffee shop. It was always busy and they always had one or two people back there, but it did go fast. Again, you don’t have to sign for anything, which was weird to get used to but super fun. I loved the doughnuts (I had 2 a day; guilty!). If you upgrade to a Premium Club room, you have access to: a separate, private check in (pictured); a dedicated lounge with bar; premium alcoholic beverages; an exclusive ala carte breakfast/lunch restaurant (Noor); and roped-off, private sections on the beach. You also get better room options, like a swim-up suite. The Premium Lounge had a buffet of mostly fried food every day (like dumplings or cheese) and some vegetables. There’s also a daily dessert counter, which I obviously attacked every day. There is a bar in the Premium Lounge, as well as some sofas and chairs.

The majority of guestrooms at both properties are on the smaller side. We had a Premium Garden View King, which was about 411 square feet, the average room size (there’s a Premium Suite Garden View that’s 828 square feet). This is the same at the Family side, though the Suites over there come with a private plunge pool (!). All rooms, no matter the category, come with a bathroom with dual vanity, rain shower, closet, mini-bar, flat-screen TV and 2x daily turndown service. Here’s another view of our room. The rooms are set in long buildings, stacked over 3 floors. We had a room on the ground floor, which was great since we could just walk over to the adult pool in seconds. Hilton La Romana Adults Only has three pools. One of the pools is *only* for Premium guests, which is this one below. It’s very quiet, large and very deep, which I appreciated. By the way, I should mention that there were a lot of smokers at this resort. The Dominican Republic in general caters to Europeans, Russians, Latin and Canadians, as well as Americans, and every room has an ashtray on the balcony, and there are many smoking sections, including areas outside restaurants. You could not smoke at the pools though. I did not have a problem whatsoever with the smokers, in fact, I sort of loved being around them (hey, you’re on vacation!), but just a heads-up. You can see how the buildings surround the pool, sort of cocooning it. It’s intended to be quiet. The adult infinity pools (side by side each other in one pool deck) is where the swim-up bar is, and music is playing, and of course the family pool is a little chaotic, so it was nice being able to read my book. I also loved the water massage jets at the Premium pool, and it does have a swim-up bar, but the party people generally went over to the infinity pool. It had more of a party vibe. Also, if you book Premium, you don’t get a special wristband or anything. When you get a drink or towel from the bartender, he takes down your room number, which indicates your room status. Oh, there’s also a hot tub, but it was under construction when I was there. The best category room is the swim-out garden view room. You have your own pool literally right off your balcony. I wish we had booked this room but they were sold out (weirdly, I never once saw anyone in the pools!). There’s a limited number of these rooms since they only go to ground floor rooms on one side of the building.

The two adults-only infinity pools face the beach. They are also huge.The two infinity pools are actually one huge pool split by a stone path right through the middle. The one on the left was quieter than the one on the right, because the one on the right…… has the swim-up bar!Here’s a look at the family pool. It’s sort of lazy-river style, and it was massive. There was also a 10-person hot tub. Honestly, I spent most of my time at the Premium Adults Only pool. Here it is again.

For our Hilton La Romana Resort review, we definitely need to highlight the pools.
Hilton La Romana is right on the foot of a beautiful beach (with trees! which I thought was unique and loved). The beach is divided into two sections: the family side and the adult side. Further division was for Premium guests. As you can see below, they have a dedicated beach section, indicated by the roped-off area, but nobody really checks to see if you are Premium or not (and also, most people preferred to be closer to the water, so it was quiet). In theory, there is beach service, but we saw a beach waitress only once for our three night stay. It’s faster to go to the bar to get a drink and come back. The beach is gorgeous. The beach area on the adult side is about 1/3 the size of the beach area on the family side, but it was never crowded and felt intimate. We loved the beach. For our Hilton La Romana Resort review, the beach definitely gives it a good notch up.We were at the adult beach every day. If you squint, you can see how there are a lot more people over on the family side. There’s a pier that extends out from the end of the property, so you can actually see the beach in its entirety from here. This is the family beach we’re looking at. Insanely beautiful, right? There’s a private beach section over on the family side too for Premium guests. You can’t get in the sea from this side, but the views were pretty breathtaking. If you see that sail in the distance, that’s the end of the Hilton property, so you can get an idea of how much the beach sprawls. Because the property faces west, we got the sunset every night. A lot of people would watch the sunset from the pier, but I went up to the lifeguard tower after he left for some great shots. The resort does have a spa. It was huge (21,000 square feet) and rustic. I loved the spa lobby, which had a vaulted thatch-roof ceiling. The staff here were amazing. The spa has a sauna, as well as an outdoor jacuzzi and pool. It’s set in the back of the property. Honestly, I was blown away with the spa. The treatment villas were intimate, sprawled throughout a lush garden with reflection ponds and Koi fish. It felt very Southeast Asian, and while I’m at that, a lot of the resort’s design had that vibe. My massage was about a 3/10 but my friend said his massage was fantastic. Hey, that gives another nudge up for the Hilton La Romana Resort review.
There are five restaurants at Hilton La Romana, including: Sakura (Pan-Asian, dinner only); Caoba (buffet for breakfast/lunch/dinner); Mare Grill (lunch and dinner); Noor (Mediterranean for dinner, and breakfast and lunch for Premium); and Chinola (Dominican, dinner). Mare (pictured) is one of three oceanfront restaurants. There’s a Spanish restaurant, though it’s not on the website. You can eat at any restaurant you wish, no matter what resort you’re at, and all restaurants are set on both properties.
Here’s the buffet. There’s a salad bar, dessert station, meat section, section for Dominican food and some other specialities.I loved the design of Sakura, the Asian restaurant. While the Hilton La Romana website says reservations are not necessary at any of the restaurants, they actually are. Remember, the resort has over 700 rooms, meaning there can be some 1,400 people on property, and only 5 restaurants. You’ll want to make reservations because the host will ask you if you have reservations, and you get priority seating over guests who don’t have a reservation. Sakura has a teppanyaki grill, which you definitely need reservations for since it doesn’t seat a lot. While the Adults Only lobby has live music at night, the nightly entertainment over on the family side was on a larger scale, like acrobats.I loved the structure of the buildings at night. They reminded me of Avant-Guarde alien spaceship pods from the 1980s or something. They were pretty edgy for Hilton, and I was living for it.

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