Viva V Samana by Wyndham, A Trademark Adults All Inclusive

Worst viva hotel - (I never write reviews, but this is my experience and giving you a warning) This was my birthday weekend - The only nice part of this hotel is playa coson which is to the left of the hotel up the beach, but it’s still a walk. Beautiful spectacular views, but I had to walk to the nicer area everyday. This is the worst resort I’ve ever been to. I am a member of viva hotels membership and I can’t emphasize such A HORRIBLE experience. Hotel staff are very persistent with selling and upselling things ( memberships, spas, souvenirs) Restaurant food was not impressive. got sick in the fusion oriental restaurant for my birthday dinner. There is no snack bar. VeryLimited food. Food was horrible. My husband and I got food poisoning from both restaurant and cafeteria. The buffet Lacks so many options, not what you expect at an all inclusive. We ordered room service everyday and the food did not show up for an hour minimum, sometimes not at all. Not sure why this is adults only if they don’t have much entertainment and the bar has limited hours. Especially the club viva members small section. It’s a tiny rooftop bar with pool and amazing views, but the Section is only open until 7pm. You can’t enjoy the only thing the hotel has to offer because it closes so early. Third, we missed our excursion due to food illness and they did not want to refund. They wanted me to get a doctors note for a refund. How can you possibly leave your room to see a doctor when you’re not feeling well ?Luckily, they offered me another day after arguing and going back and fourth with management. I am an avid traveler to Dominican Republic and visit often multiple times a year. If I stay at viva Wyndham I always stay in La romana at Dominicus Beach palace. Much better, cleaner much more bars, pools and space & entertaining hotel. I will never return to this hotel ever in my life

We went to this resort 3 years ago and we loved it. But unfortunately bungalow disappointed us this time. Cockroaches are everywhere. We asked few times to disinfect the room , changed the bungalow for another one. Still the same issue . The front desk told us the room was cleaned. Nothing changed. Bungalows are usually more expensive then other rooms in resort. So why we paid extra if nobody wants to do anything to make it comfortable. ||The pros . We loved the food . The beef was always so nicely made . The variety was very good. Never been hungry:)||The animation team 3 years ago was great always dancing always make people moving. Now they look like sleeping beauties . Seriously. They look like they are bored. One guy just was seating on the beach chating for 3 hours with Spanish speaking visitors. I assume thats what they paid for. There is no vibe in the evening anymore cause the animation team just doing nothing. |Maybe management changed , but 3 years ago my review was 5 stars, now down to 3 , sad .

Ok resort - either twenty-somethings or older retirees for the most part. Food was excellent but service was not. If you don't speak French or Spanish, you will be ignored. Staff aggressive for tips and focus on that rather than providing real service. Found this from the Airport to the Resort and the day trips. Beach was great for walks but incredibly rough and the water was cloudy, which meant snorkelling was poor. Not a bad experience but there are so many other resorts that are better.

This is our third time at Viva Samana. We love spending time with the Animation group that become “friends for life”.||The hotel and restaurants are very well maintained and the staff is very friendly as always. ||The rooms are spacious and comfortable, the cleaning ladies are spectacular and make it easy to stay a whole 10 days and leaving you wanting you could stay longer.||Honestly we have to say that we truly love this hotel. However now we need to share some honest concerns. Exclusively for this our 3rd time here: ||The animation manager does not care about his team. The manager and assistant manager of animation team are really not connected with the rest. They don’t lead and boss around. Rarely spending time at all with the team and clients. You see them once in a while, when is time to take credit for the rest of the team efforts. You can spot the bad management in just one activity the minute you arrive. And sharing with first time guests we’ve found out they also can’t help to wonder why “the energy feels off” most of the time inside the animation team.|All while at the same time you notice the key members of the animation team that work very hard to keep it up, do an above and beyond job and entertain the hotel guests. They are: Ariel, Shelly, Michael, Anais, Sofia and Bryan. They are the soul of the team and truly make the best of the stay positive and working hard, even when the Management and assistant (Rafa and Lilo) always find a way to bring them down, the moral down. And again, it’s noticed and commented in general by most of the viva club clients and guests. We all can feel the low morale over the team. And we feel uneasy because we know maybe we wont find our “friends forever” working here again. ||Lastly, I don't know whom in their sane mind hired 2 young girls for the animation team who don’t show teamwork or even interest on the activity at task! They also have openly said, they are here paid to vacation. They embarrass the team with their lack of interest in activities and poor dancing skills on the shows and they don't care to try. We’ve seen them chasing the guests at the buffet for a table where to take advantage of “different food”, sitting with and ignoring them while talking on their language. Even at time you may find them at the disco chasing after guests, if you know what I mean…||To conclude, I suggest and like for general management to pay attention and recognize the people that work very hard to maintain the good spirit and morale of the hotel and company. You know, “that Viva V Samana standards and services” which for years have characterized this beautiful hotel and that makes clients and partners to come back because they are looking to see their friends and have a good vacation.

We both had a lovely Vacation! A short trip from the airport, we arrived and our room was ready. Room was clean and well maintained during our stay. Staff were ALL so warm and welcoming, always a smile and Hola! Resort size was good, never a line. Lots of towels, for pool and beach. Never a issue finding chairs. Food was good, only tried the Fusion (a la carte) and it was very good. Resort is a laid back scene, and small that walking anywhere isn't far. Don't understand why people always look for negative, guess they just like to complain! Us we look for the good stuff and it always wins! Thank you Viva V Samana!

Very disappointed with how our situation was handled at Viva V Samana. My partner and I were peacefully enjoying the beach with music at a reasonable volume when a couple (from Canada or France) approached us aggressively and made racist and insulting comments. They never spoke to us respectfully or tried to resolve anything calmly. The situation escalated when the woman grabbed my partner’s backpack, threw it away, and broke his phone. Despite this, we chose to avoid further conflict, and I personally stopped my partner from involving the police. What truly disappointed us was what happened the next day: instead of protecting us, security approached us in a harassing manner and threatened to remove us from the resort simply because we wanted to voice-record the situation for our own protection. This felt extremely unfair and unsafe, especially since we were the victims and tried our best to de-escalate the issue. As guests, we expected professionalism, neutrality, and protection—none of which we received. This experience left us feeling disrespected and very disappointed. I hope management takes situations like this seriously in the future and ensures all guests are treated with fairness and dignity.

I hope you have time because this is going to be long, I only gave this hotel one star because it wont let me leave a review with no stars. Where do i even start? Lets start from the airport. We had originally reserved transportation from Santo Domingo to Samana, we ended up renting a car instead and canceled the transfer via email (the same email thread used to confirm the transfer) We land at the airport and there is a man holding a sign with my name on it and yes you guessed it, its the transfer service. We felt so bad that the man drove THREE hours to pick us up from the airport after we canceled the services that we ended up paying him anyway, When we arrived to the resort, at first glance it was small. One pool, the beach was pretty. As soon as we walk in, somebody is already trying to get us to schedule a meeting to buy a $30,000 TIMESHARE FOR THE HOTEL, MIND YOU we havent even checked in yet. We finally check-in, we got the bungalow and it was perfect, secluded, private pool. The room was spacious and nice, exactly how it was pictured. Lets talk about the food: ITS TRASH. image going to DR to eat pizza and pasta everyday. The buffet literally serves THE SAME EXACT FOOD EVERYDAY FOR BREAKFAST LUNCH AND DINNER. the eggs are watery, the fruits are not fresh. AND IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A RESERVATION AT A RESTAURANT you have to eat at the buffet or not eat at all. We were so tired of eating the same thing that we ended up leaving our ALL INCLUSIVE hotel to have dinner outside of the hotel to actually eat good food. Actual Dominican food, actual seafood, actually steak, actual food not what felt like a school lunch cafeteria food. One our second day at the resort, we wake up and notice that the pool is closed. We asked what was going on and they advised us that THE ONLY POOL AT THE RESORT WILL BE CLOSED FOR A WEEK DUE TO CONSTRUCTION. So, hear me out, imagine being on vacation and staying at a full blown construction zone, drills, escavators, LOUD NOISE. It was insane but the saddest part is that it is the only pool AND NOBODY ADVISED US THAT IT WOULD BE CLOSED DURING MOST OF OUR STAY. So now first the transportation, then the food, then the pool. What was suppose to be a vacation turned into a nightmare. We then spoke to the front desk because nobody advised us of this and now there is literally nothing to do at the resort because that is the only pool. After hours of going back and forth, they finally moved us to another hotel in LA ROMANA-THREE HOURS AWAY, We drove THREE HOURS and lost an entire paid day of vacation due to the hotel not being ready for accomdedations. We get to the Romana, Hotel is nice, Beach is nice. Food is better All in all they did not want to give us the day WE ALREADY PAID FOR AND LOST DUE TO HAVING TO DRIVE THREE HOURS TO ANOTHER HOTEL. We left that night With that being said DO NOT BOOK THIS HOTEL. SAVE YOUR MONEY, SPEND A LITTLE MORE, JUST DONT DO IT ITS NOT WORTH IT !!

Both room pools had broken jets and we were told the jets do not work and the lights aren’t supposed to come on, even though other rooms clearly had working lights and functioning jets. • One of our rooms had no hot water most of the time. Our adjoining couple had to use the shower in our room • Women’s restroom at the beach lacked basic supplies – no toilet paper or paper towels on numerous occasions. • Coffee machines were broken in both rooms. • Buffet options were extremely repetitive – lunch and dinner were the same each day, and both meals offered identical items (pizzas, chicken, rice, burgers and fries) • No beach service available unless you went to the bar. • Beach/pool towels were very hard to get every single day; taking over 30 minutes and several stops at different desks to get towels. • Aggressive sales inside the resort – we were approached frequently to buy memberships and when told we weren’t interested, he made a comment of “Typical Americans” • We tried to book an excursion with them on site that was $50 per person. He told us it was unavailable and tried to push a package on us that was $150 per person. We found the same package (that we wanted originally) online at Trip Advisor for the same price we would have booked through the resort. When returning, the excursion desk was pressuring us asking where we went, who we booked through and how much they charged. • Dining reservations were only available after 9 PM, even when we tried to book on day one. One restaurant we didn’t even make a reservation for because a guest told us she had gotten food poisoning from there the night before. We also saw on the Facebook page that numerous people were getting food poisoning from the cold station at the buffet restaurant. • Room service frustration – When we called to request restocked waters and beers on our second evening, we waited an hour with no response. When calling a second time to check on an update, We were told it was our first day and we shouldn’t need refills. When we told him it was our second day and we still needed water at least, we were told they’d “do us a favor” because it was our “first day,” despite correcting them. They brought water bottles and sodas in a small trash can liner.