Riu Bambu - All Inclusive

Customer Ratings & Reviews

TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

5349 reviews

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  Family vacation at Riu Bambu

  Our family spent a beautiful week in April at Riu Bambu. The venue has many plus points and a few weak points that travellers should be aware of depending on their expectations. On the plus side: - The beach is absolutely gorgeous, the best patch among the adjacent resorts in our opinion. It is easy to find a lounge chair in the shade at any time of the day, the water is beautiful and safe, there is a volleyball court where people just randomly form teams and play together (same for soccer). - The service at the restaurants is outstanding, we were impressed with the kindness and professionalism of the staff. - The pools are beautiful, clean and warm. - The food was generally good to very good, with much variety. - In the main restaurant and in the Italian restaurant you can sit outside and enjoy the breeze coming from the Ocean. We didn’t have problems finding a table anywhere. - There are many beautiful day trips offered, we notably did the Scape Park (lots of fun for the whole family) and Catalina Island. - The water park at the resort is great, very safe, well maintained, and thrilling. - The complex is beautifully landscaped and manicured, very green with lots of palm trees, but also tropical birds and a bunch of sweet cats roaming the grounds. - This Riu is patronized by locals, which makes the resort feel less anonymous. On the minus side: - People tend to fully occupy the lounge chairs with towels and stuff around the pool early in the morning (even without showing up for hours), finding a spot is a tricky business (we didn’t care, we preferred the beach, but just in case) - Although totally functional, clean and well equipped, the rooms need a serious update in terms of furniture and bathrooms (we doubt this claim would surprise the Riu management) - Many patrons come to Riu Bambu just to party, period. This implies that there is loud music everywhere during the day, lots of booze from very early in the morning, and Riu “official” parties every other day, some of which end at 3am. Granted, you can avoid joining in, but you might need earplugs to get a good night of sleep: people tend to be very loud and oblivious when they come back from parties. The best advice we got before arriving was to bring tumblers to take your drinks to the beach, lots of sunscreen (which is preposterously expensive at the resort store).

  Apr 12, 2026
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  Fun week with the family

  I took my daughters for a week vacation and the food , hotel , beach , room and staff were all nice . My kids really enjoyed themselves

  Apr 11, 2026
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  Beach amazing, parties fun, resort very clean but not 5 star....won't return

  Resort very clean and amazing beach. Staff were also o very friendly and there to help. We stayed Monday to Monday and resort seemed to get more crowded closer to weekend. Amazing beach - top two I have ever seen. Constant roll of waves which is nice to play in but no snorkeling or clean water due to waves. Further up to left side, water alot clearer. Some sargassum coming in at end of week. Tractor cleaning beach so more if an issue when in the water. Vendors not a big issue, most friendly. Fresh pineapple with rum on beach was incredible. Ground very well kept, no bugs hardly anywhere. No ants by pool due to drinks spilled. Weather - perfect and amazing breeze on beach. Lots of Chairs on beach but as weekend neared, harder to find. RIU Party zone and 4 parties per week has to be one of the reasons what sets this resort complex apart. Did 3 of 4 and had a great time! Only few mins walk behind the resort. Easier to get there or back to resort whenever you want. The bad Not a 5 star and yes, you get what u pay for but hotel does not support or deserve that rating. AC - didn't work. Set at 18 c but never cool in room. Messaged 3 times and then 4th to get them to fix puddle of water by door that they had to walk through each time. No fresh pool towels after 2 or 3....guess they didn't have enough. No fresh juice of any kind. No fresh milk. No seats by any of the FOUR POOLS after 9 am....starting at 6-6:30. Again, 1000 rooms, not enough room! Beer - one and one only. No problem getting cans for room but draft only entire resort. Food - you'll find something to eat but not 5 star, lol.....if you can get in. Not interested in lining up for 1/2 hour before they open to try and get a seat. Steakhouse opened 6 and bye 6:30, full for the night. Same night, Mexican was 2 hour wait. Asian pretty good and easy access. Mexican was very good after getting in on 3rd attempt. Seen no buzzers, been at other RIUs and this worked great. Not hear. Sick 4 days - yes booze probably didn't help lol but not 4 days. Room maintenance and upgrades(AC) would go s long way here but that's hotel owners and management, not the staff. Staff worked very hard and we appreciate their efforts but they can only do what they access too. We stayed at three RIU in last year. Latino north of Cancun was by far the best. Montego Bay was nice and acceptable. Bambu was unfortunately, not. For the price we paid, expect more. Cannot see how Latino, probably best beach we ever seen, and Bambu can by rated the same does not give me any faith in their rating system. Been fun but won't be visiting any RIU in future trips.

  Apr 11, 2026
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  Beautiful vacation

  The Riu Bamb is a bit outdated and could use a refresher. Overall, amazing vacation. Lots of selection for food and drinks. Beautiful beach and friendly staff.

  Apr 10, 2026
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  Seriously thinking twice about staying at RIU.

  So let me start by saying I have stayed at lower class hotels and recieved better service for the most part and left better reviews. We arrived on the 17 March 2026. Everything seemed nice and pleasant upon our arrival. The lobby was clean. We were checked in within a reasonable time frame, given the amount of people who were waiting for check-in. We arrived at our room promptly. As we began exploring the resort, we noticed that there was poor signage to indicate where restaurants were located etc. On Wednesday the 18 March 2026, I attended the nexus tours meeting at 10am at the stage. We were told that we would receive an email on Monday 23 March 2026 with instructions for check-out and which bus would take us to the airport and at what time. I gave both our email addresses to ensure we got the email. As we were not interested in tours or excursions, the nexus tour rep did not seem to be appreciative in any way. By Monday evening we had received no information. There was no information at the main counter either. I tried contacting Nexus Tours to report our issue and get the critical information. I have still not heard from them. This resulted in me having to contact Sunwing directly to get all my information. Luckily we did not miss our bus. It took several days to locate the Mexican restaurant which was hidden behind the main buffet outdoor seating area. It also took several days to figure out that the small lunch and breakfast buffet was also the Italian restaurant at night. We arrived at 19:10 hrs at the Italian restaurant and were told that they are now closed for the night with no explanation. The buffet signage stated it was open much later. While eating at the two different buffet’s, it was clearly evident that most of the labels on the food were completely wrong. For example, the label will say bacon, but there was pasta in its place and no bacon to be found anywhere. Service at all restaurants was far less than exceptional. I have stayed at multiple RIU hotels in the Dominican Republic over the years ( Bavaro palace x2, merengue / bachata), and have always had exceptional service while dining. During our stay at the Bambu, we had to serve ourselves our own drinks regularly. One night while at the Bambu main buffet, there was multiple people handing out surveys regarding the hotel and our experience, while filling out the survey, no less than 5 different serving staff continued to hover around, and look over my spouse’s shoulder trying to read what she was writing and asking why we were not giving a higher rating. We marked the service as good. And gave a brief description of our issues. During this evening and this evening alone, we did get the famous RIU dining service. There was not a moment where our water or soda was empty. If it was, within seconds, we hand a fresh drink. By the next morning, the service went back to what we had experienced previously… we had to serve ourselves again. It was as if the night before had never happened. The only good service we had was at the steakhouse. Both times we went, service was excellent to say the least! They deserve high praise. The best bar staff on the resort was at the Blue pool bar. They were always happy to see us and were actively engaging. It was rare to have to wait for a drink. As for our room experience…. Daily, while trying to take a nap at approximately 12:30 to 13:30 the fire alarms would go off for several minutes. When I went to ask about it at the front counter, I was told it was a random test. 1 time a week is random…but every day???? Further to that, at approximately 2am the fire alarms went off… no fire etc… people were evacuating for no reason. By this time, we ignored the alarms as much as possible… this could result in injury should a real fire form. This made our trip extremely hard to relax to say the least. As for the rest of the room experience, on several occasions, our water was not restocked. This resulted in my having to track down an employee on a drink cart and tip him several dollars to get two bottles of water so we could drink and to use in my CPAP machine. On the third day of not being restocked, we went to the main lobby check-in counter to report the issue and ask for water. The employee told me to go for dinner then he would have water waiting for us. Upon our return, the employee stated that he did not have water. He only had carbonated water. We then found a manager sitting at a desk by the electronic check-in desk. We explained the situation to her. She was kind enough to provide us with a large case of small bottles of water. At no time did we have the red card on our door during our stay., so that was not the issue. Another odd thing to find on a RIU property was a large quantity of stray cats. They were everywhere. Further to this, before leaving on our trip, I checked my RIU rewards points for all my previous stays at the RIU’s over the years… there was none…. There should have been more than enough points to upgrade us easily. I am extremely disappointed and dissatisfied with this. This was my spouses first trip outside of the United States and Canada. This was a poor example of what I told her RIU was all about. Based on this experience, it will be highly unlikely that we will return to a RIU resort until the issues mentioned above have been corrected. It is extremely saddening to see what has happened to RIU resorts if this is the new standard of service and excellence. Further to this, I wrote a review to RIU and Sunwing upon our return home. It has been several weeks and we have not heard from them at all. We always tipped the staff far better than most people as well, so that was not the issue at all. Room 5107 RIU BAMBU 17 March 2026 to 24 March 2026.

  Apr 09, 2026