With both Keith and I hitting milestone birthdays this year, we couldn’t think of any better way to celebrate than treating ourselves to 10 days of care-free relaxation at our favourite adults-only all-inclusive resort, Excellence El Carmen near Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
Contents
- Background
- Arrival and check-in
- Food and drink
- Suites
- Beach, pools and resort grounds
- Service
- Activities and entertainment
- Excellence Club
- Conclusion
Background
Our first time at an Excellence resort was in Playa Mujeres, near Cancún, when we first travelled to Mexico in 2014. We spent 5 days in Mexico City, 5 days based out of Mérida exploring the Yucatán peninsula, and then 2 nights at Excellence Playa Mujeres before flying out of Cancún. We had miserable weather, but we were blown away by the food and resort amenities.
Several years later in early 2020, under stress from the corporate world, we decided an all-inclusive resort vacation would be the remedy. That’s when we discovered Excellence El Carmen, a resort in the Excellence chain with a more modern design aesthetic. It’s located on a pristine stretch of beach outside Punta Cana. We booked a 6-night vacation package in a suite that included a private rooftop terrace with plunge pool. On check-in, we were offered the opportunity to upgrade to their Excellence Club at a discounted rate. It didn’t take much convincing to give it a try—more on that later. The timing of this vacation couldn’t have come at a better time since we returned literally as the world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fast-forward then to December 2021, just as international travel was picking up again. Despite the ongoing challenges of new COVID variants appearing, we decided we desperately needed to get away. We decided to bookend COVID with a return trip to Excellence El Carmen. We booked an 8-night package in the same type of suite with a rooftop terrace, but this time reserved in Excellence Club from the beginning.
And now again in 2024, with some milestone birthdays to celebrate, it was fitting that we’d return to our happy place at Excellence El Carmen. Once again in Excellence Club with our rooftop terrace, but this time for 9 nights.
Arrival and check-in
The first interesting signal of goodness upon arriving at any Excellence resort is the front gate security. Your taxi or shuttle bus comes to a giant steel gate and the security guard must find your reservation on the list before. If you’re taking a shared shuttle, you’ll usually be the last one dropped off so they don’t have to let outsiders into the resort.
At the resort doors, your bags will be taken out of the vehicle and tagged by the resort staff as you’re promptly given a glass of sparkling wine and a damp towelette to refresh yourself. You’ll then be shown to the front desk for check-in. If you’re staying in Excellence Club, you’ll be taken to the Club lounge for check-in. Depending on your arrival time, if your room is ready, a hotel porter will take you (and your luggage) to your room. On the way, they’ll give you an orientation of the property, pointing out the location of restaurants, bars and other amenities. If you arrived early and your room is not yet ready, you’ll be invited to start enjoying all the resort amenities while you wait… go to a bar, restaurant, pool or the beach. Nothing is off limits. So think about keeping the essentials you’ll need in a handbag; all your checked luggage will be kept safely by the hotel porters until your room is ready.
Food and drink
First-class food
Different things attract different people to Excellence. For us, the initial draw was the food. So many all-inclusive resorts are known to have notoriously bad food, between boring buffet restaurants and the hassle of making reservations at the à la carte restaurant. Excellence prides itself on its restaurant offering. These vary slightly between locations; at Excellence El Carmen, they have individual restaurants for seafood, Italian, Mexican, French, Indian, Spanish tapas, Asian, a steakhouse and sports bar. All the restaurants offer first-class food, so follow your cravings. For us, the Mexican restaurant was one of the real standouts.
There is a buffet restaurant but only for breakfast, and since there are à la carte restaurants that also offer breakfast, as well as excellent room service breakfasts, we’ve never touched the buffet at Excellence. None of the restaurants require reservations. Not all restaurants are open every night—they rotate through them and in busy season, they keep more restaurants open each night compared to slower times. But the schedule is set weekly so you can plan accordingly.
Premium drinks
Also unlike many resorts that only offer local beer and spirits in their all-inclusive offering, Excellence offers a few local and international beers, good quality house wines, a sparkling wine, and nearly every international spirit and liqueur imaginable, including many premium offerings. If you’re in Excellence Club, the Club lounge offers top-shelf spirits.
Fresh coconuts abound. Enjoy a signature Coco Loco drink, where fresh coconut water is blended with rum, coconut cream and ice. If you want something a little less “loco”, opt for a “coco con ron,” which is just rum added to fresh coconut.
My other favourite, of course, is a piña colada, garnished with some fresh pineapple.
Suites
There’s no such thing as a bad suite at any Excellence resort. Even the smallest suite is at least 800 square feet. Every suite features an oversized jacuzzi tub, large private terraces with loungers and spa-like bathrooms with rainfall showers.
Most of the buildings at Excellence El Carmen are 3-storey buildings, and the “standard” suites are the second floor.
Ground-level suites are either swim-up suites or suites with a private, personal pool. At Excellence El Carmen, the swim-up suites feature a large terrace (part in the sun for tanning, part covered) with access to lap pools that span the building. Each building has a separate pool; these aren’t connected by a lazy river that goes to the main pool, like at other Excellence resorts such as Playa Mujeres. This does take out some of the fun of a swim-up suite, but it does mean fewer people outside your suite.
If privacy is your thing, consider the two-storey rooftop terrace suites. As the name implies, these suites offer your own private 800 sq ft rooftop terrace with plunge pool, a semi-covered outdoor sofa, a lounge bed and outdoor shower.
Beach, pools and resort grounds
The grounds at Excellence El Carmen have been expertly designed, landscaped and groomed. You’ll fall in love the moment you walk into the resort, and you’ll never get tired of it.
One of our main activities became simply doing laps of the property because it feels like walking through a tropical botanical garden. During our stays, we’d do at least one long beach walk. Excellence El Carmen is nestled beside other resorts on both sides, so you can go for good walks in full safety.
The main pool of the resort is situated near the beach. The pool encircles a building that includes 2 restaurants, a rooftop lounge and 2 bars (including the swim-up bar). This means you almost always choose to hang out in the sun or find some shade.
There’s also a lap pool that doubles as an activities pool for things like aqua fitness, aqua cycling, etc. Nearby, directly on the beach, is a large palapa with an another bar and restaurant that serves buffet lunch (if you don’t want to get dressed for the other restaurants).
The beach is groomed every day, so it’s always clear of seaweed and other debris. Excellence El Carmen has a good length of beach, plenty of beach chairs (no racing to claim a chair), and towels at the pool and beach (no beach card nonsense). Depending on the weather, the sea can go from smooth and calm to quite rough, so get into the sea when it’s nice because you never know when it can change. There are a few small coral reefs along the beach, so it’s worth taking a mask and snorkel to explore them.
Service
Room service runs 24 hours and is part of the all-inclusive service. We used room service for breakfast and it did not disappoint, whether you’re looking for something local-inspired or more traditional breakfast fare. We would also occasionally take advantage of room service if we got hungry while hanging out in our room. But for lunch and dinner, we much preferred the food options available at the myriad of restaurants.
Despite having several bars near the pools and beach, Excellence El Carmen has an extensive wait staff patrolling these areas, so drinks are plentiful.
Activities and entertainment
I never thought I’d find myself participating in resort activities, but within a short while, I was finding myself looking at the daily schedule and prioritizing activities. There’s a good range of activities, from group fitness and exercise, to food and drink lessons, to arts and crafts.
If you’re into exercise and fitness, there’s a range of group workouts organized in the gym, as well as yoga and bootcamp-style workouts on the beach. For some more playful exercise, join the various pool fitness activities, which rotates between aqua fitness, water cycling (yes, they bring specialized stationary bikes into the pool) and water jumping (on small trampolines in the pool). We attended these every day, and nobody takes it too seriously. The aerial yoga activity is good fun, but not for the faint of heart (literally–as you spend quite a bit of time suspended upside down).
The oceanfront restaurant hosts a number of cooking classes and drink demonstrations, ranging from paella to Dominican specialties, and drinks ranging from classic cocktails to local spiced spirits.
Some of the more relaxed activities include Spanish lessons, mud therapy (where you mix up your own volcanic ash mud to rub all over your body before jumping into the sea to rinse off), making bracelets, and polishing your own Larimar gemstone pendant (Larimar is a semi-precious gemstone only found in the Dominican Republic). These are all worth a try, and don’t take much time.
Excellence Club
Many resorts offer a “Club” level and it’s often difficult for new travellers to understand if it’s worth the upgrade. As I mentioned earlier, the first time we booked at Excellence El Carmen, we didn’t book Club but upgraded at check-in. We were hooked and have booked Club ever since. Let’s talk about some of the Club perks, and why we like them–although it may not be worthwhile for everybody.
Oceanview rooms
When you’re in Club, your suite will be in the buildings adjacent the beach, so your suite will have an ocean view. Non-Club guests stay in buildings further away from the beach, so some might get a partial ocean view by chance, but it’s unlikely. If you like hanging out in your suite, this is nice, but if you’re going down to the pool or beach all day, it may not be a huge value
Club restaurant and upgraded alcohol
Excellence Club guests have exclusive access to Magna restaurant. This is a French-inspired restaurant that is open for breakfast and dinner at Excellence El Carmen.
For breakfast, Magna offers some very refined food options (like quail eggs and caviar, or scrambled eggs with mushrooms and truffle oil), elegantly presented dishes and French press coffee. But there are also solid breakfast options from other restaurants and from room service. When we visit, we tend to alternate between Magna and room service, depending on our mood.
At dinner, Magna becomes very interesting depending on your food tastes. Their soups are amazing, and they’re hard to pass up (unless you really don’t have the stomach space). They offer an appetizer of foie gras on toasted brioche which I have with every meal at Magna. I can’t say enough about their main courses. The surf and turf comprises a filet steak (cooked to perfection) and lobster Thermidor. If you want a lighter meal, opt for the scallops or the lamb chops. If you’re looking for steak, try the marinated rib eye or the opulent tomahawk (which should really be shared).
The Excellence Club lounge and Club beach bars feature upgraded alcohol options, including top shelf options like single malt whiskeys, premium blended Scotches (Johnny Walker Black Label), gins (Hendrick’s), and vodkas (Grey Goose and Belvedere). Excellence El Carmen also serves generously a local Dominican rum, Barceló (including the Barceló Imperial in the Club lounge… a rum worthy of drinking neat or on the rocks). The minibar alcohol is also somewhat upgraded in Club suites (Jack Daniel’s and Absolut).
Private beach area
Club guests have access to a private beach area, which does give you a greater selection of beach loungers, although Excellence El Carmen is very generous with the number of beach loungers, so it’s very rare that you have any difficulty finding a place to relax.
Other upgraded Club amenities
Other Club amenities include upgraded toiletries and access to additional room service menu items, but these aren’t anything to get too excited about.
Conclusion
Quite simply, Excellence El Carmen is as close as you get to perfection, at very reasonable prices for the offering. Yes, you can find cheaper all-inclusive resorts, but they can’t come anywhere close in terms of food quality, drink options, suite size and amenities, poolside service and access to pool and beach loungers. It’s also a joy to visit, because the staff seem genuinely happy, and many of them are long-term employees. That’s why we keep going back!
If you’re looking to indulge in some pure relaxation, enjoy some first-class dining and beverages, and enjoy a carefree adults-only all-inclusive vacation, look no further than Excellence El Carmen near Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. I hope this writeup shows how it’s worth every penny. If you’ve enjoyed your stay at Excellence El Carmen, share your experience in the comments below. Have questions? Ask away in the comments!
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