Gran Bahia Principe Punta Cana - Ambar

by Robert Knapp
(Harrison Twp, Michigan)

Don't stay here unless you like being surrounded by thiefs. We stayed here Jan 10th thru 15th, in rooms 64201, 64203 and 64116. Two out of three of our couples were robbed of $550 and $200, from the room safes!! The thieves gain entry to the safes, (not quite sure how but I will give my best guess later) locate your money and take SOME of it leaving the rest so it appears all the money is still there. In both cases this occurred on the last day of the stay. Also in both cases the robbery was not discovered until we arrived home. Nice finish to the vacation. I believe this was an inside job with more than one person involved at the Bahia Principe Ambar.

In one case upon returning from dinner my brother-in-law was unable to open the room safe. Phones calls to the desk resulted in a visit from maintenance who also could not open the safe. The manager then responded and after some time trying different things and actually blaming my brother in law for not using the safe properly he then changed the safe battery, opened it, and then hastily left. In the other case the manager, (George) told my parents to "just set the code at 1,2,3,4," my parents are elderly and did just as they were told. I didn't find this out until too late and changed the code, but the theft had apparently already occurred.

These were not the only problems that we had, but by far the most serious. We called ahead to have a wheelchair for my dad, "no problem" we were told each time, upon arrival they wanted my dad to visit a doctor first and after sitting outside the "doctors" office for 40 minutes we gave up and decided to call the desk later and try again, we did this for the entire trip and never did get a chair for him, they tell you what you want to hear and then when you are out of sight they do not care anymore.

Our room key failed no less than 8, thats right, EIGHT different times, the first time (on the very first day) after repeated calls to the front desk and assurances that one was on the way, I went down to the desk to get replacements and was told "we never send room keys to the rooms", sounds reasonable but why wasn't I told that before we waited two hours? The next time the keys failed we were told we were doing something wrong, somehow we were damaging the keys, on the second to last day they finally changed the door battery and guess what, no more problems, no apologies either!

Do not believe that we are picky travelers that expect everything perfect, this is not the case, we tipped generously through-out the entire trip, gave the maid and room persons $5/day, tried to speak Spanish when we could, we were always polite and expected some things to go wrong, not a problem, but what did happen was a problem that I wish someone had warned us about.

The rest of the problems were basically minor, and if the thefts had not occurred would have been easily overlooked. It was not all bad, the rooms were great, the grounds perfect, the ocean wonderful, the weather nice, the food good. BUT there are too many other great places to stay that are warm and have all the same amenities to ever stay here again.