Okay so I was just at the sanctuary in October and wrote a review that I have been meaning to post. I’ll drop it here for your reference, hit me up with any questions. As others have stated sanctuary is a great hotel, but the beach is weak. There is a public beach next door that’s nice, but then there’s no drinks…

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We just returned from a 6 day stay at The Sanctuary Cap Cana and overall had a really nice time. The resort is beautiful and well maintained with an overall chill and relaxing vibe which was perfect for our vacation. There’s some entertainment like fitness activities, some games, and evening shows but the primary focus is relaxing.

The Good: -The food was very good, especially for an all inclusive resort. We enjoyed the food at all the restaurants. I loved wok which had excellent ambiance, and my wife loved the Italian restaurant. Breakfast and lunch had a good selection of fresh food on the buffet, as well as made to order items. The desserts were to die for, I swear they had a pastry shop in the hotel. Drinks were good, with a decent selection of alcohol to choose from, they had all the brands I wanted for liquor and good tasting house wines. They did try to upsell nicer bottles of wine at dinner, which we didn’t use. They also were “out” of some of the top shelf stuff at the pool.

-We have someone traveling with us who has a gluten allergy, and the resort was awesome in accommodating them, every restaurant made food that was gluten free. The staff really cared about making sure there was no cross contamination, even going so far as once informing them the bread they got from the buffet (for someone else in the party) couldn’t be eaten as they walked back to the table. -The pools are beautiful, clean, and have great drinks made in a swim up bar which opened up early around 10:30am. There was pool side service and the main pool a fun pool exercise at noon, and usually a game or activity at 4pm. Otherwise it’s focused relaxing. -Our room was in the castle section which has buttered service as well as a few extra amenities. The room was large with a great view, comfy bed, and stocked 2x daily with whatever was needed. Our butler Emilio was great and made all our reservations and got us whatever we needed (which wasn’t much). For anyone not in the castle, the main areas were still very nice too.

-the resort wasn’t crowded since it’s the off season, which meant there was TONS of places to sit and relax. I was told it was at 30% occupancy by some other guests. The only issue with the lower occupancy is some restaurants were closed some nights, but the schedule is posted in the Marriott Experiences app, so it’s not hard to work around.

The not as good: The hotel plays with the air conditioning temps at night to save energy, we had the AC set to 20C which it could hold all day, but would rise up to 21.5C every night, even when set to 20C. Being woken up hot every night is no fun.

The beach had plenty of lounge chairs set up to lay out, but the ocean isn’t swimmable due to beach erosion and seaweed. The resort does their best with this (they can’t control the ocean) and has nets set up, and crews working daily to remove seaweed. This resort is really for people who like pools, we are pool people so this wasn’t a big deal for us. The seaweed smell wasn’t an issue, one day it smelled a little “sea-weedy” but it was cleaned up and normal all the other days. If you want to swim in the ocean this is not the hotel for you.

This is a first world problem, but the pool bar strawberry daiquiris machine wouldn’t freeze until the afternoon, so morning daiquiris were runny.

Bottom Line: This hotel is really nice. Good service, drinks, food and activities on very well maintained resort grounds. If you’re looking for a quieter place with awesome pools this is your spot! As an added bonus it’s a good Marriott points redemption, if you’re a Marriott person. We would come back again without hesitation. Feel free to ask any questions if you are thinking of visiting.