Overall the hotel is average and you will be happy here because its clean and the beach is very good. Food, beds, showers are all average for Caribbean.

Pros:
Very good beach
Crepes available at every meal
Pizza available all night til 6am
Free entry to Mangu (but Mangu only busy 2am-4am)
Big quiet rooms and clean hotel
Gym

Cons:
Rooms are humid
Dominican staff are not friendly
Nightly shows are boring
Music is bad (all sad and slow Spanish stuff, NO raggaeton, no shakira, no Mana, no English)
Phone calls are $2/min to Canada and must be made in lobby. You can't use phone cards.
Internet is $16/hr (not a typo)

Tip:
Free water bottles at the lobby bar

This vacation spot was a great time for my whole family. I went with my parents, two brothers, husband and my 4 children ranging from 4 to 10 years old. Food was good...variety and a few locations...plenty of bars too at convenient locations. If you are canadian and are travelling with Air Transat, you have many benefits without extra cost...private breakfast with same variety as buffet but served to you instead, and private beach area and bar exclusive to air transat visitors only. Rooms were cleaned daily. My parents' room had an issue with air conditioning so they moved them to another room...oceanview. Nightly entertainment was good. I even got a glimpse of them practicing for their next series of performances and looks even better. Weather was great...not too hot...enough sun for a good tan but a nice breeze that there was no humidity...beautiful weather. Sometimes light rain at night but never in the day....it looked cloudy every morning we woke but the sun was out by about 10...never failed. :)

Our Air Transat rep Marie-Claude was very honest and open about what our stay will be like and she was right about everything....never tried to sell us anything and warned us about what and who to be careful of.

Esperanza was the employee that worked in Kids Club and was amazing and so much fun with the kids. She was always smiling and happy to see my children. She even sang happy birthday for my daughter on the stage and made her feel very special with all eyes on her and a big applause. :)

The worst part of the trip was the airport...where the pushy men were overly-aggressive about handling our suitcases even when we said no. They will take your luggage off the belt to claim it...I would advise you to take it from them as soon as possible and firmly say no. We had little luggage and 6 adults and we told them no but they insisted and literally took the luggage from my brother's hand. My brother said if you want to take it, take it but I'm not paying you....he took it...then after walking the measly 20 feet he stood there waiting for money. My brother said I told you I'm not paying you and he walked away mad. Leaving to go back home they swarmed us like bees and had 6 men on our luggages even after we said no...they ALL stood there and wanted their own tip...my Dad trying to be nice gave $2 to one guy...and they all came to my Dad for money until he raised his voice to them to please leave us alone. It was ridiculous.

This review will probably be mysteriously removed within a week, but here goes anyway:
Wished for home
My husband and I arrived at the Occidental with an open mind given the star rating and the good reviews on this site. Unfortunately we were wishing for home after the very first night. Where to start......

1. The Room
The room was sketchy at best. Our roof actually leaked horribly after a heavy rain storm, and I was horrified and afraid of dying in the Dominican. I should have guessed, after taking a peek into one of the maid's utility rooms, which were on each floor and left wide open all day. There were also no locks on those rooms, and it didn't feel like a safe environment. Anyway, the maid's room had stacks of molding mattresses, and a huge puddle on the floor along the wall. After that night, there was not a good night to be had as fear and stress prevailed. Our room door was not installed correctly, and you could actually still see the hallway through the door frame when the door was shut and locked!

2. The Beach
The beach is beautiful once you've gotten past all the litter and cigarette butts. Before you go latching onto this glimmer of hope, the beach is beautiful, if not more so, at all the resorts along this strip, so it’s not exclusive to this resort. I watched a staff member walking around with a garbage bag "cleaning" the beach, which entailed dumping the contents of drink cups onto the sand beach, including straws, garnishes, daiquiri slush and beer. Disgusting. Beach chairs are scarce, and you have to walk and walk and search and search for one without a towel on it. Come on people, get it right. No one needs this kind of stress on vacation!

3. The Pools
The jacuzzi tub is not heated, just a small pool with bubbles along the edges. It is only for the Royal Club members, but I didn't see a lot of security around to enforce the RC amenities. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't even bother with the Royal Club, just upgrade to another resort. Pool side loungers were scarce and you had to wander a lot to find one without a towel on it. As for the common folk pools, they were nice if you had headphones on or were underwater, because the poolside music is a loop taped off a radio station, static and all! I didn't catch on until it actually started skipping every 2 minutes, repeating the exact same DJ phrases and static in the exact same spots in the song.....give me a break! Another note, everyone must be peeing in the pool, because there aren’t any public washrooms around, and you have to go all the way to either the lobby or your room to use the can. RC guests get a private public washroom in the RC check-in room which is a little closer to the beach.

4.People
I didn't find the other guests to be friendly at all, except for about 4 people who spoke English and were Royal Club lifers who must have been suckered into a time share (poor souls). The weekends brought dozens of locals who were rude and intimidating. They stood in groups along the pathways and glared at you as you passed by, not even giving a courteous greeting in reply or making any move to allow you some room to pass! I longed for Mexico. At least there was one server in the main buffet who turned out to be a baseball player and spoke the best English out of anyone on the resort, even better than the Manager Marco, who actually required a translator! Aside from the the service staff, the only folks who seemed to be linguistically gifted were the salesmen who hounded you every time you tried to sneak back to your room. We took to going up the back stairs to avoid the harassment.

5. Entertainment
The nightly shows are great if you are retired. The shows were very dated and very much in the Vegas/Tony Bennett style of entertainment with flashy costume changes and dancing. I also got bitten 20+ times by mosquitoes at the open air Theatre, despite wearing the best bug spray money can buy, and was thankful I took Malaria meds before coming here! Other than the theatre, you can go to the dance club which is just outside the resort and not included with your resort package. If clubbing is not your thing, you can people watch in the open air main lobby area, if you can find a seat. Again, I was bitten 20+ times sitting in the lobby in a chair we managed to wrangle after much wandering, musical chairs style. Other times, we were relegated to sitting on the edge of a flowerbed. There are some scheduled events, I discovered too late, as there is not communication for guests as to what is going on on any given day.
6. Food and Drinks
If you enjoy eating around half naked saggy barefoot European men wearing nothing but a speedo, then the beach buffet is for you. I found it very disgusting, and little things like straws strewn on the floor, bits of paper and napkins fluttering in the surrounding garden, no footwear or clothing required, and minimal cleaning staff in the buffet all told a story of hygiene issues. I didn’t find the plastic cutlery appealing either. If you enjoy 2 day old buns left over from the buffet and half cooked mystery hot dogs that leave you longing for 7-11, then the “Sports Bar” by the pool is for you and may be your only option between 10am-1pm, other than the beach buffet. The a-la-carte restaurants were ok, but you don’t go to this type of budget resort if you’re a Foodie. The main lobby buffet is just fine, but if you go at peak times, be prepared to stand in line like in high school. The best meal to be had is in the Royal Club restaurant and the Royal Club midday beach grill. All in all, your digestive tract will tell you the undeniable truth about the food. Bring Imodium and rehydration meds with you. The “frozen” cocktails were not frozen, but warm sticky concoctions made differently at each bar on the resort using unrefrigerated cartooned milk products to top up partially chilled Pina Coladas. Stick to beer. If you want a drink at the beach, no servers are employed outside of the food courts! You have to hoof it all the way up to the bar and serve yourself. Before you go calling me a princess, having beach and pool servers in the Caribbean is the norm for resorts touting and charging for “Royal” amenities. The same lack of service applies at any pool, including the Royal Club pools.
7. The Grounds
The grounds are well maintained as far as cutting the grass, trimming the foliage and sweeping up the puddles after a rain storm. That being said, the beach, as I mentioned, is largely neglected. I wasn’t impressed with the pathway lights, which were largely smashed in and had fluorescent bulbs visibly dangling like loose eyeballs everywhere you look. Things like this take the magic out a place, and plant disturbing notes of doubt and mistrust in the back of your mind as you make your way around.

Well, there it is. Hopefully this review sees some reading before it is removed.

I was so scared to actually go on this trip after reading all the reviews. However, I was nicely surprised by what an enjoyable,fun time we had! The rooms were much bigger than I expected,food offered was much healthier than I expected(I figured it would be all pizza and chicken nuggets), and the entertainment was just that-entertaining! We weren't even royal club! We had a fabulous time.Great value for the money. We woke up every day and went to the beach (stunningly beautiful!),went on an excursion every afternoon( yes we had to haggle but they ended up being waaaaay cheaper than we pay in Florida),and went to dinner and a show in the evening. Sometimes we would go to event they had after the show if it was interesting(karaoke!). I loved how it was so international and we really got to meet a ton of people from all over the world. It was the first time I have seen topless people on the beach- kind of embarrassing for my 14 yr old daughter ,but she got to see how other countries "holiday". We will be back!