By Mark and Clare, Pack With Purpose. We haven’t stayed at Cayo Levantado Resort yet, so this is our researched guide rather than a firsthand review. Everything below comes from the resort’s own information, current booking listings, and recent guest reviews. When we’ve been, we’ll update this with how it actually felt.
This one is for the couple, or the mother and grown son, who came back from their last all-inclusive saying the food was fine, the beach was fine, and it never went quiet. Cayo Levantado Resort is a five-star all-inclusive with 218 suites and villas on a small island five kilometres off the Samaná peninsula in the Dominican Republic. There’s no road to it, no kids’ club, and the evening entertainment is a band, a piano and a sunset DJ. On Expedia’s Canadian site it scores 9.8 out of 10 from nearly 300 reviews, and the score comes with conditions.
Getting there
Flights and transfers
Samaná has its own airport, El Catey, and from late October through April Toronto gets a nonstop to it about four and a half hours long: Air Canada on Saturdays from October 31, Air Transat on Sundays from October 25, and WestJet joining in April 2027. Transat also flies from Montréal year-round. Outside those days you connect through Punta Cana or Santo Domingo instead, and that changes the trip more than the flight does. El Catey is 45 minutes from the resort’s pier. In comparison, Santo Domingo is two and a half hours by road. Punta Cana is four and a half, and a guest who did that drive in early 2026 spent more than four hours in the van. Canadians don’t need a visa. A passport and the Dominican Republic’s online E-Ticket entry form, filled in before you fly, are what you need.
Air Canada Vacations, WestJet Vacations and Transat all sell Cayo Levantado as a package, and the WestJet package includes the airport transfer. Book the room on its own and the transfer is on you ($): the resort’s own van from Santo Domingo was quoted at about $300 US return, and private vans run about $149 US each way for up to six people.
The boat
Check-in happens on the mainland, at a small welcome house on the Simi Báez pier where the bar is open and included. After that, a covered catamaran takes you across in about ten minutes. The boat is then part of the rate, both ways, for the whole stay. Its schedule is the limit: it runs to a timetable rather than on demand, so a trip to Samaná town for the afternoon takes planning, and in rough weather it doesn’t run.
The setting and who it’s for
The island is about a square kilometre, and the resort uses 14 hectares of it. It reopened in June 2023 after a full renovation by Grupo Piñero, the Spanish company behind the Bahia Principe resorts, as their first luxury hotel, built around wellness. Forbes Travel Guide, which rates on its own scale, gives it four stars. Likewise, TripAdvisor guests give it 4.8 out of 5 from 240 reviews, with rooms and cleanliness both rated 4.9 and above.
Three beaches. Two are private to the resort. The third, however, on the western end, is the public one, and from about 8 in the morning until 6 it fills with day-trippers who come over by boat taxi from Samaná for the bar and the vendors. They can’t get into the resort, but you’ll see the boats, and a guest who stayed in early 2026 describes noticeable litter on that side. By evening, though, the beaches are guests-only.
Who it suits
Two adults who want a small, quiet resort with one staff member assigned to them for the week, who’ll use a yoga class or a sound bath, and who are happy with the same three restaurants for a week. It’s the resort we’d send someone to after a big-brand all-inclusive left them wanting less of everything except the food. January to March is humpback season in Samaná Bay, and the whale-watching boat leaves from the resort.
Who should skip it
Families with kids who need a club, a slide or other children to play with. Anyone who wants a show at 9 and a bar after midnight. Groups who want to leave the resort and explore, because every exit is a boat. And, finally, anyone who needs a wide choice at dinner.
What the all-inclusive covers
In the rate
Meals at Palma Real, the buffet, at Santa Yuca, the lighter menu by the wellness pool, and at Carey on the beach, which does pizza, sushi and burgers at lunch and Japanese-Peruvian at dinner; snacks at the Olah beach club and coffee at La Molienda; 24-hour room service; a minibar restocked daily; the bars, with cocktails, local and international wines and, guests report, premium spirits; tips; Wi-Fi in the room and across the island; an hour a day of kayaks, paddleboards and snorkel gear; the daily yoga, meditation, Pilates and fitness classes; the sound-healing and cacao sessions in the wellness zone; the rum-tasting, bracelet-making and palm-weaving workshops; the botanical tours; and the boat. Every guest also gets an Ambassador, a staff member you reach on WhatsApp for reservations and requests, and it’s the part of the service reviewers praise most.
Costs extra ($)
The two signature restaurants, Senda, a five-course Dominican tasting menu, and Manaya, a steakhouse with a wine list of 170 bottles, where a porterhouse was quoted at $85 US on top; spa treatments, including the hydrotherapy circuit at $40 US for 90 minutes and a 90-minute signature treatment at $220 US; the multi-day Yubarta wellness programs, which are booked and paid before you arrive; the whale-watching trip, about $150 US a person for four hours; motorized watersports and the dive centre; laundry; and the airport transfer unless it came in your package. The resort takes cards only.
There are no club levels, the paid upgrade tiers other all-inclusives sell. What you pay for instead is the room category, and more than half the rooms come with a private plunge pool.
Amenities
The rooms
All 218 are suites or villas. A Junior Suite is 575 square feet with a four-poster bed, a terrace, and a yoga mat in the room. Add a plunge pool and it’s 738 square feet. The eight Family Junior Suites take three adults, the two-bedroom villas take four adults and a child, and the twelve Beachfront Villas are adults-only, right on the sand, with a pool each. Overall, rooms score 4.9 on TripAdvisor, and the design and the views are what guests describe. The plunge pool is for cooling off, not for swimming, and one reviewer called it way too small.
Pools
The Olah beach club pool sits on the water, with loungers in the shallows and Jaiba, the beach bar, beside it, and it’s the one that gets the sunset DJ and the wind. The wellness pool is inland among the trees, with cabanas and hammocks and no music. No swim-up bar is listed at either. Because there are only 218 rooms, a guest who stayed twice describes no crowd at either one.
Food and dining
The breakfast at Palma Real gets the most praise, nine stations and, by the resort’s count, 28 kinds of bread and pastry; Expedia’s own summary of the reviews calls the breakfast options phenomenal, and guests in 2026 call the food fresh and rate the room service highly. Choice, however, is the problem. Outside the two paid restaurants there are three places to eat dinner, and when the island is quiet the resort closes some of them. Guests in May and June of 2026 found the buffet shut and one or two restaurants carrying every meal, with long waits between courses, and one December guest counted about sixty people on the whole island. The menus also lean to seafood, and one reviewer wanted more that wasn’t. Senda’s tasting menu hasn’t changed from one year’s reviews to the next, so it’s a one-night thing.
Dinner at the à la carte restaurants is booked through the resort’s app, five to ten days ahead, and the one guest who wrote up the app in detail found it buggy for both check-in and bookings. Your Ambassador can do it for you on WhatsApp instead, which is what one guest who stayed twice ended up doing.
Bars
Coa in the lobby has the live music and stays open until midnight. La Placita is the terrace bar, Jaiba the beach bar, the wellness bar does the smoothies, La Molienda the coffee, the pier has one, and the Senda bar is the paid one ($). Guests say the pours are premium and nothing is watered down, although one who stayed twice says which bartender is on decides how good the cocktails are that night. One 2025 guest also found the red wine list short.
The beach
White sand and calm, shallow water on the sheltered side of the island. A guest who stayed twice calls it immaculately clean and never crowded. Seaweed lands from time to time, but reviewers in February and June of 2026 both say it was cleared quickly. Snorkelling from the beach is also in the rate, an hour a day with the gear. Bring bug spray: the same guest got plenty of bites, on an island with this many trees.
Spa and wellness
The spa is open 9 to 6 and nobody under 16 goes in. Its hydrotherapy circuit (sauna, steam room, cold plunge and pool) is paid ($). Meanwhile, the Yubarta wellness zone next to it is the part that’s included: a cenote-style pool where they run floating and sound sessions, an ice-bath room, a yoga studio, and a daily class schedule. Guests who came for the wellness side praise it most. One reviewer found the massage weak, and that’s the only knock we found.
Gym
A small indoor gym, an outdoor training area the resort calls the Crossbox, a personal training studio open from 6 in the morning until 10 at night, and a tennis court. One guest who stayed twice says the gym is almost always empty, and another, in fact, called it the best hotel gym.
Entertainment
A live Dominican band some nights, a piano in the lobby, a silent disco, a paint-and-sip on Mondays, and the DJ on the beach at sunset. Guests who wanted more Dominican music and dancing, however, say so in 2026 reviews, and more than one of them uses the words excessively quiet. One reviewer had the opposite problem with the beach DJ at 5 p.m. and one with plaza music until 10:30 near room 305, so ask for a room away from the plaza if a quiet evening is the point.
Kids
Children are welcome, but there’s nothing built for them. No kids’ club, no splash pool listed, and no cribs. Indeed, one reviewer with children says there’s little for them.
Service
The Ambassador system is what guests praise most, and one December 2025 reviewer’s words for the staff were kind, attentive, present and warm. Still, the inconsistency shows up in the same month: another reviewer asked for coffee five times and waited forty minutes between courses, and the app didn’t work for the guest who tried to check in on it.
Our take
Cayo Levantado Resort scores 9.8 on Expedia.ca and 4.8 on TripAdvisor, and it earns those numbers in a narrow way: a small private island, quiet on purpose, rooms scored 4.9, a beach a repeat guest calls immaculate, and a staff member assigned to you. If that’s the week you want, we’d book it, and we’d book it for February when the whales are in the bay.
The price is the catch, though. On Expedia’s Canadian site the lowest room for two was about $1,178 for a mid-September night and about $1,203 a night for a week in early February 2027, before any package deal, more than double the from-rate we quoted in our Moon Palace Cancún guide. If the Dominican Republic is decided and the budget is lower than that, our Secrets Cap Cana guide in Punta Cana is the comparison. Also, a resort with three included restaurants closes some of them when it’s empty, and the reviews from the emptier weeks are the ones with the complaints. And the drive counts if you don’t fly into El Catey: book a nonstop from Toronto or Montréal, or plan on two and a half hours in a van from Santo Domingo.
If you’re after the Dominican Republic with more going on, our firsthand review of Ocean El Faro in Punta Cana is a bigger, busier resort. For a quiet island week with the rooms and beach the reviews describe, check current pricing on Expedia, and compare the room-only rate against a package with the flight and transfer in it.
When we get the chance to stay, we’ll update this with the firsthand version. Until then, this is our honest read from the research.
What to pack for Cayo Levantado Resort
Cayo Levantado Resort: Our Star Ratings
These ratings are based on aggregated guest reviews and the resort’s own information. We haven’t stayed here yet; they reflect what guests consistently report. Five stars is excellent, one is poor, and half-stars are allowed.
| Item | Rating | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rooms | ★★★★☆★4.5 | Suites from 575 square feet, 4.9 on TripAdvisor. The plunge pools are for cooling off |
| Pools | ★★★★☆4.0 | One on the water with the DJ, one in the trees with no music, no crowd at either |
| Food / Dining | ★★★★☆4.0 | Three included restaurants, and fewer than that in an empty week |
| Drinks / Bars | ★★★★☆4.0 | Premium pours, seven bars, and a night that depends on the bartender |
| Beach | ★★★★☆★4.5 | Calm, shallow, private. Seaweed comes and goes |
| Spa & Wellness | ★★★★☆★4.5 | Classes and sound sessions in the rate, treatments and the hydro circuit not ($) |
| Gym | ★★★★☆4.0 | Empty most of the day, indoors and out |
| Entertainment | ★★☆★☆☆2.5 | A band, a piano, a DJ, and quiet by design |
| Family-Friendliness | ★★☆☆☆2.0 | Allowed, not catered for |
| Service / Staff | ★★★★☆4.0 | Warm people, an app that doesn’t work for everyone, and the odd slow dinner |
| Getting There | ★★★☆☆3.0 | Forty-five minutes from El Catey, hours from anywhere else, then a boat |
| Value for Money | ★★★☆★☆3.5 | A four-figure nightly rate, and the guests who paid it mostly think it was worth it |
| Overall | ★★★★☆★4.5 | 9.8 and 4.8 from the guests, earned by a quiet, small, expensive week |
See how this resort compares with every resort we’ve rated, side by side.
Sources: Cayo Levantado Resort official information; Expedia.ca guest reviews and listing details; TripAdvisor traveller reviews; Air Canada Vacations, WestJet Vacations and Transat listings; Forbes Travel Guide. All resort photos courtesy of Cayo Levantado Resort via Expedia.
