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In Punta Cana, Lopesan has opened three connected all-inclusive resorts — one built around a lagoon, one reserved for adults and one centered on family fun — creating what amounts to three different ways to book the Caribbean’s most exciting new resort.
Lopesan Caoba Lagoon Resort, Spa & Casino, Lopesan Serenity Bay Resort, Spa & Casino and Lopesan Splash Cove Resort, Spa & Casino are all open in Punta Cana. They are three separate all-inclusive hotels, but that kind of undersells what Lopesan has actually built here.
The best new all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean may actually be all three of them.
That’s because this isn’t really a story about three hotel openings. It’s about Lopesan taking one of the Caribbean all-inclusive resorts that has impressed us most over the years and turning it into something much bigger: a choose-your-own-resort destination where couples, families and travelers who simply want more space around the pool no longer have to book the same kind of hotel to share the same vacation.
The three hotels officially began welcoming guests on July 7, part of a Punta Cana expansion backed by more than $350 million and adding more than 1,000 rooms to Lopesan’s Dominican Republic portfolio.
We have spent a great deal of time at Lopesan Costa Bávaro Resort, Spa & Casino, the property that established the company in the Caribbean and now anchors this much larger resort destination.
When we first stayed there, we called it the best new all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic, and later put it among our favorite all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. Read CJ’s original Lopesan Costa Bávaro review
What stood out wasn’t one giant pool or one restaurant. It was the way the whole place functioned, from the extraordinary open-air Boulevard to the swim-up accommodations, the dining and the feeling that a very large resort could still give you reasons to wander.
Our driver on that first trip, Nickeas, told us: “This is the most beautiful resort in Bavaro.” After a few days on property, we understood why.
That experience is the reason the three new openings matter.
Lopesan isn’t asking travelers to take a chance on an entirely new formula. It’s taking a formula we already know is great and separating it into three more clearly defined vacations.
Why This Is Happening Now
Punta Cana does not need another generic all-inclusive.
It has enough scale, airlift and mature resort infrastructure that the more interesting question now is how hotel companies differentiate inside the all-inclusive category. Lopesan’s answer is segmentation without isolation: build separate hotels for separate vacation styles, then connect them to a much larger dining, entertainment and nightlife ecosystem.
The company has effectively expanded Costa Bávaro into a resort district.
That starts with The Boulevard, the pedestrian entertainment area we have long considered one of the best amenities at any Caribbean all-inclusive. There are restaurants, bars, shops, entertainment venues, a bowling alley and nightlife, meaning your evening doesn’t have to end when dinner does. See why CJ calls Lopesan one of Punta Cana’s most entertaining resorts
The original Costa Bávaro opened in 2019 after a project reported at roughly €230 million, giving Lopesan a 1,042-room Caribbean flagship before this latest phase ever began.
Now that flagship is the foundation rather than the whole story.
Lopesan Caoba Lagoon: The One We’d Start With
If you want the clearest expression of the new Lopesan idea, Caoba Lagoon is probably it.
It is the largest of the three new hotels, with 554 rooms, and its defining feature is a 417-foot lagoon pool that runs through the resort environment. CJ first flagged Caoba before opening as the centerpiece of Lopesan’s next Punta Cana chapter, and the finished resort gives the complex a water-driven identity that Costa Bávaro never had on its own.
This is also the most broadly appealing of the three. You don’t need children to justify staying here, and you don’t need an adults-only environment to make it all go smoothly.
That makes Caoba our default recommendation for a couple, a group of friends or a mixed-age trip where nobody wants the vacation defined by a water park.
Lopesan’s own site currently advertises Caoba from $295 per room per night, while a CJ Google Hotels check published Aug. 8 found Lopesan rooms around $304 per night during the late-summer period. Those numbers will move with dates and room categories, but they put the opening in an unusually approachable pricing band for a brand-new five-star all-inclusive.
Lopesan Serenity Bay: The Adults-Only Answer
Then there is Serenity Bay, the smallest and most focused of the three.
It has 239 rooms and is adults-only, giving Lopesan something its original Punta Cana resort could never completely provide: a hotel where the entire experience, rather than one section of it, is designed around adults.
That distinction is significant.
You can choose a quieter hotel with its own pools, dining and wellness focus and still step back into the broader Lopesan complex when you want more restaurants, cocktails, entertainment or the Boulevard. It solves one of the recurring problems of adults-only resorts: tranquility is wonderful until you actually want somewhere else to go.
The current advertised starting price on Lopesan’s site is $339 per room per night.
Splash Cove goes hard in the other direction.
Lopesan Splash Cove: The Family Resort
This is the family hotel, with 242 rooms, along with the water park, pools and family-focused accommodations that include waterpark-view and swim-up categories.
CJ had been watching this one before opening precisely because it made the broader complex make more sense. Instead of every family competing for the same pieces of a giant resort, Splash Cove gives that trip its own home base. Read CJ’s preview of Lopesan Splash Cove
That earlier CJ rate check found a family junior suite at about $364.50 per night for June and a swim-up family junior suite around $503.36. It also put Splash Cove about 20 minutes from Punta Cana International Airport, making the transfer one of the easier ones in the destination.
From Miami, the nonstop trip to Punta Cana is about two hours and 46 minutes on the current schedule, with American Airlines, Arajet and other carriers serving the route.
That ease of access is part of the equation here: this is a very large resort experience attached to one of the Caribbean’s easiest major gateways.
And the Value Is Interesting
There’s another number worth watching.
Last July, CJ found a standard room at the original Lopesan Costa Bávaro at about $370 per night on Google Hotels. The roughly $304 Lopesan pricing CJ found this August puts the new entry point about 18 percent below that summertime Costa Bávaro check, although these are different hotels and dynamic rates rather than a like-for-like room comparison.
That caveat is important, but so does the message.
Lopesan is opening more than $350 million worth of new resort inventory without immediately making the entire proposition feel inaccessible. In a Caribbean all-inclusive market where many of the newest luxury properties start substantially higher, that gives these hotels another advantage.
So Which Lopesan Is Right for You?
If this were our trip and we wanted the broadest version of the new experience, we’d start with Caoba Lagoon. It looks like the best balance between the water-focused new resort concept and access to everything that makes the larger Lopesan complex distinctive.
Couples who prioritize quiet should pick Serenity Bay. Families whose children are going to spend half the trip negotiating how quickly they can get back to the water park should make life easier and book Splash Cove.
The clever part is that those decisions no longer require three completely different resorts.
That is what makes this opening more compelling than another trio of hotels in Punta Cana. Lopesan has built three front doors into the same vacation.
CJ was already impressed enough with Costa Bávaro to call it the best new all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic after experiencing it first-hand, and we’ve continued to rank it among the Caribbean’s standouts. See CJ’s latest guide to the three new Lopesan resorts
Now the idea behind that resort has gotten bigger, more specialized and, in some ways, easier to choose.
The next time you’re planning an all-inclusive vacation in Punta Cana, the question may not be whether to stay at Lopesan.
It may simply be which Lopesan you want.
The post The Best New All-Inclusive Resort in the Caribbean Is Actually Three of Them appeared first on Caribbean Journal.
