Dominican Republic Excursions in The Real DR

Pure Caribbean-Saona Island Combi

Excursion Advice

As with any country visited extensively by tourists there are several pit falls that should be avoided when purchasing excursions. While excursions can turn a mediocre vacation into a lifetime experience. without the proper advice and guidance they can turn your holiday into a nightmare.

The team at The Realdr.com and Hola Tours have put together these simple guidlines to help you in your search for the perfect Dominican Excursion. As always, we welcome any comments or additions you may have to these tips from experiences in the Dominican Republic. If you would like to add any other tips, please click here to contact us.

Pre-booking Excursions

Its not that easy to pre-book excursions in the Dominican Republic as most of the excursion owners have not built this facility into their websites. The Realdr.com and Hola Tours are, however, proud to announce that we are the first Dominican run website offering truly pre-bookable Dominican excursions and tours. You can choose all of your excursions, add your excursions to your own shopping basket, pay online and receive your vouchers via email. This saves you both time and stress on arrival for your vacation as you know exactly what you can and when!

We feel that this is the best way of booking your Dominican excursions because:
  • You can book all of your excursions in one easy to use website
  • The costs of the excursions will be cheaper than in resort
  • All of the excursions will be quality tested and insured by Hola Tours in the Dominican Republic
  • You will be able to get group discounts on all excursions
  • There will be no hidden costs - the price you see if the price you pay - no hidden extras!
  • All excursion descriptions are accurate
  • You can pay online (via credit card or PayPal) and receive your excursion tickets via email
  • All purchases are guarenteed by both therealdr.com and Hola Tours
  • You will be able to call our excursion hotline for any tour advice or help whilst in the Dominican Republic
Pre-booking allows you the freedom to relax and thoroughly enjoy your holiday, safe in the knowledge that your planned days out in our fantastic country are already organised. Why spend time trying to find the right excursion for you and your family when you could be chilling by the pool or the on the beach !

Buying in Resort

OK, lets be honest, you WILL get bombarded with people in every hotel, every street corner, every shop, bar, restuarant and disco trying to sell you excursions. Whilst this may be OK for thee first couple of days, it does get very annoying after, say, day 3 of your vacation and by day 7 your usually starting to shout "NO" to anyone who even remotely looks like they are trying to sell you something!

The best way of handling this situation is to smile and politely say "No thank you, I've already booked my excursions". This usually works and a smile and politeness goes along way.

If you haven't already pre-booked as advised above, you can then have the freedom to go to any reputable agency and purchase your excursions at your leisure, without being pestered 24/7 :-)

Excursion Payment

This section is currently being updated

Additional Costs

If you do purchase your Dominican Republic excursions once you've arrived in the Dominican Republic then take care that there are no "hidden extras" that you didn't know about. The most interesting "hidden" charge is for transportation and this is charged for anyone staying outside of a designated area eg Playa Dorada where a special bus needs to be arranged to collect you from your hotel. So, you pay for your excursion, think you've saved several bucks in the process AND THEN WHEN YOUR COLLECTED from your hotel your charged up to $10.00 per person (including children) before you can even get on the bus. Unfortunately you are not informed if you are actually in a hotel outside of the designated area and therefore do not know if you are going to be charged extra.

We would like to point out at this stage that ALL Dominican Republic excursions purchased via the RealDR excursion store are inclusive of all charges. There will never be any extra charges on one of our excursions EXCEPT when you would like to give the guide or driver a tip for a fantastic day - and we're sure that you will tipping them on every excursion because your going to have an amazing time :-)

Excursion Insurance

This section is currently being updated

What to take with you

This section is currently being updated