Casa Colonial Beach & Spa ★★★★★

A Colonial House That Put Its Pool on the Roof

The north coast built its tourism on volume, and Playa Dorada is where most of it landed. Casa Colonial is the exception inside the complex. It reads as a colonial house from the outside, shuttered and low-slung in its gardens, and then it does something no colonial house ever did: it puts an infinity pool and a bar on the roof, three floors up, with nothing between the water and the Atlantic. The rest follows from that instinct. Fifty suites rather than several hundred rooms, a private beach at the end of the lawn, and a spa that treats rather than pampers.

Why It Works

An all-suite hotel changes the arithmetic of a long stay. There is a sitting room to retreat to, a terrace or a lanai of your own, and in the larger categories enough beds for six, which means a family or a group holds together instead of splitting across a corridor. What convinced us is that the scale never turns industrial. Two restaurants, not eight. A single spa with a real treatment list. A rooftop that everyone uses and that still has space at six in the evening. It belongs to the Small Luxury Hotels collection, and it behaves like it.

Why This Location

Playa Dorada is a walled resort complex just east of Puerto Plata, which means two things. The beach is groomed, calm and private to the hotel, and the golf course is effectively next door, laid out around the complex and rated among the best in the country. Beyond the gates, Puerto Plata itself is minutes away: the Victorian houses of the old centre, the amber museum, the cable car up Mount Isabel de Torres. Cabarete and its kitesurfing beaches are a short drive east, Sosua closer still. The airport is near enough that arrival day is not a write-off. What you give up is the feeling of being in a town, which is exactly what most people come to Playa Dorada to give up.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: Colonial, serene, grown-up, garden-and-sea

• Rooms: Fifty suites over three floors, from Junior Suites to Master Suites sleeping six, with oceanfront or tropical views and many with a private terrace or lanai

• Best For: Couples on a long stay, golfers, spa travellers, and families who need a suite rather than two rooms

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The rooftop infinity pool and its Acqua Bar, which turn the third floor into the best seat on this coast

• Dining: Lucia for dinner only, Caribbean fusion fine dining looking over the mangrove lagoons, and Veranda for breakfast and lunch with the Atlantic in front of it

• Amenities: Rooftop infinity pool, private beach, Bagua spa with indigenous treatments including honey and royal jelly, massages, facials, wraps and salon services, fitness centre, sauna, gardens

• Attractions: Playa Dorada golf course (alongside the complex), Puerto Plata old town and its amber museum, the Mount Isabel de Torres cable car, Sosua and Cabarete by road

Fifty Suites and Not One Plain Room

The categories run from Junior Suites, including the lanai versions that open onto the garden at ground level, up through Deluxe Suites facing the ocean to the Penthouse and the Master Suites that sleep six. The decoration is deliberate rather than themed: contemporary furniture in colonial proportions, dark wood, white linen, shutters doing the work that curtains do elsewhere. Oceanfront or tropical view is the real choice. The tropical rooms look over the gardens and the lagoons and are quieter; the oceanfront ones give you the sound of the Atlantic all night, which is the reason most people came.

Bagua, Lucia and the Shape of a Day

Bagua is the spa, and it works with indigenous ingredients, honey and royal jelly among them, across massage, facials, body wraps, exfoliation and salon services. It is the anchor of a slow day here: beach in the morning while the sand is cool, the roof through the afternoon, an hour at Bagua, then Lucia for dinner over the lagoons. Veranda covers breakfast and lunch on the ocean side. Two things to weigh. Lucia opens in the evening only, so lunch is Veranda or the roof. And this is a resort complex rather than a village, so anyone who wants streets and bars in the evening will be taking a taxi into Puerto Plata.