09/02/2024
TIP OF THE MONTH:
Reserve your activities and excursions BEFORE your hotel arrival!
It is better to book tentatively before you arrive because there is NO UP-FRONT CHARGE and you get the best chance at your preferred date and time for the most popular activities, which typically sell out. It also gives you time to do more research on your excursion(s) and the company you're purchasing from online. Remember that the tour operators inside the hotel are not the excursion providers. The excursion is usually provided by a contractor or third party. And due to a high volume of clients, these large tour operators inside the hotel typically have no control over the activity. So you are sometimes offered only the activities they have left, esp. if the best activities have already sold out.
By making a tentative reservation from a local company in advance, you reserve your spot with no up-front cost, you have time to read reviews on both the company and the excursion, you can negotiate rates and ask for group discounts. Also, most local companies are the actual providers of the activity and their quality control is closely supervised by management.
By using a local company, you are also contributing to the local economy of the country you're visiting and helping to positively impact the lives of the locals directly. The opposite is true when you purchase activities from tour companies that operate inside hotels. They are owned by large conglomerates who aren't truly in touch with the human side of customer service.
We at PBE created Bavaro Helping Hands to give back to the community, acting as the bridge between travelers who want to help and locals in need. Travelers who care to meet and extend a helping hand to a local Dominican family in need can read more about what we do at Bavaro Helping Hands on our page: https://www.facebook.com/bavarohelpinghands?mibextid=LQQJ4d
There, you can request information about underage children in need of help, elderly and disabled looking for that helping hand, or better yet, that single mom struggling to raise her kids on her own. These are the less popular, often unspoken of scenarios taking part in many people's lives just outside the walls of the beautiful all-inclusive resorts here.
We help poor kids from bávaro to get a better day