GP Select Bavaro vs GP Palace Punta Cana

The same site, nine years of refurbishment apart

Both sit in the Grand Palladium Punta Cana complex. Both publish 23 km and 30 minutes from the airport. Both are family hotels on All Inclusive board.

Grand Palladium Select Bavaro: built 1992, refurbished 2025. Grand Palladium Palace: built 1994, refurbished 2016.

That is the headline. Nine years is a generation of bathrooms, mattresses and air conditioning, and it is only visible because Palladium publishes both dates on every fact sheet. Almost no other operator does.

But the newer one has one pool

506 rooms, one swimming pool. That is the lowest ratio anywhere in our coverage.

Grand Palladium Palace has 366 rooms and three pools, plus nine bars against four.

So the trade is unusually clean: a newer room, or more room to swim. On a shared site with dine-around, the pool question is softened but not removed — you are walking to a neighbour’s water.

Rooms

Select Bavaro publishes twelve categories with counts and floor areas, including 12 Superior Junior Suites with a private pool, 18 Romance Suites with a private pool and 8 swim-up junior suites — 38 rooms with private water.

Palace publishes Deluxe through Loft Suite grades including a Junior Suite Swim Up Beachfront.

The casino

Grand Palladium Palace has one. Select Bavaro does not.

Choose Grand Palladium Select Bavaro if

You want the most recently refurbished room on the site, or one of the 38 private-pool and swim-up categories.

Choose Grand Palladium Palace if

You want three pools and nine bars rather than one and four, a smaller hotel, or a casino on site.

Where the evidence cannot separate them

Neither publishes kids club age bands, though both name three clubs. Neither publishes a minimum age or a mandatory fee schedule. Select Bavaro does not publish its beach sand type; Palace does.