by Bert Archer
Last updated: 9:45 AM ET, Thu July 3, 2025
The secret to having a good stay in Punta Cana on your next all-inclusive indulgence is to have it in Miches.
Club Med has been there for a couple of decades already, but it's only this year that other big brands have decided to spread their wings and see if they can make Miches the next Punta Cana—or the next Tulum.
Staying in Punta Cana is convenient. It’s close to the airport that was built for it, and you’ve got dozens—scores—of all-inclusives to choose from. It’s also a pretty cool place to hang out at night, though the staff and security at your resort will probably make it as difficult as they can for you to experience it.
At the resort I visited, the new Zel by Melià, I had to fill out a form on a tablet at the security gate every time I wanted to leave on something other than an official excursion. Not for my safety, obviously—that form wouldn’t protect me from anything—though that’s how they framed it. And I only got to that form, and the gate 1 km away from the hotel (one of five in the gated compound with walls that made you wonder whether they were trying to keep people out or keep people in) after running a gauntlet of in-house staff heavily implying I’d be taking my life into my hands if I were to exit the grounds.
(Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
This is a common tactic for all-inclusives. I’ve run into the same thing in Jamaica. It’s not pleasant, and it’s not entirely ingenuous either. In a place like Punta Cana—or Negril, or Cozumel—the places are almost entirely populated by hospitality workers. These are company towns, and the people the staff have been trained to warn guests against are therefore, weirdly, themselves.
So for all but the most persistent among us, spots like the Drink Point or the Plaza Espagne, cool neighbourhood nexuses like Varón and Friuza, are mostly beyond our grasp.
So why not go somewhere less packed? A nascent tourist destination that is still being formed—where you don't feel like one of 20,000 people after the same thing, because there are only a couple of thousand people across this whole stretch of land.
And the land is, to be fair, a lot more interesting up here. There are beaches, of course, and they’re everything you want out of a beach-holiday beach. But there are also forests and mountains. Whether you visit them or just stay on the beach is immaterial. The scenery is just so much more striking up here.
(Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
And they’ve also got something that, as far as I was able to tell anyway, Punta Cana does not: an all-inclusive with a Dominican restaurant.
It remains unusual for all-inclusives to reflect their geography culinarily. It can be tough to find Jamaican food at resorts in Jamaica, and you'd be forgiven for not even knowing there is such a thing as Bajan food at resorts in Barbados.
But at the Zemi Miches, part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, they not only have a restaurant featuring high-end versions of Dominican dishes, but the entire property takes its design cues from Taíno culture—the Indigenous people who were wiped out and assimilated over the course of the DR’s Spanish colonization.
By the end of the year, a 16,000-square-metre spa is also expected to open, with moringa-based treatments—moringa being a leafy plant rich in antioxidants, usually found in teas and oils—along with quartz sand massages and cacao rituals.
The Zemi, which opened June 30, is the most interesting option in the region, and also has the benefit of being part of Vacances Air Canada’s partnerships.
(Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
It is a five-star, however—like the Four Seasons that will be opening in Miches soon—and that's not for everybody. But luckily, the second big resort in Miches, which opened in December, has good offerings at a lower price point.
The Viva Miches by Wyndham attracts, in addition to North Americans, mostly Argentinians and Italians, I was told. The atmosphere is—possibly as a result—distinctly un-American. The rooms are nice, if not de luxe, the grounds are well designed, but maybe the best thing about Vivo—also part of Vacances Air Canada’s offerings—is the main buffet restaurant, which is one big room with cafeteria-style seating.
The atmosphere is casual and friendly, the food is what you'd expect, but in contrast to so many resort eateries trying to approximate somebody’s idea of fancy, this lack of pretension is as refreshing as a dip in the Samaná Bay.
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