Locally-focused restaurants, sleek lobbies, thoughtful service and a reinvention of how hotels do happy hour. Kimpton has always been a unique hotel brand; but it wasn’t until 2016 that the company actually came to the Caribbean, with the outstanding Kimpton Seafire in Grand Cayman. It was another six years later that the company opened its second hotel in the region, with the Kimpton Alona in white-hot Tulum. 

But things are heating up. Last summer, Kimpton opened its new resort on the island of Roatan off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, and this summer another one is making its debut in the region: the Kimpton Las Mercedes in Santo Domingo, the increasingly capital of the Dominican Republic. 

The 130-room hotel will be set in Santo Domingo’s charming, 500-year-old Colonial Zone, within a 16th century building that’s been transformed by designer Rafael Moneo. 

In keeping with the brand, it’s an immersion in Santo Domingo’s brand of cool, with everything from a rooftop pool to a cigar-and-rum lounge and a trio of eateries. Uniquely, eight of the rooms will be large “rooftop suites.”

Other inclusions range from a fitness center to a mix of event space to Kimpton signatures like yoga mats in the room and, yes, that famous nightly “social hour” for guests. 

The hotel will be a gateway for guests to “uncover all that Santo Domingo has to offer,” IHG’s Paul Adan tells Caribbean Journal. (Kimpton is an IHG brand).

“The hotel will welcome visitors and locals alike with its refined style, innovative restaurants and bars and heartfelt service,” he says. 

What’s interesting about the new Kimpton in the capital is that it will be the product of a partnership with Spanish hotel giant Iberostar, which will actually be managing the resort — the first time the two companies have done something like this together, something Iberostar’s Rodrigo Silveyra called an “expanding relationship with IHG.”

The hotel is already taking reservations for stays beginning July 1.

Santo Domingo’s Colonial Zone has been undergoing large-scale improvements in the last decade as the Dominican Republic seeks to turn the first European settlement in the Americas into a powerhouse tourism destination, and it’s led to a palpable change as cafes, restaurants, art galleries and, yes, boutique hotels have begun to fill up the neighborhood.