Let me start off by expressing that the wedding day (ceremony and reception) were picture perfect. We're excited to finally be married and proved to ourselves that a destination wedding was the right choice. Leading up to the wedding, we expressed concerns to our DestinationWeddings.com specialist (Denise Flannery) about the Ocean Coral & Turquesa on-site wedding coordinator, Ana Bautista. However, once we were on-site Ana proved to us that she was more than capable of coordinating our event. To that point, we've sent Ocean Coral & Turquesa and Ana comments on how we believe they could improve the "pre-wedding" communication and planning.
Focusing on the communication and planning with regards to the service at DestinationWeddings.com, we feel there was much to be desired. As they tout a "wedding specialist" working with each bride/groom, we strongly feel that there was little involvement with "wedding" activities on the part of our DestinationWedding.com planner. It seemed to us that they functioned as more a "travel agent" and not a wedding specialist. We would have been better off to have booked this trip on our own and advise our guests of the same. We did the leg work in putting together and planning this event. We would suspect that due to the "experience?" and volume of destination weddings handled at DestinationWeddings.com, that there would be a service plan the company implements with every client.
Moreover, after going through this experience for the first time, we are now aware of many do/don't situations that were never brought to our attention. At times were we would have expected a 'wedding specialist" to step in and provide guidance or assistance, that simply did not occur. Early on, there were numerous occasions were we would direct questions to our wedding specialist (Denise Flannery), and she continuously deferred us to the onsite wedding planner, Ana Bautista. We feel some of the frustrations with the communication/planning of Ana Bautista could have been mitigated had Denise stepped in to provide the level of service that DestinationWeddings.com and she claim to provide. After continuing to defer to Ana on many more questions, we received the hint and began communicating with Ana outside of Denise's involvement. As quoted on the DestinationWeddings.com website, "During the process, your Certified Destination Wedding Specialist can help make sure you get the best deals from the hotel, the wedding planner, and any other onsite vendors - and also provide a "sanity check" against other weddings we've held at the location you choose." Based on our experience, we don't feel there is any truth to this quote.
Furthermore, at the beginning of our relationship with DestinationWeddings.com and Denise Flannery, we exchanged comments back and forth on suggestions of where to get married. We initially expressed our wishes to keep the "all in" cost for our guests to under $1500 per person. After which Denise provided a number of options from Mexico to some Caribbean destinations, each of which was significantly over that $1500 budget. After a few weeks of back and forth of over budget quotes, we decided to take matters into our own hands to research and vet resorts. Through our work and determination, we chose a resort that was within that $1500 budget for our guests. In fact, many of our guests costs were significantly under $1500 per person, relegated to our persistence to stay under budget. Our disappointment started here and did not proceed to get better in the many months leading up to the wedding.
More to that point, we also have a sincere concern over DestinationWeddings.com and Denise Flannery's business practices when assisting us with our booking. In July 2011, as we discussed our booking arrangements, Denise had suggested that we should book a Privilege Junior Suite at Ocean Coral & Turquesa as this would be a nicer room for the us at our wedding. After selling the amenities and perks of the Privilege Junior Suite, we agreed to book. Denise put together a quote for that room and airfare. We ended up with a 7 night stay and round trip airfare for $3,449.10.
A couple of items to point out…
1. Ocean Coral & Turquesa's wedding package states that any wedding party with at least 8 booked rooms (we had 11 rooms), would grant the Bride & Groom an upgrade to their Privilege Suite. Based on that, we could have booked a standard room for roughly 50% less cost and still received an upgrade.
2. Our flight package included layovers on both legs of the trip. We recall email and phone conversations with you informing us that direct flights were not available in the early morning unless we departed at a later time. We came to find out that you booked 4 other guests of ours on a "direct" flight with American Airlines that departed roughly 30 minutes after our flight. Instead, we arrived to the resort approximately 4 hours after these other guests, and they had paid roughly half for their trip.
Now onto DestinationWeddings.com relationship with Lomas Travel...
On our third day, Wednesday, we attempted to book an excursion through Alejandro (Alex) Noh of Lomas Travel. We decided to book a private catamaran to Isla Mujeres for Thursday, where we could snorkel and enjoy the local food and shopping. Alex quoted a price of $76 per person for a party of 20 people ($1520) without the extra $7 dock fee per person. Alex did not request a deposit, but we insisted he take $390 as a gesture of good will. Alex gladly took the money and informed us he would need the rest of the money the morning of the excursion. Later in the evening, we were informed by 4 of our guests that their flight into Cancun was delayed and they would not be arriving until mid-afternoon on the day of the excursion. At that point we decided we would rather cancel our excursion than have to cover the cost of the missing 4 guests. As Lomas Travel departs the resort around 5pm nightly, we had to wait until the morning to speak with Alex to cancel the excursion.
The following morning (Thursday), we met Alex as he arrived at the resort, roughly 8am. We proceeded to explain the situation to Alex and he instructed us he would call the catamaran to cancel. Following his call with the catamaran, Alex told us there would be a 50% penalty of the total booking cost (50%/$1520 = $760). As we had given him only $390, he declared that he would keep that as the penalty. This "penalty" caught us by surprise as we were never informed of this and did not think to ask when discussing the booking on the prior day. Not only were we not explained the "penalty" but we never received a receipt/invoice from Alex. After giving over $390 to him on the prior day, he only told us to meet in front of the hotel at 8:45am without any further verbal instructions or providing paper documents of any sort. On Thursday morning, as we balked at the $390 penalty, Alex proceeded to show us 20 receipts that he hand wrote. There were individual receipts for each of the 20 people, clearly outlining the booking procedure, cancellation policy and penalty. However, these receipts clearly showed a "customer signature" line that was blank, as no person of the 20 had been presented or signed any paper. At this point in the conversation we asked Alex for a full refund as we had not been presented these receipts or signed them. He declined, after which we took the top copy of the 20 unsigned receipts and proceeded to the resort management to request their assistance in the matter.
We ended up speaking with 3 different resort managers over a span of 3 hours (wasted time) which eventually led to a supervisor of Lomas Travel to travel to our resort to mediate/resolve the situation. As we waited for the supervisor of Lomas Travel to arrive, we went to find Alex once again to ask for copies of the receipts. He presented a handful of receipts with a customer signature. We knew immediately that these signatures were forged, at which point, we tore the stack of receipts from Alex's hand and proceeded to find and explain the forgery to the resort manager. When the supervisor of Lomas Travel arrived, he asked the resort manager and us explain the whole situation. After hearing the story and our explanation of the forged receipts, the supervisor returned our entire $390 and asked that we accept his apology. Suffice to say, this whole ordeal lasted roughly 4 hours and just about ruined our day. As a partner of Lomas Travel, I would expect DestinationWeddings.com to investigate this situation and see to it that nothing like this ever happens to your clients again.
Also, some last items that have shown us the lack of care for your clients:
1. During our last call before we departed to Mexico (roughly 1 week prior), Denise felt our discontent with our trip arrangements, and to save her own dignity, she continued to suggest that we should have picked Jamaica as our destination. This goes to prove that there was never an understanding of our wishes since the beginning.
2. We would have expected a welcome letter, gift or thank you from Denise Flannery and/or DestinationWeddings.com to have been arranged for us upon our arrival to Ocean Coral & Turquesa. With 18 people booking through you and DestinationWeddings.com, my estimate is DestinationWeddings.com would have secured in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $25,000 of revenue for this group. A little token of appreciation would have been a nice gesture.
3. During the months leading up to the wedding, Denise Flannery interacted with and quoted a number of our guests. We have heard from most of those guests that Denise claimed that if they did not book through DestinationWeddings.com that their room assignments would not be guaranteed and they may not be able to end up in the same resort as the rest of the party. Specifically, Denise stated that the Ocean Coral & Turquesa resort has 2 parts to the resort. Denise proceeded to inform some of our guests that the if they would not book through DestinationWeddings.com that she could not guarantee they would have a room on the "Coral" side of the resort, which is the side Denise believed we (bride/groom) were booked at. In fact, there is not a Coral and/or a Turquesa side of the resort, but only privilege and non-privilege rooms. The hotel concierge confirmed that they make best efforts to group rooms together for all wedding parties regardless of the booking/travel agent. Case in point, we had 4 guests book through Expedia and their rooms were placed next to the rest of our guests that booked with DestinationWeddings.com. Therefore, the "side" of the resort a room would be booked would not have been a factor if a guest booked with an outside travel agency. The week before the wedding, Denise emailed Ana Bautista (the resort wedding coordinator) a request that our entire group of 22 people be accommodated by securing rooms close to each other. We do not believe this email impacted the resorts decision to assign rooms close to one another.
4. More to the points above, we have been back from our trip for 6 weeks and after sharing our displease with our trip and wedding, we have yet to hear or read any follow up from Denise or DestinationWeddings.com. In our view, this is a complete sign of disrespect and has been the main reason for writing this letter.
From our perspective, this was a very stressful experience that we would have done anything to avoid. It was distressing to our guests as we lived from one crisis to the next, just begging for the chance to get home. We do not feel that is unreasonable to expect justification and explanation of the events outlined along with a comment on how problems such as ours will be resolved so other unsuspecting travelers do not experience the same.