Member- UKbee
- 5 years ago
- Wedding: November 2014 - Mauritius
Hi Bee’s,
Fiance and I are getting married in November this year at a gorgeous boutique spa/hotel in Mauritius. We booked it up back in January and due to pay the outstanding balance in August. We fell in love with the hotel, did a lot of research and looked at a lot of reviews before making our choice, it will just be us two and we have been getting everything in order over the last few months. When we got all of the documents through we looked and found that we were on the ‘His & Hers All-Inclusive’ package, we were curious as to what this was exactly (we assumed all-inclusive was ALL-INCLUSIVE, we hadn’t seen anything to explain that there were more than one package or descriptions of what was included). When we looked into it and got some info back, we found that this was essentially the most basic package and there were two packages above this ‘Premium’ and ‘Honeymoon’, we were very surprised that we had not been told about these, that they hadn’t pushed us to take one of these options (to make more money) and hadn’t thought as we had booked our wedding and honeymoon at the hotel that we may want the honeymooners package?
A friend of mine works for an indipendant travel agents and arranged everything via a tour oporator, when I asked her she said she also had had no idea about these packages and why we weren’t asked, also surprised there were so many options for all-inclusive. The response she got back from the oporators was very rude and basically saying that we didn’t ask, we didn’t get. I’m sorry, but they get paid on commission and there job is to make you aware of all the available options and get the maximum on the deal, which surley for them means selling the top package? We had to hunt for ages with help from the hotel to even find where it said anything about the all-inclusive packages on the website. The only thing they could suggest was that we upgrade which would cost us a lot, considering we are there for 14 days.
Usually, I wouldn’t kick up too much of a stink about this sort of stuff, drinking and eating tonnes isn’t the be all and end all, but this is our WEDDING and HONEYMOON, we will never have this experience again, we want it to be special and we don’t want to end up with a surprise bill at the end because we wanted a few bottles of champagne on arrival and after our wedding! The basic all inclusive package is fairly restrictive on what drinks you can have i.e. only certain wines (house wines probably) and it’s by the glass, not bottle (which is included on the premium and honeymoon package), some cocktails, not all and only champagne included on the wedding night…that’s not all inclusive!
After this she then tried the hotel themselves, after a week or so they came back and apologised but no, it’s between ‘us’ and the tour oporator. My friend at the travel agents went to her management earlier this week who has various other contacts, along with the recording of how rude the tour oporator was so is going to go back and see what else they can do, if not we will either have to just have to pay up if we want the premium package (which is a lot of money for us) or be careful while we were out there, which is not what we wanted.
Fiance is really angry that we weren’t asked, that they just put us on the basic package and that they didn’t take into account this was our wedding, also angry that they are not willing whatsoever to help, even discount the amount to upgrade. He also thinks that the travel agents should absorb the costs to upgrade as they should have investigated and given us options, this is hard as she is also my friend and I believe she also did not have any idea, and the tour oporator should have advised her so she could have spoken with us about it, she is annoyed/upset for us and trying her best to sort it. Fiance even suggested we tell them we are going to cancel and book another venue out there, we booked at a great time and now all the prices are 2-3 times the amount we paid and the availability isn’t too great at the top places as it’s peak season and less than 5 months away.
Just looking for some advice really bee’s, keep pushing & pushing to get the premium package free of charge as it was there ‘mistake’ or just let it go and either deal with having to be restricted on the honeymoon or pay the extra?
