If you like being under constant attack by a photography helicopter and being pushed around by the staff who are trying to get you out of the way of their advertising film crew, you’ll love Beaches Turks & Caicos.

We were unfortunate enough to book a reservation at this place in December 2012. Incredibly, what was to be our vacation happened to coincide with their advertising campaign. Every day of our stay was nothing but aggravation.

THE BEACH WAS COMPLETELY CLOSED on 3 occasions. They placed guards at all access points to the beach so the paying customers wouldn’t access the beach and interfere with filming their advertising.

For several days, they removed all beach equipment; beach chairs, kayaks, water trikes, snorkeling equipment, excursion boats, etc. This was to allow complete access for the models and photo crew and to have an empty beach to photograph and film. Never mind that thousands of paying customers who each paid a small fortune to attend this ‘resort’ are being pushed around because we were considered a nuisance.

Pools were intermittently closed, bars, restaurants, water park, etc., were closed off so they could be filmed for advertising purposes.

A helicopter that had the Sandals logo and a photographer hanging out the side door, was constantly circling and hovering overhead, making high speed passes over the beach and the buildings at treetop levels. This went on for hours and hours over the course of several days. The noise and disruption was incredible. This would never be allowed in the U.S. because of the danger to those below. However, at Beaches Turks and Caicos, they are not at all concerned about YOU. When it suited the resorts interests, we (the paying guests) were treated as background objects for filming. Later when it suited the resorts interest for us to be gone, we were chased away.

The staff will pretend it’s not happening.

You cannot predict when they will use the facility for advertising purposes, but when it does you will have no recourse. We registered a complaint regarding their photo shoot, and received an undated form letter that they apparently keep on hand to give to people who are upset about their aggressive photographers. I even demanded the name of a supervisor I could contact directly. This person was mysteriously never available.

The manager I spoke to at the resort was clear that we should continue our stay and then proceed with a customer service complaint after we returned home. This we now realize, was to get rid of us, get us as far away as possible, giving us no recourse when customer service refuses to respond.

We had a long conversation one evening with a young woman who has worked at the resort for several years. She told us that these photo shoots happen TWICE A YEAR! Of course they are planned in advance, but the guests are never informed. It is impossible for you, the paying guest, to know when it is going to happen. There will be no mention of it when you book your trip. When you arrive and find that it is happening, that’s just too bad for you. They don’t even thank you for funding their advertising materials for the next six months.

Anybody planning a destination wedding at this place should reconsider. Spending thousands and thousands of dollars to have a beach wedding in which you have to shout your vows over the never ending drone of the helicopter would be a catastrophic event.

We had communications with customer services who have now stopped responding. This organization is a bunch of thieves. No sane organization would push their paying customers around and expect them to put up with this kind of treatment.

I found it hilarious to look at trip advisor after we had returned. There were many postings that accurately reflected the photography attack that occurred at that time. There were however, many more raving reviews posted which made no mention of the photography over that time period. This confirms to me that the resort is flooding trip advisor with fake reviews. There is no way a guest who was on the property at that time could have possibly avoided the horrible plague that was the photographers and helicopters.

I am going to pre-empt the false and misleading response that Beaches/Sandals will place regarding this posting. I can assure you that even though they say ‘contact customer service to resolve this issue’, that is also fake. Their customer service has only deflected our concerns. They are only there to delay and eventually stall any resolution. Meanwhile, they have successfully stolen our money.

In summary, DO NOT spend thousands of dollars to stay at a resort that obviously doesn’t care about repeat customer visits. In my experience, they only use the existing customers to create advertising materials to bring in the next wave of new customers. For those who are on-site and have already fully paid for their stay, they have your money and will treat you however they damn well please.