One and Only St. Geran - Should I give up?
I am about to travel to Mauritius with my family, for 2 weeks, staying at Constance Le Prince Maurice, St Regis (using up my last SPG points), and One and Only Le St Geran.
St. Geran is a bucket-list place for me; I know a few people (of the old money/grande dame type) who stayed there 30 years ago. I always wanted to go there, and after their recent reopening, this seemed like a good opportunity.
The reservation process with St Geran has proven incredibly difficult though. Please see below what happened so far (sorry for the lengthy text). At this point, I am so frustrated that I am about to move my stay somewhere else. I feel foolish having to do a special effort on my side to even reserve with them.
What is your point of view: 1) Would you keep trying? How? ; or 2) If moving my stay, where?
This is the recount of the events:
All rooms regardless of size have a max. occupancy of 3 in the online booking system, so I was unable to book online with my 2 children. This is quite normal.
From there it went downhill: An e-mail reservation request to the hotel directly went unanswered for a few days. I then contacted One and Only central reservations, and I got a confirmation within a few hours. After that, I also got an offer from the hotel (days after I had already reserved). Even later, the hotel asked me again for all details I had already given to central reservations (names of travelers etc.).
Then, for some reason I received a second confirmation, which was wrong (4 nights instead of the 5 I had asked for). Not sure why, I never asked for 4 nights, I never changed my dates. I followed up, they had availability for the “additional” night, though, and I thought everything was fixed. I had to e-mail in a signed and scanned credit card form so they could charge the deposit (25%).
A few days ago, 6 months after the booking, they wanted to charge the remainder (they require payment in full 2 weeks before arrival), and the total was wrong, because in fact I was still booked for 4 nights. It took another two calls to the hotel to fix it.
Or so I thought. In the second call, the person confirmed that there is availability for the fifth night, and promised that I should receive a reservation confirmation. Instead, I received a message that they understand I want to extend for one night, and they need to check availability. ???
Not once during the process did I receive an apology. What I did receive though in the meantime was numerous messages attempting to upsell to half board, which I did not want.