Take a Picture, Get Kicked Out of Your Hotel

John wrote while I was on vacation with this nightmare story of customer service at a hotel in the Dominican Republic. I made some suggestions to John, but what would you suggest he do?

First, I must say how your brilliant initiative with Amateur Traveler podcasts enlighten every morning and evening transit! For people who can live vicariously through others it’s a blessing and perfect antidote to all stressful events of the working day. With every podcast one can feel how your audience grows and matures. Listening to your advices build a lot of credibility, your resourcefulness deserves the highest marks, and your podcast exposure is astounding. That is the reason why I decided to bother you with our problem. We – me, my wife, and two my children, 8, and 12 – just came back from the “vacations” in Dominican Republic. We stayed in the hotel “Hacienda Dominicus” which belongs to the Iberostar chain of the hotels. It is not a bad hotel, including locations and accommodations. But the service, respect to guests, simply conducting illegal activities – that is quite different picture!

Let me describe everything in order. On February 19, 2009 we had the reservation to the Le Colonel restaurant that is located on Hacienda premises and included into all-inclusive service that we bought. At 7:15 pm me, my wife, and my older son came to the restaurant and asked to be seated according to our reservations. The customer relations (!) representative Jusula answered that this restaurant currently is having private (!) party, and our reservation was just cancelled. Even though we are not people who like to argue, we showed our frustration with the way they handle reservation process. I took couple picture with my camera to argument my point with the customer service, and mentioned that I might mention this incident to the newspaper. Immediately Jusula pushed my camera away, when to her coworker inside the restaurant, said something in Spanish, rushed to the front desk, and called security. The following is described in the strict chronological order with some comments:

7:15pm, 2/19/2009 – We came to the restaurant, our reservation is cancelled

7:20pm – customer relations representative Jusula pushed my camera away and rushes to the front desk, mumbling “stupid American” (!!!).

7:23pm – Another customer service representative at the front desk announces that we have to leave the hotel because I pushed Jusula (!!!). Obviously she lied to the security in Spanish, but we could not understand anything. Nobody asked us anything at this point, nor any of our witnesses.

7:25pm – Me, my wife, my son are taken into the closed office without windows and kept for almost two hours. During this time there was only one person – assistant manager Marcos – who spoke to us in English. I wrote the report with my explanation of what actually happened, but the manger did not take it arguing that it is too late and there is nobody who can look at it now. At the same time our representative from Travel Impressions (the company that sold us this package) Hector was on the phone with the management of the hotel. The complete conversation is unknown to us but he clamed that he negotiated for us to stay in the hotel for that night and in the morning at 10 am we’ll meet at the front and start actually investigation of what happened. I made an attempt to call US Embassy but obviously nobody gave me the phone.

8:50pm – We were released, after my son was crying hysterically “Are they going to kill us now?” and our witnesses got in the office requesting what was going on.

9:10pm – I finally called US Embassy from our room and made the report with off-duty officer Robert Bundge. He promised to file the report and advice embassy on the situation with the American tourists at this hotel.

9:00am, 2/20/2009 – We receive the letter under the door requesting us to leave the hotel. Even though we scheduled to start investigation with our only agent Hector at 10 am. Again, nobody until this point made any effort to question us what happened as if we did not existed.

10:00am – We meet with our agent from Travel Impressions Hector, who looks shocked as we are by the action of the hotel administration. At this point the other manager of the hotel, Brita, has joined the conversation. She claims that yesterday she took Jusula to the medical office (!!!) for medical attention. At the same time we and our witnesses saw Jusula working on hotel premises all the time last night! Brita did not want to tell us what happened to Jusula (because nothing could happen!). She did not want to listen to us, and we forced her to accept our report that we wrote day before. She still did not read it. Without calling our witnesses she declared that the decision is final and we have to leave the hotel by 3 pm. Hector recommended to start looking for another hotel. I requested to talk to the waiter Mr. Basanta, who was in the restaurant at the time of the incident, but the management (another assistant manager, Mario) claimed that he is not on premises. Mario also claimed that he spoke to Mr. Basanta on the phone and Mr. Basanta did not see anything since he was not there. I checked my camera, and it contained the picture of Mr. Basanta at the restaurant at that time! Also, contrary to the Mario’s statement that Mr. Basanta was not at the hotel, I managed to take picture of him working at the bar at the same time (!!!). Mario also mentioned, that he knows Jusula and her family for 4 years and she simply cannot lie!. Basically, the management prevented me from collection any evidence and ignored all our and our witnesses’ statements. When they saw that I started collecting evidence to prove my innocence, they called to the room and requested us to leave the room by 1:00 pm otherwise they would start charging money.

1:30pm – We left the “Hacienda Dominicus” hotel for another hotel in the middle of our vacation, doing nothing wrong!

Please forgive me for this wordy description, but my frustrating sole does not know other way to describe what happened. From our victim’s prospective this is the clear case of dishonest and disgruntled employees, falsifying statements to discredit complaining guests. The promote and protect corruption in the hotel, cover up the fraud, prevent guests from collection evidence, and endanger well-being of their guests. If you, or any of your listeners have any helpful idea of how to handle this case, it would be greatly appreciated. At this time I spoke to number of lawyers, and only one took time to talk to me. He explained that the hotel is the foreign entity, Iberostar is not US Company, and it is very impractical to sue them here, even though we have a lot of evidence to support our innocence. In any case, my wife and my children must not have been kicked out of the hotel since they were not accused of anything!

Thanks in advance,

John

So what do you think? What should John do?