New fee to visit from RM to pearl or visa versa

[mountain]

When I book a lengthy stay I need to break it up in the middle (just for the change of pace) and heading to the other Desire is enough change of scenery. It makes the days I am at Desire more "desirable". Now, since we are no more costly to the resort by checking out the other property but we are asked to dig still deeper into our pockets, we'll just plan a shorter stay at Desire and try another place when we need a break and just stay there for the last few days.

[WhiteSands]

One slight correction, they must offer a day pass as we met a couple on March 9th at Pearl who was just there for the day from another resort.....not any of the Desire or Temptation properties. They paid $250 US and had to leave by 6PM......

I stand corrected. On their website it always used to state that they did not sell day passes, now it simply states

"DO YOU ALLOW DAY OR NIGHT PASSES?
Desire is a clothing optional resort for couples only that grants you an initimate holiday, but if you are already staying in one of our Desire Resorts, you will have the opportunity to enjoy a Day Pass at either Desire Riviera Maya or Desire Pearl at your convenience for $ 150 USD per couple."

No mention one way or the other about guests from other resorts.

[Okskidivers]

Very sorry to hear of this new policy: agree that it is short-sighted and that the budget explanation does not make much sense especially when you consider the rates paid by Pearl guests. Would be great if another clothing-optional and lifestyle friendly resort would open especially on West Coast.

Admin Note: Please lets keep this important topic "ON TOPIC" - off topic posts will be moved or deleted - tnx

[werfun]

As we have said before; Cabo is the ideal place for a Desire type of resort be it a desire property or another owner.
maybe all the Desire lovers should band together and start a Cabo resort without all the BS that the Desire owners seem to stir up with their ever changing management decisions from day to day. We are just glad that we never gave in to the sales pitch to buy into the resort.

Admin Note: Please lets keep this important topic "ON TOPIC" - off topic posts will be moved or deleted - tnx

[J&K]

We have been to neither and are visiting pearl in may. We have a penthouse for part of our stay and wanted to check out RM for a day, just to see what it is like compared to Pearl. It will be interesting to see if they try to charge us. Ridiculous that we could pay so much a night and be charged $150 to check out their other property. I will email now to voice our disapproval.

Please let us know what response you get.

Here is their response...

Unfortunately the policy doesn't allow me to give you day passes on your
entire stay for free, as it would be really unfair on all the other guests
that are paying for their day passes to visit both Desires.
What I could do for you is I will speak to the Manager at DRM and I might be
able to give you access to their foam party just for one day.

I would also like to explain to you that when you book a night at Desire
Pearl, your money stays in DP's budget. Same with DRM.
The 150 usd us for your consume on the hotel you are not staying in. The
real cost of the day pass is 250usd. But between Desires is 150usd.
If you would like to go Temptation the rate is 240usd with no discount.

And my response...
It is a shame that the budgets can't be worked out between the two Desires, since they both are Original Resort properties. I think in the future this will likely cause us to split our stay between the resorts or try other options. We like the upscale elegance of Pearl but also like to party which we are told is more frequent at DRM. It is a shame we can't have both. If I am paying a premium to stay at Pearl it just doesn't seem right to have to pay more to visit a resort owned by the same company when that resort actually costs less. The policy is not very customer centric. Really unfair to other guests? It is really unfair to all guests that you are now charging a fee for something we feel we already paid for in our booking.

No return response yet.

At least they are responding. And now their response...

As I was explaining before, both hotels work their budgets differently. As I imagine, you must have stayed at different resorts not only here in Mexico , but probably also in your country, and I can't think of any other resort giving you full access all inclusive for free to their other properties.
It is like if you visit Disneyland in Paris and then you arrive to Florida in the afternoon and try to get in for free. They won't let you unless you pay for the entrance. That is just an example.

I appreciate your understanding and I am looking forward to meeting you.


Now that they opened the door comparing themselves to Disney I have a good response, although written from the treadmill as I prepare for our May trip

[Tilley08]

........what is left out of the response is the fact it was once allowed and now it's not.

[J&K]

As I was explaining before, both hotels work their budgets differently. As I imagine, you must have stayed at different resorts not only here in Mexico , but probably also in your country, and I can't think of any other resort giving you full access all inclusive for free to their other properties.
It is like if you visit Disneyland in Paris and then you arrive to Florida in the afternoon and try to get in for free. They won't let you unless you pay for the entrance. That is just an example.

I appreciate your understanding and I am looking forward to meeting you.

Now that they opened the door comparing themselves to Disney I have a good response, although written from the treadmill as I prepare for our May trip

And finally my response. Going to let it go after this. I figure they know what they are doing and are doing it to increase $ the easy way, not the right way...

Thank you for the information. We would like to visit the DRM foam party on Tuesday May 13th.

I also appreciate the discussion on the new policy of charging for visiting a sister resort owned by the same company. In my company we have different business units. Each business unit has its own budget. Sometimes one business unit charges the other business unit for services and vice versa. We do this with internal transfers of money. This is immaterial to the company as a whole when it comes to revenues, costs and overall profits. We do this internally so that our customers do not have the inconvenience of decreased services or unnecessary costs. Why should we charge our customers more when as a company, like Original Resorts, we have no additional costs as a result? What we are losing in one area we are gaining in another. If one business unit has a lot more money coming in than another then that shows us the business unit with the money coming in is doing a good job and we should put more resources into that business unit. The beauty in all of this is it results in good healthy internal competition to ensure we are doing the best for our customers. Most importantly the customers are happier and appreciate the services and products we are providing. Happier customers equals more business for the entire company and everyone wins. Happy customers = happy employees = more profit = happy original resort owners I realize the hardest part of this equation is determining where to place your most valuable resources, your employees, in order to continue to provide the excellent service you provide. You could start by limiting the daily transfers and tracking what those transfers do and consume at the other resort. Eventually you would be more comfortable removing any limit as you would better understand the resource requirements to support the transfers. There are even computer software programs called Business Analytics that help corporations with Workforce Planning. The company I work for has over 30,000 employees and we use a Business Analytics computer software that only costs $5000 a month. Well worth the cost savings in ensuring we have the right resources in the right place at the right time. And well worth the added revenue as a result of happy customers.

End result is it is a much better and effective way to increase profit than by directly charging your customers to use two different business units within the same company. Probably way more information than you wanted but if you read this far I very much appreciate you listening.

Oh, one more thing, you are right that Disney would charge me twice if I went to Disney World Orlando and Disney Paris in the same day but we both know that isn't possible. We just got back from Disney World in January. And we stayed at a Disney property. We visited other Disney properties to use their pool as we had friends there and there was no fee. No extra charge that would make us feel like we were paying twice! Now I know this isn't an apples to apples comparison as the resorts are not all inclusive. However, there are costs for these services which are not charged back to me the consumer. Disney understands that a happy consumer that stays at Disney and spends money at Disney instead of traveling elsewhere resulting in more revenue going to Disney is more important than Disneys Grand Floridian Resort budget or Disneys Polynesian Resort budget. The transfers of money happens behind the scenes and the customer is happy. Oh, and the same applies to the theme park. I can buy a ticket that is good for Disney World and Epcot and Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. All different budgets but the same company. We had the same experience with a Hilton resort in Key West.

Thank you again for listening. We are very excited to visit Pearl. We have heard wonderful things and will be happy regardless. We are long time fans of Temptation Resort but can tell we will like Desire Pearl even more.

[mrmuscle]

To reply to Desires statement about no other all inclusive resort allowing transfers to sister resorts free of charge, we did stay at the Great Parnassus and transfers to the Golden Parnassus were free of charge. All the all-inclusive amenities were included with no extra charge. We drank free of charge and ate steak free of charge, all that was required was notice with the front desk that we were visiting the sister resort.

[EmptyNesters]

[
At least they are responding. And now their response...

As I was explaining before, both hotels work their budgets differently. As I imagine, you must have stayed at different resorts not only here in Mexico , but probably also in your country, and I can't think of any other resort giving you full access all inclusive for free to their other properties.

Let's see.....If I stay at Sandals Carlyle in Montego Bay, Jamaica, their lowest price property in that town, I also have access to Sandals Montego Bay and Sandals Royal Caribbean, free of charge AND they provide a shuttle. Stay in one of the three Sandals on St. Lucia and you have use of the other two properties. Stay at Sandals Negril and you can use the facilities at Beaches Negril.

[shore128]

One of the dominant resort companies in the Riviera Maya, AM Resorts, which operates the Secrets, Zoetry, Now and Dreams resorts (over 10 just in the Cancun and RM area alone) has a program where guests of Secrets can visit (and dine at) another Secrets Resort. The company offers the same program in Punta Cana. And as another poster pointed out, Sandals offers this at its resorts in Jamaica and St. Lucia.

[Play_Dough]

The Rui properties also offer access to other properties for free (transportation not included), Hidden Beach allows access to El Dorado, and also Iberostar. With Iberostart, I think it is only a one way access (higher hotel class can access the other facilities). It's nice to have the option to have some sort of variety since Desire's are smaller properties. I was there in January and went to Pearl for a day with no fee. I wouldn't book without seeing it based on feedback from others that have visited. Very nice property but RM much more lively. Next trip, we are probably going to do a split trip extending the length of our trip. Had we not seen the property, we would have gone for only our regular number of days. Maybe they need to hire a better accountant to manage the two budgets and incorporate inter-company transfers. And maybe limit the number of transfers daily to work within their capacity.

[millsjr]

The Palace resorts in Cancun and RM also offer for its guest to go from one resort to the others without any costs. This is true for many resort chains as mentioned by others and is the becoming the norm and NOT the exception. It is ridiculous that the person replying to your emails suggested that, surely they are smarter than that. If not, then they need to educate themselves of what is going on in the market. I realize their brand is a different market altogether and that is probably why they think they can get away with this crap.

[Headstone]

Here is what I just sent:

Dear Sirs.

It has just come to my attention that there is now a fee to move between your high end exclusive Original Resort properties.
For some background, my wife and I have been to your Desire Properties on 4 occasions and would have been for a fifth last October had you not sold the Los Cabos property a week after we had visited and ensured us that it was not going to happen.
We are currently booked to return to DRM this October for Halloween and are really looking forward to the trip. We are also going to be at Temptation Resort in two weeks (another of your properties).

To hear of your new policy is very distressing. It is truly a sign of poor customer service and appears more of a money grab.
As you are well aware, many of your customers are repeat visitors and do so on multiple occasions. We still feel new and yet have been 4 times. Plenty have been 10 or 15 times. Some even more. So when it becomes known that you intend to implement such a policy to very loyal customers I feel very slighted.

This coming April for our visit to Tempation we have friends that will be at DRM at the same time. Now I know that they are two different classes of resorts but we were hoping to at least spend time with them. Being regular guest there was a hope you would welcome us (as an appreciation for our patronage) for an afternoon. Now not only does it appear that this is not possible at all, it seems that you do not care about loyal customers in the least.

I fully understand your “point” that the resorts are run separately under different budgets, but being in an industry that runs many different buildings under separate budgets it is well known that the head company has the ability to shift resources and balance the books as needed. I can understand that you feel that the cost of a guest going to the other Desire property from where they are staying can affect operations at the other. But really, how many guests per day do in fact visit the other? Being as neither of the resorts have more than 230 guests at any time I cannot see this as much of an issue.

You have pointed out to another customer that there could be an issue with the amounts of pool chairs!!! On all my visits to your resorts there are NEVER enough pool chairs for the registered guests let alone anyone who may visit. To the issue of food and drink consumed, what is eaten and drank at one is not at the other. This is a balance of costs. On many days customers at either of your resorts leave the properties to visit the local area and surroundings. Thus savings to you. Do we as guests get compensated for not eating or drinking those days? NO

Customer service means treating your loyal customers as you would wish to be treated. I certainly hope you do not enjoy being overcharged and gouged. That is what this is. WE are paying for an exclusive high end holiday and should be treated as such.
If you feel the need to keep track of guests coming and going either from one of the resorts or between them then do so!!
If I have friends come and visit from out of town and they want to go elsewhere to spend a day I do not charge them. That would be absurd! I adjust accordingly and treat them PROPERLY.

As of now you do not seem to know what you are doing and are just trying to make a buck.
We were very put out of place when you closed the Los Cabos resort and were never apologized to or compensated in any way.
It seems your company is caring less and less about us as customers.

I really think it is in your best interests to revisit this bad policy and look at what it means to treat a guest.

We still really enjoy going to the Desire resorts and will continue to do so right now but if policies like this continue we will have to consider going elsewhere.

Signed
Distressed Loyal Guest

[NWWACouple]

Wow - that stinks. It may not completely affect our future travel plans, but it will certainly factor in. We have to say that overall we haven't been impressed at all with the direction Desire ownership is heading...

[jnj69]

How far are the 2 resort apart? Taxi ride lenght?