Unhappy in Hawaii

[canyonwalker]

Hawaii April Travelog #21
Waikoloa - Tue, 12 Apr, 2022, 5pm

From reading my previous post, Getting Settled in Waikoloa, you might think I'm really happy here. We've got a comfortable condo with a balcony and a big pool complex. What could possibly be wrong? The answer is, nearly everything is wrong. 😨

I booked this 5-night trip months ago as part of a timeshare marketing package. It was coincidentally when we were planning our previous Hawaii trip in December and I was straightening out a hotel cancellation with Hilton that I let them pitch me on prepaying for a travel package. The saleguy was listing locations we could go, and he had me at "Hilton Waikoloa Village." It's a nice resort that a trusted colleague of mine had said many nice things about in the past, and it's on the beach on the dry side of the Big Island— which we specifically wanted to go to. We'd actually looked at traveling to the Big Island for December's trip, but plans didn't work out. This was an opportunity to stay at a nice resort in a place we wanted to go, at a reduced price. Score, right?

Well, they bait-and-switched us. In the conversations with the sales people they talked about the Hilton Waikoloa Village. It's a 4-star hotel that's right on the beach and has amazing pools and several restaurants. Instead of being accommodated there we're in a step-sister property a mile away. It's laid out like a suburban condo complex, has pools that nice but not amazing, and has only one restaurant that basically only serves poolside snacks and is only open 11a-6p. Oh, and instead of a room overlooking the ocean steps from the beach, we're overlooking a parking lot. A mile from the ocean. And they wouldn't even give me a room 90 minutes before check-in time, making me wait instead until 15 minutes after check-in formally began.

The dashed expectations about location were buried in the fine print. The fine print— which they sent to me, but is not what any of the salespeople said to me— reads, "[a] Hilton area hotel or Hilton Grand Vacations Club resort." So they're within their terms of contract.

But you know what's within my terms of contract? Saying NO at the sales presentation.

You see, the reason timeshares like Hilton Grand Vacation Club offer this discounted stay package is that it's an advertisement. They want you to experience and enjoy a stay in a timeshare so you're more likely to buy one. We've got our sales presentation scheduled for Saturday. That's four days after our arrival... and within minutes of arrival they'd already 100% lost our sale.

Comments

[glossy_mat_finish]

A proven and guaranteed way to loose a potential customer is build up and imply one of the Seven Wonders of the World then deliver an average attraction that impresses no one. The marketing campaign and product don't match up.

It's unfortunate that you were led into this trap.

Any qualities of the accommodation that you might have found to be pluses have been negated by the person that offered you the original deal. That person was very likely following a script (their every action and every word is scrutinized by a manager and software). The Sales Rep position is a thankless and very difficult job. Not defending them, just saying their actions and words were set higher up the food chain.

Competition is fierce in a limited market, add to that the lack of customers during a pandemic and you end up with a very desperate and hungry marketing/sales silo.

None the less, I wouldn't contact them next time I looked for a travel package.

[canyonwalker]

I don't so much blame the original salesguy who sold me the package, or even the later salesgal who confirmed the dates and location and told me which property customers like me are "usually" accommodated in. It's their organization that let us down. It's whatever employee managing room assignments, likely based on a company policy, decided a few days before our arrival, "Enh, these customers are on a package, let's shift them over there to save room for higher paying customers over here." That's the moment they lost our business.

The irony about this business decision is that while they likely shifted us to a lesser property because we're "on a discounted rate", it's their own business they've hurt with that decision. We're not bargain-shoppers who lucked into a sale and will tolerate second class service because we got a cut rate. This is explicitly a sales trip. They are courting our business, showing us their best to entice us to spend tens of thousands of dollars with them. And they lost it with one little 5-second decision.