Gæstebruger
4. marts 2025
For the past three years my wife and I have been blessed to visit the Maldives, well, two years as this year in 2025, the W Maldives canceled our reservation 5 days before we should have been boarding a flight to travel 24+ hours to Paradise!!! For nearly a year had been planning this trip. Booking on points is a blend of art and luck, and becoming more challenging each year as the programs value grows less and less. I had cracked the code between air and two properties and we planned on staying at the W Maldives for the first week, and then moving to the Conrad Maldives for a second week. 5 days before boarding a flight for the 24+ hours of travel to the resort, I received an email from the resort that a generator had failed and we were being relocated to JW Marriott. We had just been at the JW Marriott and the additional travel time, in addition to being a resort we were not interested in returning to, put an immediate damper on the vacation outlook. Then I realized there was a 2nd JW Marriott which had just opened, but the email was not clear which JW Marriott was referencing, what quality of room we would be in, any contact info and really, no concern for our experience, just a cancel and relocate. Messaged back to resort, and contacted our Personal Ambassador as I had just earned Ambassador Elite status for 2025. So much last minute uncertainty made the idea of flying around the world for what SHOULD have been a dream vacation suddenly feel like a nightmare in the making. Three days passed (our Ambassador rep was off for two days, and the resort was not getting back, so I started searching for contacts and emailing) 72 hours passed since the jarring notification, we were past the cancelation window for Conrad, and W Maldives had become non-responsive to a Marriott Ambassador Guest. In speaking with our Ambassador support person, I learned that Marriotts position is the transfer is in the same Tier, and considered an equal quality resort. I questioned though, is it of equal desire? How does this resort have so much availability to accommodate all of these orphaned guests if its an equal experience? I did research and found the JW Marriott near the W on average 20%+ lower cost so from a cost perspective, clearly a lower cost yet no consideration was extended to account for such. A couple years ago, earned Lifetime Hilton Diamond Member, and Hilton was exceptionally more helpful and understanding with one phone call to the Diamond Desk, opening a case, and being willing to work with us. The Conrad Maldives has been absolutely amazing in both previous visits and not surprised here, they allowed us to cancel without penalty, a one time exception due to the out of our control issues presented by W/Marriott. The Conrad was literally at no fault, and treated us better than the hotel chain that crashed our dream vacation!!! AlaskaAir/Qatar also canceled without issue. Even the small hotel in Male near the airport canceled without issue
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