AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Travel Need Advice

I hate to give the name since I love San Pedro and dont want to hurt anyones business. They have been great up to this point.
The confirmation states, "see our website for our cancellation policy". The policy in the website says they will charge 1 nights stay if cancelled within 48 hours of arrival.
I put down WAY more than 1 nights stay.

Some bill your creditcard for the full amount of your book stay, on or before you arrive.

That's why travel insurance IMHO is a MUST>

I NEVER get travel insurance. I always rely on the "48 hour cancellation policy".

I definitely will not travel without insurance now.
I'm giving them some time & hopefully we'll get this resolved peacefully without me having to give the name & blast them on this board. I will if I have to though, we'll see what happens.

immissing, did you get my email?

As part of the legally required procedure to gain your Hotel Licence from the BTB you have to submit your cancellation policy to them. They should have it on record and are the official route for arbitration or complaints if you feel wronged by the Hotel.

While they look to be in breach of their policy bear in mind many of the cancellation policies are the same or very similar and that once you are within 45 days or so of arrival penalties are usually incurred. This is as the likelihood of filling the space is less and less the closer you get to arrival date, and often other people have been turned away in the interim of the booking and the cancellation.

Despite the fact they are running a business, in your tragic experience I would have thought at least a credit towards a future stay could have been offered - even IF they were within their rights to keep the deposit.

IMHO travel insurance is for fools, if you can't get your money back, suck it up and bite the bullet.

If it is on your credit card, the simple solution is to call your credit card company and refute the charges. Then sit back and let the place in AC duke it out with your credit card company. Most likely you will win by default with hardly any effort on your part...

Perhaps I should elaborate on my earlier post. When I said "travel insurance is for fools," it was because in all of my travels I would have spent WAY more for travel insurance than I could have ever collected. After all insurance is a numbers game, and the insurance companies are not non profit organizations!

CyaBye that is true.

But peoples needs differ.

What if you were booking for 5 people each time?

It is NORMAL hotel policy for 99% of Hotels on Ambergris that deposits are non refundable for cancellations within a 30 day period and while in this case a tragic death was the cause, we get all sorts of bogus reasons for cancellations and it is unfair for the hotel to have to lose revenue when somebody has held a room on deposit for months on end and then cancels it is almost impossible to fill vacant rooms with a last minute cancellations.

To threaten bad publicity for the hotel because they are within there rights to keep a deposit is in my opinion ludicrous.

Without a cancellation policy the Hotels would deal with allsorts of bogus cancelaations and messing around the policy is there for protection of the hotel

If this was at my hotel I would extend a credit for a future stay however if that was not sufficient for the customer it would signal something other than the reason they provided.

With regards to credit card companies if the Hotel can show cancellation policy is clearly in view for the customer to see the Hotel will win every time.

My advise is to contact the manager and ask for a credit towards a future stay any reasonable person would extend this to you in light of the reason you had to cancel.

best regards

Gaz