Reply from VacatiaMar 3, 2017
Martin, my name is Caroline, and I’m the CEO of Vacatia. First and foremost, I am very sorry for your terrible experience. I’m asking our team to update me directly of your situation. I would like to understand in detail how we failed you, so we can make this right and ensure we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future. My sincere apologies again, and I’ll be in touch shortly.
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Martin and Lilliana,
I reviewed your calls and correspondence with us tonight. It's clear we made a series of bad mistakes. Ultimately as the CEO, the responsibility falls on me. Please accept my sincere apologies for how we mishandled your situation.
Our first mistake was not making it clearer on our site that there was no A/C at the resort. Although it's common for resorts in Kahana not to have A/C because units are cooled from the trade winds, you are right to point out that we should not expect guests to know this information. It's also understandable you prefer not to take the risk of staying in a unit without A/C.
Our second mistake was not having proper escalation procedures in place when several of our senior managers were out of the office. When the resort denied to return funds for your non-refundable reservation, our team was unable to escalate the matter to the senior executive that had the direct relationship with this resort as he was on an international flight. Our guest care manager was also out of town, and to further add to the confusion, you spoke with two separate agents named Dan. The last Dan you spoke with was unsure if he could take over supervisor duties when his direct manager was unavailable, which led to him being referred to both as a supervisor and not a supervisor. Although we made improvements to our training and escalation procedures since you spoke with us last August, you clearly saw the holes we had in our organization. I am very sorry you had to witness our growing pains.
Our biggest mistake of all was our lack of empathy to your situation. We founded Vacatia to be a different kind of travel company - one that focuses on delighting families and friends - and a company that treat our guests like family. Your situation became more complicated because the resort was unable to make an exception, but that was no excuse for us to treat you like a "case", and not a person. From listening to call recordings, it's clear you were worried about the situation not resolving in-time to re-book at another resort before your pending travel date. Because of this, we should have proactively contacted you every half hour, even to report we were still on the phone with the resort, instead of burdening you to call us to receive updates. I also should have been contacted considering the complexity of your situation and direct managers being out of town. It's something we would have done for our family, which means we should have done that for you.
I will contact you separately by email with my personal contact information so you can reach me directly. I hope you allow me to make amends as best as I can. Vacatia will absorb this charge. Refunds have already been applied to your credit card. And at your convenience, I would be grateful if you can allow me to personally extend my apologies over a phone call.
Sincerely,
Caroline Shin
CEO, Vacatia
