I went to club med the first week of June 1999 and stayed at they village in Martinique. this is what happened to me and various pictures both from the SCUBA diving and around the club. Some was good, some not so good. About a month after my trip I received a survey form Club Med asking about my trip. I responded by filling out the survey and adding a list of what could not fit in, or did not there was not a place for in the survey. That was in July 1999 and I have not received a response from them, so I am posting this to warn everyone. If by some miracle Club Med does respond to my letter or my putting up this web site. I will be happy to post their response here for everyone to see.
1) When I first got there I could not find anyone or any signs at entrance where the taxi dropped me off to tell me where the front desk is or to do anything with my bags. I ended up carrying my suit case, dive bag and carry on bag and walking around until I found the front desk.
2) I then had to wait for 20 minutes until they found someone who spoke English and could help me. Maybe I am wrong, but if you are going to market your product to an English speaking country and English speaking consumers, you should have people on hand who speak English.
3) When I got to my room, the people who where there before me were still using the room. Check out time is 11:00
4) The maid had not cleaned up the room yet. It was about 3:00 PM.
5) After the prior guests finally got all their things out of the room and I got in it. I found that the air conditioning did not work. it only blew hot air. I went back down to the front desk to complain about the air not working and was told that there are no other rooms available and that they will try to get someone to look at it, but that they do not know when that will happen.
6) When I called Club Med to arrange my trip, I was told that there is a special at this club for free SCUBA diving. As one of the reasons for going there was to dive, I naturally took advantage of this. When I went to check in for the weeks diving, I was told by a member of the SCUBA staff that I was not on their list and that I have to pay for the diving. I showed her my paperwork that Club Med had sent me that showed the trip was paid for and that I had signed up for the diving and that it is free. She did not care, she kept insisting that I have to pay for it.
I asked to speak to the general manager and two people went and came back about 20 minutes later with the person who is in charge of the SCUBA. I again asked for the general manager, about 15 minutes later the person in charge of sports shows up. I again (third time) asked for the general manager and after another 20 minuets, (just under a hour to get to speak to him) the general manager shows up. He looked at my papers and said that I am correct about the diving (surprise, surprise). He also changed my room. He did not say anything to the people at the front desk about this, he just told me to tell them that he had put me in a different room. (remember up above where the front desk told me that there are no other rooms available? Seems to me that they lied about that. Not good customer service.)
7) While they did change me to another room, which was bigger and did have air conditioning that did work, it did not work that well. It was only cool, not cold.
8) During the week that I was there, I found out that the club was only about one third full. I also found out that there were only 20 English speaking guests. That the people that come there are predominately from France.
This is something that I feel Club Med should tell customers when they call to make reservations. Very few of the employees spoke English. If I had known this I would have chosen another Club Med to go to.
9) The maid's cart was parked permanently outside of my room. (see pictures)
10) The bathroom in the room was not air conditioned. Not very good when you get out of the shower trying to dry off and you start sweating.
11) There were tiles missing in the shower. (see pictures)
12) There were some missing vinyl tiles in the room, and others had pieces missing from them. (see pictures)
13) The door jambs for the door going into the bathroom and from the hallway into the room were both rusted. This is not safe, as if some one were to step on one barefoot, they could have cut their foot on the rusty metal. (see pictures).
14) There was paint peeling off the wall in large pieces in the shower, around the toilet (see pictures)
Dive Pictures |
Other Pictures |
