Boycott El Dorado Royale & Karisma Resorts

[Matt Adcock]

Originally Posted by El Dorado Royale

El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels, by Karisma strive to provide exceptional wedding services and meet our guests' every need. As such, we have listened attentively to feedback provided by the bridal community and have updated our outside vendor policy. Outside photographer and videographer vendors are welcome at the property for a charge of $500 per day. It is no longer a requirement for them to stay at the hotel but are welcome to do so if they choose. Vendors must be pre-approved in advance by the wedding coordinator and must abide by all Mexican governing laws which require foreign workers to obtain proper licensing and work certificates while in Mexico doing work for themselves or on behalf of others. The hotel reserves the right to request proof of such license and/or work certificate.

We place a great deal of emphasis on our overall wedding services, guaranteeing the highest level of guest satisfaction such as offering U.S. based wedding planners, on-site professional coordinators, unique beachfront ceremony locations (including seaside chapels), gourmet cuisine, blood work done on property, customized weddings and amenities, and affordable prearranged wedding packages like our Free Sweet Wedding Package, to name a few.

At El Dorado Spa Resorts & Hotels and Azul Hotels, by Karisma, we take pride in our wedding services and ensuring couples experience the ultimate day of celebration, romance and a lifetime of memories. We look forward to continuing to work closely with you, creating perfect destination weddings.

Do you have a name? Its nice to see Karisma tune into the Internet web sector of their target demographic. If you are going to be posting about policies and so forth, it would be nice to know who we are talking to and your position inside Karisma's Goliath company.

del Sol photography also strives to provide exceptional wedding services and meet our guests' every need. In fact, we strive even harder to sell your hotels to our clients by posting slideshows on this forum. Our clients are members and talk about their past experiences. The lasting impression every time, their photo story at your resorts.

We are in business to serve travel agent style marketing with our online presence through online networks and forums like this one. Del sol Maintains proper paperwork to work in your hotels and yet Karisma coordinators reply to our clients that we were banned due to past unprofessional behavior. When in fact, it was words from very post in this forum where we were trying to protect our clients about these fees and let them know exactly what they were and that they were high and we disagreed with it however it was the only way for us to work on the property. We endorsed this policy and asked EVERYONE to pay the $500 fee. And my count today, is that we serviced 15+ weddings where our clients paid those fees.


Our upcoming clients and current Karisma clients wish you would change your policies, especially regarding your smaller Boutique hotels. We are in position to have a very very mutually beneficial professional relationship with constant del SOl referrals from ecstatic clients.

del Sol and all of our clients are curious to hear your reply and we would like to THANK our clients for their support. Also, thank you Faith Wishnie for actually making a good PR decision to allow old contracts to continue to have their wedding without last minute policy changes damaging their special day.

Regards,

[Tammy Host]

Originally Posted by El Dorado Royale

Outside photographer and videographer vendors are welcome at the property for a charge of $500 per day. It is no longer a requirement for them to stay at the hotel but are welcome to do so if they choose.

hello, thank you for coming on the forum to post the new outside vendor policy. when i spoke to one of your PR people they told me that if the vendor was a guest at the resort they did not have to pay the fee. is that still true?

[jeskaly]

This is great to know. It is ridiculous that these expensive high end resorts won't let you choose who you want to photograph your special day....how money hungry are they?

[Case*a*licious]

OK... I'm confused... I was really considering Azul Sensatori by Karisma. I was reading about a $500 outside photog charge in one of the threads, which after considering that the pics are the one thing I really want to spend money on, its totally worth it to me. Does anyone know if its anything more than $500. If they don't allow outside vendors, are theirs even any good?

[sunandrun]

I am getting married at one of the Iberostar resorts. They charge $300 if you want to bring in an outside photographer.

[bechgrl]

Hey everyone! I just wanted to post this in defense of EDR......there are many resorts that have the same rules that you can not bring in outside vendors w/o paying extra which while it sucks is understandable, everyone likes to make money! Mid-way thru my booking EDR changed it's rules that now not only do you have to pay the extra $500 for the outside vendor you also have to pay for them to stay at the resort for 3 nights. Because I was told in the begining that it was only the $500 rule they stuck with that! Make sure you save all of your emails! Also never forget trying to negotiate with the outside vendor. I asked mine and they are splitting the $500 fee with me!

[TA Jill]

Originally Posted by bechgrl

Hey everyone! I just wanted to post this in defense of EDR......there are many resorts that have the same rules that you can not bring in outside vendors w/o paying extra which while it sucks is understandable, everyone likes to make money! Mid-way thru my booking EDR changed it's rules that now not only do you have to pay the extra $500 for the outside vendor you also have to pay for them to stay at the resort for 3 nights. Because I was told in the begining that it was only the $500 rule they stuck with that! Make sure you save all of your emails! Also never forget trying to negotiate with the outside vendor. I asked mine and they are splitting the $500 fee with me!

Not sure if you read all of the way through this thread, but the whole reason it was started was because of the new policy and because of this post, supposedly EDR has changed the policy and that was the whole purpose of posting this information.

[bechgrl]

Ta Jill I had not read that they had changed to policy back but my post was still correct in what it said! That's awesome that they changed it back. That would have been helpful if I still thought I had to pay for my vendor to stay at the hotel. But there is still the $500 fee I talked about as well as mid-way thru my planning they had changed it but still stuck with the original deal we had made! Just wanted everyone to be aware to keep all emails!

[Mandy]

Originally Posted by bechgrl

Ta Jill I had not read that they had changed to policy back but my post was still correct in what it said! That's awesome that they changed it back. That would have been helpful if I still thought I had to pay for my vendor to stay at the hotel. But there is still the $500 fee I talked about as well as mid-way thru my planning they had changed it but still stuck with the original deal we had made! Just wanted everyone to be aware to keep all emails!

Bechgrl,

You will find LOTS of info regarding this topic all over the forum. Read through these:
El Dorado Royale (EDR) Brides - POST HERE!
El Dorado Brides - Roll Call
El Dorado Royale - Resort photographer?
Legal Ceremony Outline for EDR
$500 to bring in my own photographer!
El Dorado Royale wedding advice

These would be a good place to start. I've also included some generic EDR threads. You should read all the way through all of them, and you will find answers to lots of your questions! There are more, but I'll let you find them on your own. Search through the Mexico forum. Happy planning!

[adias.angel]

Just want to say a big thank you to Tammy for posting this!!!

We want Del Sol as our photographer but we cannot book with them until one year from our date. We need to select the hotel now though. If not for this post I never would have known about the problems with the Karisma resorts. We actually had a couple Karisma resorts on our list of favorites. They have now been crossed off.

I cannot say thank you enough for saving us!!!! Carla