Annoyed with the Sheraton Hacienda del Mar

[AlmostaSeif]

I have been negotiating with them for the last couple of weeks. They came down on their room rates by $5 a night, which I dealt with. Now we are trying to get them to work with us on food and beverages and they lowered the price by $3 for the open bar. NOW, we just told them that we would book tomorrow (mind you, this will bring their hotel $10,000 + over two days) if they would throw in the wedding cake (a total of $265) at no charge and they won't budge. I don't get it. I just want to book the hotel, but I don't get why they are so unwilling to budge on anything!

[TammyB]

I don't think they usually do wedding cakes. How many quests are you having? You might want to contact Deena at Sweet Dreams, she did our cakes and they were AWESOME..

 

The problem with most of the vendors in cabo, well anywhere for that matter, is once you say it's a wedding they just see dollar signs. Maybe if you are working with a WC she can help you out.

[Jessalyn]

yeah, I had a hard time negotiating with them too. I was able to get them to lower their deposit, so you might want to consider trying that.

 

I did have them do our wedding cake..it cost me $100 it was a little crappy cake and didn't taste very good. We just wanted something to cut, not necessarily for our guests to eat. We chose a buffet though and there were tons of yummy desserts in the buffet, and the food was very good.

 

Also, we did open bar on a consumption basis and I think that saved us a ton of $$... a lot of our guests had been partying the 3 nights leading up to our wedding, so they didn't drink much at the actually wedding, so you might want to compare per drink prices to the per hour open bar prices.

 

Let me know if I can help at all...you can always pm me...good luck! The Sheraton is beautiful!!!

[franeve]

Well let me just tell you I'm getting married at the Sheraton in November and my contract requires 10 booked rooms. The problem is my guests are finding rates online for the sheraton which are cheaper than the "special rate" I'm getting from them!! I called Oscar the event coordinator at the Sheraton (twice!)and he sent me an email saying that by booking through the sheraton my guests would get a discount at the spa, and other perks! So what! How can I ask my guests to book through the Sheraton and pay more for their rooms?? I'm going to call him again tomorrow..... But I thought you should know and discuss this with them before you sign your contract...

[RebelBride2008]

I booked my wedding at Cabo Azul and had similar issues with the room block negotiations- they wanted much more per/night vs a promotion they are running. After much back and forth and frustration, we ended up not signing the contract and our guests booked the package deals and saved over $100/nt on their rooms. Too bad for CAR for not working with us. I hope you can work out your issues with Sheraton.

 

Here's another issue we are having with negotiations:

The manager at our reception site will not let us use the existing chairs for our receptions and we must bring chairs in! WTF is that! We booked the resort and site because we loved the look/decor, now we have to go with "wedding" chairs. If we wanted that, we would have booked elsewhere or just had the wedding here. It's like we are bringing so much money to the resort, you think they would be willing to work more with you on things...like chairs and a wedding cake!

 

I hope it works out!

[Floreria Rayen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RebelBride2008 I booked my wedding at Cabo Azul and had similar issues with the room block negotiations- they wanted much more per/night vs a promotion they are running. After much back and forth and frustration, we ended up not signing the contract and our guests booked the package deals and saved over $100/nt on their rooms. Too bad for CAR for not working with us. I hope you can work out your issues with Sheraton. Here's another issue we are having with negotiations: The manager at our reception site will not let us use the existing chairs for our receptions and we must bring chairs in! WTF is that! We booked the resort and site because we loved the look/decor, now we have to go with "wedding" chairs. If we wanted that, we would have booked elsewhere or just had the wedding here. It's like we are bringing so much money to the resort, you think they would be willing to work more with you on things...like chairs and a wedding cake! I hope it works out!

I don't know about Sheraton but Cabo Azul is a time share resort and it's possible that the rates your guest got where cheaper when they booked directly with the hotel because they have to go to a timeshare breakfast. If you don't agree to it you need to pay a more expensive rate. This because the timeshare people pay the difference between the "promotion" rate and the real one.
When they book groups they aren't obligated to go to the timeshare breakfast, so that could be why the rates where more expensive.

About the chairs I don't know what to tell you, that should be included in the price. Of all the weddings I have set up at different hotels in the area, this is the first time I heard of something like this.

Hope you can get to an agreement with the resort and good luck!

[fogdog]

I wish I had something encouraging to tell you, but I had the exact same experience at the Sheraton. They were frustratingly illogical and inflexible at every step of the way. Don't expect this to change - even when you are there for the wedding - they just didn't do anything to make things special or easy for us. That said, I thought my wedding was beautiful and I wouldn't do anything differently - except leave more of the planning and dealing with the Sheraton to my WC.

 

As for the cake, we had our reception at dCortez and they did the cake there and most of the guests said it was the best wedding cake they ever had. It wasn't that pretty or creative but it was really good (tres leches,chocolate, and vanilla). And way more than we needed (I think we all at less than half of it).

[AlmostaSeif]

Well, we went ahead and booked with the Sheraton after all. I am happy with the decision, but worried about dealing with the WC. We got over the fact that they were not going to work with us on pricing and said to heck with it and booked. I am happy to have it done and over with! Just hope it all works out!

[franeve]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlmostaSeif Well, we went ahead and booked with the Sheraton after all. I am happy with the decision, but worried about dealing with the WC. We got over the fact that they were not going to work with us on pricing and said to heck with it and booked. I am happy to have it done and over with! Just hope it all works out!

Well, if it helps I have only heard great things about the site itself, it's supposed to be very beautiful, so I'm excited about that...Maybe I'll have my Wedding Coordinator see if she can do something to help, she has been really nice to work with so far, Do you have an WC outside of the Sheraton? I am using Gaby from Baja Weddings, I really like her. Let me know if you want her info. There are also tons of reviews on these forums on other coordinators and all the brides on here are really helpful.....

[AlmostaSeif]

We don't have a WC outside of the Sheraton. I printed some information on WC in the area and need to sit down and really research them. We are already over our budget by about $3,000! We are paying for 11 of our family and friends to fly out and their hotel for two nights which is really putting us over. Why we agreed to do that, I have no idea. Everyone says that after the location is booked, everything will fall into place. I don't feel that way! I am so stressed with everything! K, I am now done with my rant. lol.