Zoetry Agua Punta Cana Endless Privileges, Punta Cana

Last fall, my fiancée and I deliberated over our “perfect” honeymoon. We decided that the one thing we wanted most was a small resort that offered a quiet and private reprieve from our busy lives. After looking all over the world, we made our selection for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation at Zoetry Agua Punta Cana. The small resort, with just 51 rooms, was exactly what we were looking for. We booked our room last November, seven months before our wedding, and quickly received an email from a reservations clerk offering to help us with any additional needs for our visit. Over the next few months, we traded numerous emails and arranged a special dinner on the beach, as well as transportation to and from the airport. Two weeks before our trip, I called Zoetry to ask whether we might be able to extend our trip by a few days. They told me they were over-booked for those extra days. When I asked whether our original booking would be affected by their “over-booked” status, they assured me we’d be fine. On Friday morning – the day before our wedding and just three days before our scheduled departure – I received an email from Zoetry informing us they had overbooked the property and were unable to honor our reservation. They offered us a room at another property called Secrets Sanctuary Cap Cana – a sprawling complex with 176 rooms. Secrets, more than triple the size of Zoetry, was precisely the type of place we didn’t want to go. Worse, the reviews weren’t as good. When I asked Zoetry Hotel Manager Luis Fitch why he bumped a honeymoon couple instead of someone in one of the other 51 rooms, he told me, “It was a business decision.” When I asked him what went wrong, he casually said, “People get bumped. It happens in the airlines and at other hotels.” When I explained that a move to the much larger resort wasn’t an acceptable option, he offered us a free “romantic” dinner and a free airport pick-up. Only after I continued to express my outrage did he offer something better – but by the time I won that Pyrrhic victory, I no longer wanted anything to do with his chain. So on Friday afternoon – as guests were arriving for that night’s rehearsal dinner – we found ourselves scrambling to book a different honeymoon. We ended up going to a wonderful resort in Los Cabos, Mexico – but at significantly greater expense. If anyone is planning a vacation, I strongly recommend avoiding Zoetry and their related properties. The casual indifference with which they canceled our honeymoon at the last minute bodes poorly for other travelers, as does the fact that other Zoetry guests have shared similar stories on review sites of being bumped at the last minute.