Booking this Marriott hotel was a disaster. Can we get a refund?

What if you arrived at a Marriott hotel expecting a luxurious beach resort but instead found a rundown establishment that's been under renovation since 2017? That's the disastrous situation that confronted Denise Jacob's family when they traveled to Marriott's Carambola Beach Resort in St. Croix last July.

Jacob says the alluring photos of the hotel displayed on the Marriott website bore little resemblance to the condition in which she and her family found it. The crumbling foundation of their room’s veranda, exposed electrical sockets, stained bedding and more pushed the family to check out early.

But their last-minute reservation at another hotel on the small island cost these loyal Marriott Bonvoy members over $5,000.

After several unsuccessful attempts at finding someone at Marriott who would sympathize and compensate the family for this troubling hotel experience, Jacob asked TPG for help. She was hoping we could negotiate an outcome that restored her family's faith in the hotel chain.

Getting a great hotel deal on the Marriott site

In spring 2022, Denise Jacob and her family were thrilled to learn that many Caribbean islands were lifting COVID-19 testing requirements. The brood unanimously decided to plan a tropical summer vacation to celebrate this newfound ease of movement.

Opening her laptop, Jacob started searching for accommodation ideas for the trip. As a longtime Marriott Bonvoy member with Platinum Elite status, naturally, her first choice was to check the Marriott-branded resorts in the Caribbean. Soon she zeroed in on the U.S. Virgin Islands as their vacation target destination.

Jacob liked that the islands are a U.S. territory, so United States citizens don't go through immigration lines to enter St. Thomas, St. John or St. Croix. In fact, the group wouldn't even need their passports for this vacation, and they wouldn’t have to worry about currency exchange.

Now, the family just needed to pick which island to visit. Jacob hoped she might even be able to redeem Marriott Bonvoy points for the trip.

"We found Marriott's Carambola Beach Resort in St. Croix. The photos looked fabulous — just the type of place we were looking for," Jacob told me. "It had beautiful suites, and the property was stunning — right by the ocean. We were sold."

Even better: Jacob successfully redeemed Marriott free-night-award certificates for two nights at the hotel. This significantly would reduce the overall cost of the seven-night vacation.

"I thought the rate for the additional five nights was strangely low, but since it was a Marriott hotel, we had no real concerns," Jacob explained. "And the pictures convinced us this was the right choice."

Not investigating those low rates further was an oversight that Jacob would come to regret. But that realization wouldn't become apparent until many months later ... at the check-in counter of the Carambola Beach Resort.

Was this even the same hotel?

The day the family boarded their flights from California to St. Croix, they were excited. Because of the global pandemic, it had been quite a while since they had enjoyed a tropical vacation, and they were really looking forward to this getaway.

After the long journey, the family landed in St. Croix and took a 45-minute taxi to the Carambola. That's when their high hopes for this vacation took a sudden nosedive.

"We showed up, and it didn't look quite like we expected. Immediately we saw it was a bit run down," Jacob reported. "The staff explained that Hurricane Maria had damaged the property in 2017. The hotel was still under renovation. I started to get a bad feeling."

Then the Carambola staff put the family in a golf cart, took them on a bumpy ride over broken concrete pathways and delivered them to their bungalow. At this point, these loyal Marriott Bonvoy members knew they had made a big mistake booking this hotel.

Jacob said the room was nothing like the photos she had seen on the Marriott website. "I couldn't believe the state of the room," Jacob recalled. "It was not like any beach resort I had ever stayed at before. The place was in shambles. It was hard to believe that Marriott would have branded this hotel!"

The family stood in the room after their long day of travel and wondered what to do.

Trying to switch rooms

Jacob says the condition of the room was shocking. She annotated the photos below for us to point out the specific issues she encountered.

The windows had giant diagonal cracks and the electrical outlets were exposed. Where a television was supposed to be on the wall was just a blank space with wires snaking from it.

When she opened the closet to put their luggage away, she found that the rods meant to hold their clothes were broken or missing. Sharp metal poles jutted in various directions from the wall. The foundation of the porch was crumbling, too, and black mold crept up from the bottom of the walls inside the room and in the bathroom.

The family was traveling with children, so they expected to be able to use the fold-out couch, but the furniture was covered in mysterious dark stains.

When Jacob pulled the bed out to look at the mattress, she immediately realized one thing: With unidentifiable red stains, no one in her family would be sleeping on it. Especially her children.

"There was no phone to call anywhere, so you had to hike up a 3/4-mile service road filled with potholes with minimal lighting or on a longer path with buckled and cracked sidewalks to get to the lobby. My husband is disabled, so he couldn't take that journey. My daughter and I went up there and told the staff we could not stay in that room."

Jacob was under the impression that perhaps they had been given a room under renovation in error and that all would be corrected by a move to a new bungalow. That turned out not to be the case. Jacob said the next room she was shown had a strong smell of mildew and visible mold everywhere. She rejected the replacement offer.

When the Carambola staff explained there were no better rooms to assign the family, Jacob returned to their room. She noted and photographed the awful state of their bungalow, still in disbelief at the turn of events.

"I thought, if this place was so damaged by a hurricane five years ago, it should be closed. Everything looked dangerous," Jacob told me when she sent the photos.

The family tried multiple websites to get a suitable replacement hotel for the next seven days. But, at the last minute, nothing was available within their price range. So the family got another idea.

The final straw

Having no other choice, the Jacobs decided to try to make the most of their situation. They would travel to town and buy air mattresses, sheets and pillows and camp out in the room. After all, Jacob said, the beach in front of the hotel was beautiful. But then they noticed a significant problem that made their new plan impossible.

"We realized that the doors in our room leading to the beach would not lock," Jacob explained. "That was a deal breaker. We were in a bungalow only 10 feet from the beach on a dark, deserted end of the resort. We didn't feel safe with no way to secure our room."

And with that, the family began a search in earnest to find a new hotel, which they found, but at great cost.

An expensive last-minute reservation on St. Croix

Finally, after much effort, the Jacobs were able to book an alternative resort, The Buccaneer Beach & Golf Resort, at a cost of $1,000 per night.

Before reserving the replacement property, Jacob texted the manager of the Carambola and called Marriott customer service (800-535-4028) and asked for guidance.

"A representative asked me what I wanted her to do. I told her we just needed a safe, clean place to stay for the next seven nights. She had nothing to offer me, but after reviewing our photos, she confirmed we could have a full refund of our points and cash. The total refund was $1,600. But now our only choice was to book a hotel that would cost us over $7,000."

Not only that, but the Buccaneer only had availability for five nights. The family had to move again partway through their "relaxing" vacation to another hotel.

Nothing had turned out as the family had hoped for this Caribbean getaway.

Asking The Points Guy for help

Jacob and her family completed their disjointed vacation and returned to California. She set about trying to get Marriott to reimburse her family for at least some of their additional expenses. She also hoped for some explanation as to why Marriott had photos on its website that seemed a lot like a "bait and switch" to her.

“When we got home, I sent Marriott customer service a lengthy description of what we found at this hotel in St. Croix and asked for some fair compensation. No one bothered to reply or even acknowledge the written statement that I sent," she said.

By October, Jacob had just about given up on ever receiving any meaningful response to her complaint when she read my article about another family’s equally disappointing hotel experience.

Jacob had a renewed hope that someone might hear her plea for help about what she referred to as her own nightmare vacation. She quickly sent her request for ombudsman help to The Points Guy and her tale soon landed in my inbox.

Marriott investigates the problem

I read through Jacob’s email with caution because it contained a laundry list of complaints. Seemingly nothing was right about the hotel, according to her letter. As a consumer advocate, over the years, I've received plenty of exaggerated complaints from travelers with high expectations who expect the companies involved to give them the moon in return for minor inconveniences. But as I reached the bottom of her plea, it was clear that there was no hyperbole in her story.

Jacob had meticulously documented her family's experience with photos, and they left nothing to the imagination.

I gathered her materials and asked our executive contact at Marriott if her team could have a look. This person is a media contact that we can approach directly about cases like this rather than a public-facing customer service representative.

My experience with this executive is that she is always quick to resolve problems that Marriott customers send my way. Of course, that is as long as the facts of the case lean in favor of the guest. I was sure that the facts of this case supported Jacob and her family’s version of events, though.

To be certain, however, I attached a selection of photos of the hotel in my correspondence with our Marriott executive contact. Soon Jacob had an offer of a resolution. But to her, it still didn’t seem fair.

“The manager of the hotel called me and offered me 35,000 Bonvoy points. That doesn’t even cover one night for this Marriott hotel,” Jacob told me. “Do you think this is fair?”

I did not.

Pushing back on Marriott

I never like to harangue or strong-arm companies into correcting problems. I don’t usually need to do that since most businesses want to correct the problems that their customers encounter and I am very careful about which cases I take on, reserving my help for those that truly deserve some type of resolution in my opinion.

Jacob’s photos showed that the resort was in a state of disrepair. And it wasn’t reasonable to ask a family with children to stay in a room they couldn’t secure at night.

The uneven sidewalks and crumbling foundation of the bungalow’s porch and various staircases around the property presented a danger to guests – especially ones who have mobility problems, as Jacob’s husband does.

So I asked Marriott to have one more look.

Some good news from Marriott

After Marriott reviewed the truly unpleasant experience of the family, Jacob received a phone call from the manager of the Carambola. She was presented with two possible resolutions.

• A free five-night stay for her family after renovations are complete, or ...
• 120,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.

Jacob asked what I thought she should choose. The answer was easy: the Bonvoy points, which are worth around $1,008 based on TPG's current valuations.

Why? The Carambola has been under renovation since the hurricane hit in 2017. There is no deadline for those fixes. If, for any reason, the resort doesn’t complete the renovations, goes out of business or switches ownership, Jacob would have nothing in the end.

While the family has empathy for the island and the hotel’s struggle to repair the awful damage from hurricanes Irma and Maria, they feel bamboozled by this experience.

Transparency is important, though. Travelers must be able to decide for themselves whether the current state of a property is acceptable. Promotional photos should show that condition — not what the property looked like in the past or what it may look like in the future. This family would not have chosen the Carambola had they known its true condition. But they weren’t given that choice.

In the end, Jacob decided that she didn’t want to take a gamble on whether or not the hotel will ever return to its former state. She chose the 120,000 Bonvoy points. The family is happily planning their next Marriott vacation, and this time she will be extra careful with her hotel selection.

How to avoid your own hotel booking mistake

With today’s plethora of online resources, getting blindsided by a hotel’s condition upon arrival is thankfully uncommon. That is, as long as you do your due diligence to make sure the reality of a property matches your expectations.

Here’s how to avoid making your own hotel booking mistake when reserving your next vacation.

Visit independent review sites

It’s always a good idea to get an unbiased opinion about a hotel from fellow travelers. Visiting an independent review site like Tripadvisor should give you the full picture of the property you’re eyeing. Don’t just focus on the highest or lowest ratings. I recommend paying particular attention to the middle-of-the-road reviews, which often give you information on the good, the bad and the mediocre about the property.

Beware of fake reviews

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of many sites to control fake, paid or bot traffic, some of the reviews you will read on these sites are fraudulent. That is to say, either someone has paid for the review, or they may be a competitor or disgruntled ex-employee attempting to damage the reputation of the hotel. For this reason, you should always look at the overall depiction of the property. Disregard “one-hit-wonder” reviewers who have a cartoon avatar and no previous reviews anywhere on the site. Those are the hallmark signs of a fake review. Avoid review sites that don’t allow you to see the poster’s details.

Do a price comparison of similar hotels

When deciding on a hotel, make sure to do a comparison of other properties in the same category. If all the other luxury hotels in the same location are significantly more expensive than the property you’re considering, that’s another warning sign. You’ll want to find out why. In this case, Jacob was aware that all the other hotels were much more expensive than the Carambola, but she overlooked that oddity.

Use a professional travel adviser

One nearly surefire way to avoid ending up at a hotel that doesn’t match your expectations is to use a travel adviser to make your plans. These professionals have access to information average travelers are not privy to, and their goal is to ensure that the wants and needs of their clients are met.

If you have a question about a property, a professional travel adviser likely knows the answers — or knows how to quickly find them. And the best part? If something goes wrong during your travels, they will be available to you in real time to correct the problem. That can be a great relief when you find yourself far from home with a problem, as this family did. You can find a professional travel adviser who specializes in your destination on the American Society of Travel Advisors website.

Avoid non-branded hotels that are part of chains

In Jacob's case, I asked Marriott how this hotel in its current state of disrepair had remained a part of Marriott. The answer surprised me and I think it will surprise you, too.

The Carambola hotel is not officially branded by Marriott, meaning it's not designated as a Marriott, Autograph Collection, Westin or any of Marriott's 30 brands — at least not yet. Marriott’s spokesperson for the Caribbean and Latin America explained, “The hotel is currently undergoing renovations, and, while it is part of the Marriott portfolio, it is not assigned a brand currently until all renovations are complete.”

This is a critical piece of information that, had Jacob known, she would not have booked the Carambola. She had seen negative reviews of the resort on Tripadvisor, but was lulled into a false sense of security based on what she perceived to be the Marriott branding of the property.

Here’s what you need to know as you browse the listings on the Marriott site:

• Although all of the properties on the site are in the Marriott portfolio, not all are branded.
• A Marriott-branded hotel meets a specific set of standards that you likely associate with the company.
• To confirm that a hotel is actually part of the Marriott brand, the property’s page should indicate one of the 30 brands under the Marriott umbrella.

By taking that step, you should ensure the property lives up to the standards Marriott (or other major hotel groups) publicly set forth for their specific labels.

Bottom line

It’s not often that you’ll see an advertised luxury resort in such a state of disrepair as the property in this case. Unfortunately, though, this could happen to you if you don’t take some precautionary steps during your planning stages. By doing a little research before clicking on that "Confirm" button, you’ll be unlikely to be surprised at the check-in counter during your next hotel stay.

If despite all of your best efforts, however, you find yourself in a dispute with an airline, cruise line, vacation rental company, car rental agency, hotel or credit card company, send your request for help to tips@thepointsguy.com, and I’ll be happy to help you too.

Want to learn more about whom we've helped with their travel quandaries? Check out these related posts:

• Our American Airlines flight delay turned into a nightmare. What are we owed?
• My family showed up at our Marriott hotel and it was closed
• My business-class seat was broken. Can I get a refund?
• Will the Chase Sapphire Reserve cover our stolen rental car in Italy?