Meeting with Oasis Viva Jan 29th

Jannet and I were kindly invited for lunch at GOV today.

We met with:
Mario - Hotel Director
Valentina - Hotel Concept Manager
Paco - Sales Director for the entire Oasis group

Before I mention any details, I want to repost what I said on 6th November 2013 here

That was 10 weeks ago and nothing has changed from my initial perception of the concept.

I also want to reiterate my belief that the management are smart people, do genuinely care about their guests enjoying the hotel and are going above and beyond what is required of them. A prime example of that being Valentina's input here. It seems to me Valentina is being given more and more responsibility and with the hotel at 100% since the start of the year she is extremely busy - that is why she has delegated the bulk of official responses here to Adriana.

As another example of her commitment she told us that she would shortly be moving her desk from the hidden away office to the lobby so that guests could more easily find her and so she can interact more with them. Personally, I think she's crazy and will never get any work done!

Anyway, on to the meeting.

We met in the White Box restaurant and were introduced to Paco who we hadn't met before. Paco is in charge of Sales for the entire Oasis group. He was already aware of the cancuncare community and impressed with the publicity we had provided. To my surprise, he seemed more interested in what he could do for us rather than what we could do for them, and we talked about a few ideas which may get developed further.

We all discussed the concept again and how things were a couple of months down the line since we last met. As I said above nothing has really changed from my initial perception, or theirs.

GOV has arguably the largest and best stretch of beach in Cancun and that is what they want to focus on during the day - a chilled vibe on a beautiful beach. The pool area at GOV is fairly small and it wont be like the pool scene we all know from TTR, lets remember at TTR the beach and water is not all that and quite small so their focus on the pool scene.

The owner does have very firm ideas of how he wants the hotel to be, and as much as we may report how we would like it to be to the Managers and they in turn report back to the owner, it's his hotel and if he doesn't like it it ain't going to happen. The poolside music is one particular area the owner has strong opinions on. Today there was Reggae played at a fairly low volume. There wont be any loud Dance music during the day, the atmosphere will be chill and relax on the beach until around 4:30pm when they begin to ramp things up.

The weather was nice today and the hotel was full. There were about 30 people in the pool at any one time, maybe 10 or so at the pool bar with the rest dotted about, mainly as couples. The beach was full. There were some topless ladies on both the beach and by the pool area, and several wearing thong bikinis.

We also talked about how the demographic of guests is different at GOV. GOV has (and always has had) a high percentage of Latin American guests and especially from within Mexico. Also a sizeable amount of Russians and of course folks from the USA, Canada and the UK.

We chatted about websites and how many of the bigger ones were out of date and didn't mention the new concept so probably weren't attracting any guests looking for the new concept and also led to reduced participation in theme nights. I was told that they send details of the changes out to about 20 different places such as Expedia, Orbitz etc but some of them have 30,000 hotel changes in the queue and a team of 10 to deal with them. So it takes time, months and months in some cases and by the time the changes get implemented on the web sites something else has changed that has to go back in the queue.

Re late night opening, it has been mentioned earlier that the problem is noise keeping guests awake in surrounding rooms. They are going to experiment with different volume levels and they are genuinely serious about keeping the bar open later at night.

I mentioned the recent months trip reports here and the problems that were raised. I wont go into details for each one or I'll be here all night but I specifically mentioned more pool beds, signs for topless permitted and no cameras, DJ, some rooms not up to par, food improvements, theme night publicity, drinks lines and non availability of late night food. They intend to address each one of those. For the rooms, they have 150 rooms that are either being updated currently or in line to be updated.

I asked about running our Boobs Cruise out of GOV once a week that we had provisionally agreed a few months back, and that I was disappointed that there appeared to be a similar cruise in place - the Hip Hop cruise advertised as a topless catamaran. Seems like this was something that the tour sales people had put together, it hasn't run yet and no one has booked it so far. Paco said that we clearly knew what we were doing with our cruise and had a proven successful formula so he wants to go with ours in future and will stop the other one. I am to send details by email and a proposal and we'll go from there.

After the meeting Mario and Paco left to attend to other things and we went for lunch with Valentina to the Schilla Restaurant for an hour. After the meal Valentina had to get back to work but invited us to stay as long as we liked.

We headed over to the main bar by the pool. There are some seats and tables near there and we sat down. We were asked to move by one of the staff as the tables were for those ordering sushi and there was a waiting list which we didn't realise. However, a lady nearby saw this and invited us to join her at her table as she was by herself at a table for 4 which we did. Shortly after a guy came up and briefly chatted to the lady, he'd been partying with her the previous night. I noticed he was wearing a cancuncare bracelet and he recognised us - it was Rik from Rik and Mari and later Mari came over to chat too. Rik said he felt schizophrenic about the hotel, some things he loved, some things he hated. He'll post a trip report when he gets home.

I overheard a few people chatting at the bar who clearly didn't know each other questions like where are you from, how long are you staying etc. So the social side of things is there if you want it to be. I also noticed that there seemed to be a very high percentage of single girls (or at least girls travelling with other girls and without guys).

We left about 4pm so we didn't see the ramping up of the atmosphere, it was also Sara's day off so we didn't get to see her.

In summary, they are not where they want to be yet and they know there is work to do. To repeat for the bazillionth time they don't want to be Temptation, so if you are looking for a Temptation style atmosphere - book Temptation!

On the other hand, if you want to enjoy the beach and ocean and chill in a topless environment and enjoy the build up to the nights events early evening instead of power napping to sleep off the affects of too much booze then GOV may be what you are looking for.

 

Any specific questions, please fire away and I'll try my best to answer them. Taking a little break for now though, back later.