New rule about buying a bottle of wine to get a restaurant reservation?

I like my daily digest of Trip Advisor reviews. I've noted that a few of them have included a reference to needing to purchase a bottle of wine to get a reservation in a restaurant such as this most recent one:
"We wanted to make reservations for the nice restaurants and when we went to go we found out that in order to go to one you had to buy a bottle of wine (min $60 purchase)"
Is this a new thing?
Personally, I wouldn't take major issue with that if that was disclosed on the website and if it were for 1 restaurant only. However, this is not advertised anywhere in their all inclusive promotional materials. So it looks pretty dishonest to me. Not a happy surprise to discover on your trip.
Thoughts?

 

Fake News

 

Why would someone make that up in a review? Don't get me wrong, I don't read reviews as being a completely accurate representation. And I certainly didn't make reading the reviews: they are on Trip Advisor. I only posted here because I saw it come up a few times in different reviews.

 

On New Year's Eve this was the case.
It was $140 bottle of champagne.
I'm not familiar with this any other time.
We ran into this at Sea Flirt on New Years Eve....no problem though, we ordered room service and had an epic night.

 

I'm sure I would have agreed to that if I were there for NYE I must admit. Nice cash grab for the resort. But for people who don't drink wine, that would suck. Especially not knowing before you booked.
Also, I see that it is possible that the reviewers were actually all posting about NYE even though they didn't specify that as they are all recent reviews. Glad this is a one off thing.

 

It is not fake news. We have experienced this multiple times at the new TTR.

It happens when attempting to reserve a group table (group = 8 or 10 or so as they have 1 large table at each restaurant) at some of the restaurants. We were told it is entirely up to the manager of the restaurants discretion as to whether they will let the group have a table without buying a bottle. We were also told the manager at the Italian is the strictest with this requirement and it also depends on demand for said table. Yes, it sucks, as it is a way for them to make more money. Sea Flirt also tried to do it to us. At Sea Flirt I explained how many times we had visited TTR and at the time we were in the Penthouse so they said ok no requirement. At Italian they wouldn't budge when making the reservation and then after sitting down no one followed thru on the requirement, it wasn't even brought up.

So end result is it does happen for big groups but seems to be negotiable. Whether they will negotiate or waive it depends on demand, the restaurant and whom is on duty as a manager.

 

So it looks like the requirement is only for group reservations or on NYE?

Let's hope they don't decide to do it all the time for everyone.

 

Trip advisor is not a reliable source for information.
Before our first visit we were reading trip advisor and almost didn’t book then we found CancunCare. Much better information here.

 

I take the reviews with a grain of salt. I just enjoy reading them. I also tend to think if a piece of information turns up a few times, no harm in investigating it further.

 

We reserved twice while there in Oct for 10 folks with no wine requirement. We did however not get the "Private Room" some of the restaurants have, they put together a few tables together in the main room to accommodate, and we went through a butler half of us had/ asked for.