We had a deluxe with ocean view (and yes there was a partial ocean view). We where out by the sexy pool pretty much all day and out for the evening too. So all of those little plus deals are not really that great in the end and like others, haven't heard anything all that great or worth the price.
Again, the things that would have made it worth it for us would be the room service for all meals and a butler to get things for us (like drinks and stuff) - I just still do not understand how they can have room service for breakfast, lunch and dinner listed as part of that deal when they have no system in place to do that - WTF?!
I did a little reasearch on the "meaning' of Hotel Butler.. and from what i read.. they are more like an assistant.. you want dinner reservations somewhere they will set it up.. if you want a day trip .. they will set it up.. if you wanted a dinner in your room they would arange it .. my understanding is if you needed something like drinks in your room they would arrange it .. not bring it .. they are not servers from what I read.. if you needed somthing special like a B-day cake .. they would arrange it .. some duties they do..they unpack for you.. clean your shoes, fold down you bed.. make sure your drycleaning is picked up.. so .. they are not actually there for your beck and call.. but to make your trip better by doing the leg work for you..
We have had a butler at other hotels and they do much more than what a concierge does - what you are describing is a hotel concierge. I would even agree to disagree with the definition of butler for all intents and purposes, but the room service issue is egregiously negligent on their end! However, I believe that having them make us dinner reservations does not meet any reasonable definition of a hotel butler service, and that is really all they do at TTR. One of the hallmark differences between a hotel butler service and concierge is providing the service of in-room beverages and room service - they are supposed to fetch you food and drinks when you want them, and that is why a hotel would have a "butler service" on top of offering concierge services - otherwise it is just a concierge and NOT a butler. See these links from some of the places that have butler service similar to what we have had from other hotels: Butler Service at The Plaza Hotel: New York City Personal Hotel & Resort Butler Service in the Caribbean - Sandals Resorts Vacations with Personal Butler Services: An All Inclusive First Butler Service today – Five leading hotels share their secrets | Hot Hoteliers - Because People Connect The hotel butler makes all the difference. Even though some hotels have not set up a butler department, they nevertheless offer certain services that are typical of such position, performed by a different kind of employee under a different name, e.g.: valet, runner, assistant, bellboy, and so on. The basic services offered by the hotel butler are, namely: 1- Laundry and ironing. 2- Shoe shine. 3- Packing and unpacking. 4- In-room meals and beverages. What is the difference between the services offered by a hotel butler and those provided by any of the other positions mentioned above? When taking the tray to the room, the hotel butler is not just offering breakfast or tea; he is also bringing with him an amount of information gathered beforehand that makes it possible for him to know the guest in greater depth, thus being able to anticipate the guest’s needs. When the butler enters the room to collect the laundry, he also carries away with him an interpretation of the guest’s immediate environment that contributes additional information to the guest’s profile, enabling possible strategies concerning services that guarantee the guest’s well-being and satisfaction. The butler has received training on service quality, service strategy creation, preparation of a guest’s profile, stay satisfaction follow-up, management of complaints, and so on, that allows him to offer a highly personalized service. I didn't expect the luxury described here, I did expect we would have someone to call to get us food and drinks in the room when we wanted that service - that is what a butler service is for!
If you want the Jaccuzzi room the drops of love package cost me only 130 more. The massage and no nonsense dinner reservations are worth that alone. Then you get suppper in your room with the nice roses and oil bath, chocolates every day.... but Sultyfox has a point this appears in their Description of the Drops of Love package ,cut and pasted '' Room service for breakfast, lunch and dinner throughout your stay '' if you want the Jaccuzi its worth the extra , if not then not worth it. ps , this is not a Five star resort
they do go on to say '' Only ONE dinner per package '', but they are referring to the Drops of Love dinner, ?? who know?lol,, I have lower expectations in a 3 star hoter or 4 depending where you look, in Mexico, that way I don't get disappointed.
The dinner they are referring to is the lobster dinner that is listed separately from the room service for every meal promise. To buy a lobster dinner from the restaurant is only $20 - and you could, in theory, bring the plate to your room and eat it. But the point of that part of drops of love is usually that meal is a romantic dinner on the beach with a private waiter (it was raining that day so we opted for the dinner in our room to avoid weather). Based on their advertising, I expected the waiter to have been our butler, and other non-lobster meals would be served in our room if we wanted them to be by the same butler (or someone in guest services). I didn't expect what we had at the Bellagio Villa with butler service (that was amazing), or at the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, but I did expect room service would be available if we wanted it within a reasonable time frame (like 6am - midnight) and that a hotel employee (eg. our butler) could be called to bring us drinks or ice or anything else we wanted in the room if we didn't want to leave. I think that is the absolute minimum expectation one could reasonably have if a hotel is saying they have butler service instead of calling it a concierge!!
I told the staff in guest services that they shouldn't use big words they don't understand in their advertisements, like "butler" and "room service" - they should completely remove the line about room service and just leave in the lobster dinner, and they should say "concierge" instead of butler (and I said they should also try to spell correctly in their ads, it makes them seem much more professional - lol). Oddly, they were not picking up on my sarcasm, but we did get a partial refund for drops of love because of the room service issue. Amex says that by giving us a partial refund, they have already admitted guilt, the other refund is not going to be a problem. I just want to spare others the trouble of dealing with this worthless so-called perk. Honestly, the massage you get is not the one anyone would order if going to the spa, it was pretty much a massage I could get from some random person rubbing my back - not a real spa massage at all. We would have at least done the sensual massage because people said that one is fun, and who cares about the license then - lol The dinner in our room was nice, and so was the aromatherapy bath in our jacuzzi tub - but not worth f*cking $787!!! We are not really dessert people, so the daily chocolates and pastries didn't get eaten other than a bite or two (if I'm going to consume empty calories, it will be in the form of booze, not dessert!). But $787 for the package to me meant we had to be paying for staff availability to bring us room service for every meal and for a butler to give us extra "fetching" service not given to other guests - the other stuff was maybe worth $100-$200 at most. I never expected a guy wearing a tux to be standing outside of our room waiting to serve our every need, run our bath, shine our shoes, or to unpack our luggage etc. To fetch us drinks or ice within 15 minutes of a phone call, yes, I was expecting that! So I have no idea what they are thinking with charging so much for the package without room service for every meal and a real butler service (because the drops of love cost is above and beyond the cost to upgrade to a jacuzzi room, and they said the Temptation suite upgrade was a promotional freebee with drops of love at that time). And, by the way, room service is not available for any guest, including premier members, for lunch at all. For dinner, premier members are able to order spaghetti and/or two soups from the Italian restaurant for room service with a very narrow window to order, NOTHING else is available. We spent over an hour playing phone ping pong with guest services and various restaurants because guest services said to call the restaurants for their room service menus, telling us it WAS available for drops of love, and every time we called a restaurant they said it utterly was not available at all - but for the Italian restaurant's limited selection and NO WAY do they include drops of love guests, only premier members with white wristbands - then calling guest services back to tell them they are full of shit. That is how we got the night manager to send us a bottle of smirnoff on ice, after all that bullshit it was VERY clear they had no plan in place to honor their promise of room service for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the duration of our stay. Thanks for the $20 bottle of vodka, but we still paid an assload for the package (even after the partial refund) and got a ton of attitude and grief from the staff after simply asking for what they promised.
