Until further notice I would strongly recommend that you do not book your TTR vacation with Alpharooms.com. I shouldn't say any more for now, hopefully all will become clear soon so please don't PM or email me about it. Anyone who has booked so far has nothing to worry about. I am not removing links to Alpharooms for now as I may end up adding them all back in again in a few days, but if you were thinking about booking please just hold off a while until the situation is clearer. I will let you all know the full situation as soon as I can - hopefully within a couple of days.
Good grief! I just booked with them last Friday (11/21) I got a confirmation of booking by email but not a room confirmation yet. Should I be worried?
I'm sorry to be so cryptic, I'm waiting on an email reply from Alpharooms and a phone call with TTR tomorrow, the weekend hasn't helped in moving this along, since the people I need to hear from haven't been working. I have been told that anyone who booked before last Tuesday (18th) is fine, and the last reservation I see in my Alpharooms sales report is for 17th. If you booked on 21st it's not showing in my report and presumably wasn't via the cancuncare link so I cant really help you out on that. Of course though, I will let everyone know the situation just as soon as it has been confirmed by those in a position to confirm it.
I think this is just a TTR related issue as I spoke to a friend who works for Alpharooms over the weekend and she confirmed that they are unusually busy considring the current world financial markets. She also hadnt heard of any problems with the company but would let me know accordingly if any occured. This may expalin why thier prices for TTR have suddenly rocketed though....... Ian :-| :-|
Steve, just to let you know, I went through the Cancun Care web link but I had a problem getting their site to recognize some of my account info. The person at the chat help offered to call me and do the booking over the phone. At that time I gave her the reference number that is listed under the phone number on their site. It was my understanding that you would get credit for the booking. At least I hope so. If there is anything I can do to work that out let me know. I checked my account on their web site and the booking is listed. I just havn't gotten the voucher yet. Fortunately we aren't going until Jan. 21-28 and I have some time to clear things up.
Thanks Ian and Steve. I just recieved my voucher via email and printed it. Everything seems to be O K on this end. Steve if you get verification on your end, let me know. I will check with the resort in a few days.
booking through cancuncare via TTR Steve I also had trouble getting to the link last week for my booking. Hopefully you got credit for it! Let me know if you need further details.
Temptation informed me of this on Friday but I wanted to get clarification from Alpharooms and also someone else at TTR before posting the detail. Short Version Temptation have cancelled their contract with Alpharooms. TTR are currently saying they will not honour bookings made via alpharooms after 18 November. Anyone who has made bookings after the 18th will be contacted by alpharooms, you may also wish to send details of your booking to me and I will see what I can do. (Please forward your confirmation email to me at steve@cancuncare.com) Long Version TTR have different rates for different geographical locations. There is a North American rate, a European Rate and an International Rate. The North American rate is the most expensive, with the European rate being the cheapest, the International rate is for where clients are of no specific geographical origin. Alpharooms is a UK based company whose principal market is the UK. Therefore the prices they offer reflect either the European rate or the International rate (I'm not sure which, however both are lower prices than the North American rate.) Largely due to this site there have been many North Americans booking TTR via Alpharooms. TTR are not happy with this because they believe: a) those people should be paying more for their vacation. b) the fact alpharooms are so cheap generates complaints from other travel providers (including other website owners in the Cancun market) because they cant compete on price. It seems that TTR have been trying to resolve this for a while and are not getting much co-operation from Alpharooms so decided to withdraw their contract. My personal opinion is that the concept of different rates for different parts of the World is fine for high street travel shops but totally outdated when applied to the online market, considering that any one website is just as accessible as any other. I can also understand why Alpharooms as a UK company wish to use UK prices when the vast majority of their market is the UK. Alpharooms have told me they are removing TTR from their site until they can resolve the matter with TTR, although at this moment it does seem to be still there. I will be taking links down on TTR specific pages, but since TTR is not the only hotel I sell with Alpharooms I will keep some links live in non TTR parts of the site.
Boy this seems like one more reason that TTR is shooting themselves in the foot. Those of us here that are experienced travelers especially to TTR are likely to be the only ones to book through alpharooms. We will however tell anyone we know who asks about TTR. Most of those people will go through conventional travel suppliers for their trip. This latest move is an an example of why I would give TTR a poor referral lately. The old concept of service your client and earn your keep seems to be repalced with GIVE ME THE MONEY!!! :evil: :evil: At a time when worldwide travel is projected to be down a great deal a properly run business should not be encouraging people to stay away from a particular resort.
