My friend called Punta Riviera resort a couple of weeks back to reserve rooms for 9 people for 2 nights. The call ended well and she was assured that we have rooms and would just need to deposit PhP 5,000 per night to confirm the reservation. A couple of days later she calls again to get the bank details and much to her dismay, the same guy she spoke with the first time now says that he doesn’t have any record of our reservation. After a long phone discussion, he magically “finds” the reservation but it is only for 1 night. Since the group really wants to stay in Punta Riviera because of the ads online (which are so not true by the way but that’s a different topic altogether) my friend agreed to reserve just 1 night thinking that we can stay in a different resort on our first night.

We took the Five Star bus from Manila to Bolinao. Our expected 6 hour trip turned into 10 hours due to several road mishaps we encountered.

We reached Villa Carolina and were greeted by the very friendly owners Carol and Jan and their very helpful staff who wheeled away our luggage to our villa right away. All our needs were catered to from the second we arrived till the time we were transferring to Punta Riviera. Perhaps this is what made our experience with Punta Riviera worse, we were pampered in Villa Carolina, while we were treated like garbage in Punta Riviera.

Day 2 and we started our day early not wanting to miss on our Bolinao package tour with Villa Carolina. We wanted to make the most of our day (and money) so we planned to do half of the tour prior to checking in at Punta Riviera and the other half after we check in. We planned it this way since check in time at Punta Riviera is 11:00 am and we didn’t want to sit down and waste time.

11:00 am and we were still at the falls so my friend contacted Punta Riviera to advise that we would be late checking in, probably 3 the latest. We reached Villa Carolina around 2:00 pm and were all packed and ready to transfer to Punta Riviera, which is just across Villa Carolina resort, around 2:30 pm.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a very unprofessional and unfriendly desk agent, who told us that our rooms are not ready yet. While me and my friend who made the reservation were inside the reception area, the rest of the group was standing outside under the sun with their luggage waiting for us. No offer of assistance to help us get settled while we wait for our rooms. No apologies for the inconvenience or whatsoever.

3:00 pm and we still didn’t have rooms so the group decided to just cancel the reservation.

3:05 pm a very rude desk agent told us that we don’t need to cancel since the rooms were just made available. Again, nobody helped or even offered to help us with our luggage. No apologies either.

We reached the rooms and found out that 1 of the 2 rooms we reserved is still being cleaned and half of the group can’t get in there yet. This was our breaking point.

My friend and me once again headed out to the reception area to complain and cancel the reservation altogether. We spoke to a different yet another unprofessional and rude desk agent. Instead of apologizing and trying to help us resolve our concern as we felt like we were wasting our time waiting for our rooms when we could be on the other half of our tour, she again and again and again simply referred to the refund policy of the resort – that we can only get 50% of the down payment.

Frustrated, disappointed and already agitated, this is when we asked to speak to the manager, whom we tried to contact for an hour as they only have 1 and he wasn’t on site. I talked to the manager over the phone and told him about the entire experience and why we should be given a full refund. He spoke to the desk agent and never came back on the line to tell me what the resolution is.

15 minutes later, the desk agent tells us that she will be stepping out to get the cash for our refund. Once again, no apologies or whatsoever. A little over 10 minutes later, the desk agent comes back to the reception area with the owner, who was surprisingly off the charts rude. Instead of apologizing, he hands us the money like we owed him, ridiculed and called us names, and asked us to leave the resort immediately.

This is, by far, the worst experience I have ever had at any resort. I intend to post this message story everywhere I can on the Internet to warn people to stay away from Punta Riviera. As far as I am concerned as well as several other people that I have talked to so far, we would rather sleep in a park than ever stay at Punta Riviera.

We were lucky Villa Carolina, though last minute still accommodated us for 1 more night. If not for Carol and Jan, we would have left Bolinao that night with a bad experience and unpleasant story to tell all friends and colleagues.