RIU Hotels & Resorts review: Service

Good afternoon. I am writing this email after returning from RIU Vallarta on October 25th. I was traveling with my husband, our 3 adult kids, my sister and my eldest daughters boyfriend. We enjoyed our first couple of days. This was our first trip to PVR, we have been multiple times to Cancun & Los Cabos and have stayed at a RIU in Los Cabos.

On Friday we decided to go to the white party as it seemed a lot of guests from our resort did. Aside from the initial rain it was seeming to be a great time. We had a small high top table right in front of the dance floor. A while into the night we are dancing having fun and minding our own business and a woman comes to our and table takes one of our drinks. My husband then says that is my sons drink. At which point she glares at my husband, pours the drink on the ground puts the empty cup right in front of my him aggressively, smirks and turns to walk away. He at this point flicks the cup off the table in her direction in total disbelief. He has done nothing wrong.

Time passes, nothing is thought about it other than how weird and inappropriate that was. Approximately 15 minutes later two young men come and march up to my husband very intensely and get so close to his face their white face paint ends up on his forehead. They are going on about something but it is so loud in there he can't really hear what they are saying other than profanity. Like anyone would do in this circumstance he pushes them back as they were inappropriately close and seeming highly aggressive with their words. At this point my daughters boyfriend from the dance floor sees these two individuals in my husbands face so he rushes over to see what is going on. The boys are on the floor now from the push my daughters boyfriend slips on the floor and proceeds to get a punch on each side of his head from the boys (I have pictures). Then your staff pull the boys off/out and I am now telling my family we are leaving.

We had seen these two prior to this night so he knew immediately these boys were connected to the woman who had intentionally poured out the drink, let me add she was right behind them when they marched into his face. When I say we had seen them we had no interactions with them we had just seen one of them with his girlfriend strattling each other making out in the pool and we commented on how we didn't think that was acceptable behaviour. I said to my family, as a Mom I would not tolerate that.

We are extremely upset and annoyed that out of no choice of our own this is how our night is ending. We walk back to the resort and my son goes immediately and tells the front desk what has transpired and how upset we are. Never are we thinking this is our fault or it is going to end up being our fault. We sit and reassess what has just happened for 20-30 minutes in the lobby and then decide it is time to go to bed. Prior to us going up to bed they did not come back to the resort. Most likely still having fun.

The next day we are sitting outside the breakfast place together and we see one of the boys with his girlfriend. He is about to go in for breakfast and upon noticing us he decides he is now not. He glares at us walks towards the lobby on his phone and the next thing we know all the of them are standing at the top of the stairs looking down at us. Again we are not thinking anything other that wow. Shortly there after we see they have your staff over near them and eventually we are contacted to come to the lobby.

The manager (Gardenia) takes my husband and the boyfriend (who has done absolutely nothing other than taken a punch to each side of his face) and after a short period they are told their wristbands are exchanged, their alcohol privileges are gone or the police are being involved as this is what the other family wants. We are in absolute disbelief at this point. How could this happen when we were just minding our own business. It becomes all about the boys being under age and the push. Nothing about the underage boys being so aggressive in my husbands face, nothing about what the Mom did to begin with and then brought her boys over to him. What mother does that ? Encourages her 'underage' boys to get in a 56 year old mans face and swear at him. When they came over she was directly behind them. The mgr. says our staff says they witnessed and so this is the decision. We are saying they did not see what transpired to begin with what initiated it all. IT WAS NOT US. This is 100% unacceptable and nobody cares. My daughters boyfriend is in the process of becoming a police officer in Canada so he is not wanting to involve police and the mgr. is making it clear the police are not someone you want to involve. Nobody wants to discuss this further with us, there is no changing of anyone's mind. We asked to watch the video camera footage assuming there would be cameras in such a large resort and its denied. I asked why the mothers wristband was not taken and was told she wasn't involved. Again proving nobody there knew what actually happened and you were only listening to that family. We were also told the boys had bruises which they did not. It was very evident that was not true as we watched them walk around with no shirt for the next 3 days. Also curious did anyone on staff even ask why they were in my husbands face ? What initiated that ? Also why when we reported it after it happened were they the ones that you seemed most concerned about hearing their side and not ours.

The family then continued to walk past any/all of my kids and glare and punch their fist. The staff also pointed and questioned why two adults had kids bracelets on. Then the final straw was my 23 year old daughters boyfriend was humiliated in front of people and told to get out of the adult pool. Are you joking, he obviously is an adult and not drinking. We did have one of your staff come up to us to talk about it and and told us he was punched trying to get the boys off of us. I thought your staff blamed us ? More untruths. He made it clear he did not know what happened and it was only him and one other staff member there. No security nobody which he was surprised by.

I am not letting this go. We spent $5600 to spend a week there and were treated disrespectfully. We are a family 58, 56, 54, 23, 22, 20, & 18. We are not showing up at a resort trying to fight people. We did not get the services we paid for and of course without a doubt this changed everyone's vacation, all 7 of us. We asked for a refund for the days remaining so we could leave or even be moved to the other RIU and both were denied. How can you deny us that ? You think that decision was acceptable ? We were also told by the mgr. once the family left on the 24th we would get our bracelets back, making it very clear you were just appeasing them. The other 3 who caused all this chaos enjoyed the last days of their holiday with ABSOLUTELY ZERO consequences and continued to taunt us and glare etc etc. We reported this at the time and nobody cared. We also didn't get the bracelets back as promised.

I need to know how you are going to make this right ? Do not think for a second because we left with no conflict we are accepting how you have treated us. We will be continuing to follow up on this until there is a resolution as to how you will make this right.

Patiently waiting for a reply,

Michelle Stewart - on behalf of all 7 of us

Booking #RNT4WSYD