Grants 4 Schools

Review of WWS-SPIRITS - Winstar World Ca...

EVENT PLANNERS BEWARE! I travel to 25 states to pr...

EVENT PLANNERS BEWARE! I travel to 25 states to present workshops for educators and have had over 80+ events at hotels in the past two years. This was by far the worst experience I ve ever had.

As if planning events isn t stressful enough, I had a sales manager-Morgan contact me a week before my event. I already had 35 participants registered who had already booked rooms for not one but two nights at their hotel. Not to mention paid $1000 for the meeting space. She told me if I didn t respond to her email within 48 hours she was keeping my $500 deposited & canceling my event. I have a copy of this email. Thank goodness, I saw this email. Considering I travel for work, I m lucky to have seen the email and responded with her timeframe. 35 educators had gotten subs, made reservations and travel arrangements to be there. When I saw the message, I had a complete panic attack knowing that my paying customers had made these plans, and I would not only have to refund their registration but quite possibly their travel expenses.

Morgan explained that Djana another employee called my phone repeatedly, and I hadn t answered. Which is exactly right, because they only called me during my WORK hours. Why not email? These calls were solely about adding on food and beverage orders which I made very clear in the beginning that I was NOT interested in.

I would love to tell you this was my only problem with them! But it gets worse. The day of my event they came to the door with my participants seated, crossed their arms and sternly told me to tell my participants to remove all food and drinks from the meeting space! Food and drinks that were purchased at their hotel! My participants (after seeing these two in the back, arms crossed and clearly upset) said it looks like you are in trouble. Once I got back there, I asked them to have the decency to take the conversation outside the meeting space away from where my paying customers were sitting! Once they did, I asked for their boss.

When I spoke with their supervisors, they said they accidentally left off the part where my participants couldn t have food and beverage in the meeting room in my contract. And that their old contracts included that verbiage! Hello! My contract didn t include that. Yet, after my event ended this afternoon, they came and ask me to not allow food and beverage tomorrow & suggested I purchase coffee, sodas, water/drinking station for the group. The contract never mentions not being able to bring in food and drinks. It s not my fault they left it off, and I shouldn t have to pay for their mistakes.

At other hotels, for bringing them business, I always get upgraded rooms or am allowed a late check out since I need to change clothes after events. And they wouldn t even allow a late check out! What a great thank you I got for bringing them 35 rooms plus my own for two nights. That s 72 nights for them. And I can t stay an extra thirty minutes and change clothes? Ridiculous.

But not 1/2 as ridiculous as those two sour women who completely ruined my event.

We have a much larger event planned for the summer with hundreds of participants, and I wouldn t come back here if the rooms were FREE!