Mercure Resort Hunter Valley.
My wife Sarah received a night’s stay voucher from a Qantas Captain at the Mercure Resort Hunter Valley as a gift when she left Qantas after 26 years.
January 2015
Early in the year when her father became ill and was hospitalised, Sarah rang the hotel and spoke to Nicole in reservations to ask for, and granted an extension of time to use the $308 voucher up to the end of May.
Sarah was in the unfortunate position of ringing up again for another extension because of her father’s illness and again was granted to the end of July.
Now that her father has been recently placed in a nursing home we thought we would like to take a midweek break and use the voucher, and also take along another couple that have supported us along the way. Alas, when Sarah rang Mark O’Rourke to make the booking she was told that the voucher had expired and was no longer able to use it.
I rang Mark back to let him know the circumstances of us not being able to use the voucher beforehand appealing to him as the General Manager. He said he would look into it and get back to me. He didn’t.
July 15th 2015
Received a call from Nicole to say that the voucher had been cancelled and we cannot use it, but did offer a room discounted to $109 with breakfast. We didn’t think it fair that we should pay any further money to this hotel and declined. This of course forced our friends to cancel.
I am a retired company Director and my friend that was to accompany us with his wife is a retired RSL President. We are quite sure that the hotel would have made hundreds more that night on cocktails, beer, food and wine. Instead, amazingly, we got totally rude “front line” staff that obviously doesn’t care for the wellbeing of the group of companies they work for.
My wife and I have travelled the world extensively and have never come across such rudeness from hotel staff.