Unfortunately my fiance and I have had truly disappointing and frustrating experience that I have just had with the group sales team at the Fairmont Mayakoba.  I had been a guest at the Fairmont Mayakoba a few years ago and was so impressed by the grounds and the service that I selected the Fairmont Mayakoba as my dream wedding location.  The wedding is set for March of 2014 so we contacted the western group sales team to see about availability and pricing at the beginning of March of this year.  The group sales rep for our region responded to my query and let me know that she would not be able to confirm availability for a few weeks but that she would provide a quote for us in the meantime.  As per her instructions, we checked back a few weeks later and was told that the convention schedule was not still not set yet and she would not be able to confirm anything at that point.  A few weeks later (April), we contacted her again and she told us that the Mayakoba has a policy not to schedule weddings for the following year until November as weddings are not a priority for the Mayakoba.  But given the small size of our wedding she was sure she could get the booking approved as soon as a prospective convention signed their contract.

We spoke and emailed with her on May 12th and she assured me that we had a very good chance of getting approval, but that the convention was still reviewing the space.  We were to check back a few weeks later.  But when we did so we received a voice mail indicating that the Western office was now closed.  So we contacted an onsite rep at the hotel, as he had been copied on a few emails.  He advised that the western rep was no longer an employee at the Fairmont, and it was a NO in regards to the Mayakoba accepting wedding reservations prior to November 2013 for 2014.  This policy of not reserving next year's weddings until November is ludicrous. This time frame barely gave us (or any couple) time to get invitations made, let alone time to secure vendors or give our guests the ability to coordinate travel, that's if we could be guaranteed our dates.  But since that was not possible, we could easily see ourselves without a wedding venue by waiting so long.

My fiancee and I are extremely disappointed with the way that the Fairmont has handled the request for this business agreement.  Not only is it poor business practice to create a policy that alienates a prospective customer that would like to provide revenue for the hotel, but exhibiting such disregard for customer service is untenable, particularly for a hotel chain that prides itself on exceptional service.  In dealing with the back and forth, we've had to delay the planning of our wedding for five months and we still don't have the venue booked.  While eight months seems like plenty of time to book a wedding, it is not given that we are planning travel for guests coming from various countries around the world, not to mention that quality vendors are already booking up for those dates. 

After we contacted management at the Fairmont about our disappointment, we were then told that they would be willing to "do us a favor" and book our wedding.  We expressed our concern that the hotel would host us grudgingly and we were assured that we would be treated with the same exemplary service that any other wedding would be given.  After various emails and back and forth, we got the contract.  In which we were told that the group rate we'd been given would require a minimum of 10 rooms booked.

When we started working with the western rep originally, we'd asked about minimum room requirements and additional fees to host the wedding if the wedding party was staying elsewhere and we were told that there was no minimum for a room block and that if we chose to stay elsewhere there was no fee.  Which is why we continued working with her.  We have a very small group and it is not feasible to guarantee that 100% of our invited guests will be attending.  When we saw the minimum of 10 rooms in the contract, we asked for an exception given our circumstances and the previously given information; which was denied.  We let the sale director know that it would have been likely that the number of rooms that would have actually booked would have exceeded the room block minimum, but we didn't feel comfortable with the likelihood of throwing away money in the even that our invited guests not attend the wedding.

Then we asked to remove the room block from the contract, in hopes that we could book the wedding and then get the room block later once we get confirmation from our guests.  But the sales director told us it would add an additional $3000+ for the location rental.  This equates to approximately one third of the current quoted budget.  There was never any documentation about this fee when we inquired about this previous.  Does the Fairmont charge this outrageous fee for couples wishing to renew their vows...unlikely.  This fee is not anywhere on the website either, which may indicate that it's not a required fee.

We have since emailed the original management and corporate relations rep stating that it is apparent that the hotel does not want our business and have thus received no reply. We've made every attempt to rectify this with the hotel itself before posting any sort of review. We feel as though we've been strung along over the past five months, with upwards of 70 emails exchanged and numerous phone calls to find out that the hotel has no interest in hosting a wedding and we could have already made our wedding plans with a hotel that wanted our business months ago.  

In short we've been inexcusably disappointed with the Fairmont in this regard.