My partner and I booked for dinner for birthday and 10th anniversary back in Feb with Berowra Waters Inn as it is beautiful location away from the city and an ideal location for celebration with view to enjoy as they claimed in their bio. We...booked weeks in advanced, got email confirmation, a call 3 days before to reconfirm the booking and our dietary preferences, also an email reminder a day before our dinner reservation. We were so looking forward to this.
After 2 hours drive in a windy rainy Friday with after work traffic on the road, we realized we might be 5-10 mins late for arriving to the wharf to take a boat ride to the restaurant, so we called them 20 mins before our reservation time, and they told us “ our restaurant is not open today, there is no one working in the restaurant “ and we were shocked and didn’t know how to respond, then I asked “ we are 10 mins away and driving all the way to the special venue, what should we do now “. Someone on the line just said “ I don’t know what happened “. She obviously didn’t know what to do and we understand a lot of hospitality venues struggling with finding right people to work. Then I said can I have someone knows what is going to call me back. 5 mins later, Daiva from reservation called back and said the restaurant is close tonight as they don’t have staff working and the person who called us 3 days in advance to reconfirm the booking supposed to let us know the booking will be CXL instead. We were even more speechless but we were calm as we know they couldn’t magically give us something on that spot. However, I hope venue like them ( far location from everywhere ) could provide contingency plan same as when hotels overbooked, they communicate with other hotels nearby to walk their guest to other hotels upon checking. So, how many fails in one reservation from online booking, email confirmation, phone call to reconfirm, reminder email a day before and customer to find out the booking was CXL whilst driving 2 hours to the special venue.
She tried to move our booking to other dates, however it is a special venue people needs a long drive to get there and it was booked occasionally for birthday and anniversary. We reached out via Instagram again ( please notice that we reached out to them again, not they found out and notified customer what has beem done wrong !! ). Victoria replied us and explained that they work with a remote reservation company that was the mistakes from, she said she was going to have a chat with reservation team and email us again with follow up actions. She never emailed or called us. I texted them via Instagram again 3 days after and she told me the same thing that she would email. She never emailed, either.
As customers perspectives, booking a dinner occasionally in a location where requires a lot of efforts to get to on a rainy Friday evening, turned out there were multi-mistakes since the reservation, reconfirmation, reminder of booking, and on the day, customers found out how bizarre it was while we were outside after 2 hours drive. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere to call and understand what was going on and any other options they could provide. Most importantly, they knew they made mistakes BUT NEVER FOLLOW UP ! It was too memorable for my birthday and our anniversary celebration.More