Occidental Vacation Club

The Occidental's Vacation Club will sell you a lot that they will not deliver. Horrible customer service, no response from their affiliated hotels. Save your money and enjoy your vacations without maintenance fees and worthless contracts!

After visiting the an Occidental Resort in Cozumel in early 2022, we attended the 90 minute sales pitch for membership. After doing the math based on promised savings, we bought an annual membership. The first time I tried to use the resorts, the club price turned out to be several hundred dollars per room more than other travel sites... This was suppose to annual savings... furious and the club is not being very responsive

One of my less enlightened purchase, the customer service is crazy rude and as the web site is a chAllenge it's almost impossible to book

We bought in Aruba and upgraded to royal club in Punta Cana. They have always been first class in customer service when we called to make reservations and when we got there. Food has been variable from excellent to fair at the buffets. The royal club restaurant is definitely excellent. There have been changes with the company as with everyplace world wide, but they have remained constant. Rooms are clean, towels available, pools clean and beach palapas plentiful. I wish Punta Cana had the same process for Royal members on the beach, where a palapa is reserved for the royal club members. It would be nice not to have to get up early to get one. Yes, you do need to do that if the hotel is full. We went for a lifetime membership of one week, to 10 year membership of 1 week when we upgraded. I do miss the lifetime that we could of passed on, but that changed when Occidental bought it. So some changes are negative, some positive, the royal club is definitely a positive change. We love that we can go from Aruba to Punta Cana or Mexico or where ever they have hotels. It is important to check the hotel on trip advisor as the quality does change at different hotels available in the vacation club.

Nothing special, no worth the amount of money and they ruin your credit, same $#*! for all pay it or no.

Been members since '05, once we figured out how to get the most out of our membership we pretty much love it. Since Barcelo took over we've noticed changes and not good ones. NonMembers are using our private fc and are rude and disrespectful. Security needs to police the area better

We have gone to timeshare presentations in the past for the "free" rental car, etc. but not had such a bad experience as this. In short, when we declined to join, almost all of what we were promised was not given to us, or unusable, and found out they lied to us about when the last ferry back to Cozumel was. Luckily we ran into another family that had also declined and we compared notes and didn't end up getting stranded in Playa del Carmen for the night. We did get a crappy rental car for a day, but it surely wasn't worth wasting a day of our vacation.

Here is what we were promised: a rental car for a day, tickets and transportation to the Tulum ruins AND Xcaret (including private transportation that would wait for us to get us back to Playa del Carmen), plus a bottle of premium tequila and ferry rides back and forth from Cozumel for a 2 hour presentation. Not bad for a couple of hours right?

After the ferry, the rep walked us through Playa del Carmen and recommended shops that were super expensive. Finally we were driven to a resort and given a free breakfast. Then driven to another location to sit in a room and be presented with their vacation club pitch.

This is the pitch: basically we would have to pay $7900 upfront for the lowest tier (a studio) and sign up for a 25 year contract to pay ~$320 a year to be able to book a room at one of their all-inclusive resorts. Not a terrible deal if you only stay at top-notch, all-inclusive resorts.

This was not our first rodeo though so we investigated. We ended up using all of our cell phone data to read reviews (no WiFi available) The reviews said that we would have to pay ~$70 per night additional charges for the all-inclusive resorts and that the "available at an additional fee" option of using a different club with non-inclusive resorts was difficult if not impossible to book.

Each time we tried to decline they took us to talk to someone else (a customer service rep, a club member) and wasted most of our day. When they finally gave up, we were rushed to the front, given a cheap bottle of tequila and some tickets for tulum and a ferry ticket to return to Cozumel plus cash that was supposed to pay for our transportation. No tickets or mention of Xcaret and we were tired of arguing. In all, they wasted about 4 hours of our time there.

The driver then dropped us at a shuttle terminal and we got on a crowded public bus for a 45 minute ride to the town of Tulum and dropped. To get to the ruins we had to get another shuttle to go 15-20 minutes back to the ruins to find out we missed the last available entry time for the day. We made it back to Playa del Carmen to find that the ferry ticket they gave us was for the cheaper ferry and the last available was at 9pm, not 10pm like they told us.

Maybe if we had signed up, they would have given us the five-star treatment we were promised, but wow what jerks for our treatment we got when we said no.

BUYER BEWARE!
I became a member in 2015 and was generally happy. Barcelo bought out Occidental right after that and boy has this been a nightmare. The sales people will lie left and right to get that sale and then people are stuck paying thousands of dollars for nothing. Members were the only ones who could book First Club rooms, now Barcelo let's anyone book them, at Xcaret, the FC pool that everyone was sold as private to FC, nope, now they say it's the teeny, tiny little spa pool to the left of FC, 4 bottles of alcohol in the room, we haven't had an issue with that YET but guessing eventually it will happen where they'll take that away too, reservations at ala cartes preference, nope we were limited last trip and then it changed due to complaints. Barcelo is a horrible company that bought out a vacation club and then took all those who bought into it and took away their amenities promised or they say they don't "have their unit available" in the Barcelo system so we get a hotel room. C'mon Barcelo you can do better for the members or buy my membership back and I'll leave ya alone.

When my wife and I fist purchased our vacation club (First Club) we were very excited to use this for many many years... After 12 Plus years now when we called to booked our 2024 vacation we booked ours and we were going to also bring my wife's sister and the vacation club folks said we cannot do this anymore... I said we were told we can bring family and friends and we have done this for 12 plus years and now we were told no... I find this very very disappointment and NOT what I was told when we purchased this vacation club program... as a matter of fact when we were looking into this program while we were on vacation in Punta Cana the sales folks even told us that we could sell our bonus weeks and make money on the vacation club program which we have NEVER done but we cannot even use our current vacation club week with our family WHICH we were told we could and starting this year we were told we cannot after 12 years this is very very disappointing... My wife have called many times to verify this and we have asked to speak to management and so far to date a manager still have not called us back and when we ask to be transferred to a manager at the club they say they are busy or on the phone... I just want other people to know before they purchase to be aware this vacation club is sold as one thing and now we have been told another thing! BE WARE! Before purchasing be sure to read the contract and not listen to the lies they are telling you! This was NOT a cheep deal and now we are VERY disappointed and now they will not even call us back... I will continue writing these reviews until I get a call back from the vacation club management.

I bought a membership with Occidental Vacation Club, the next day I asked for the cancellation but they refused because I was told that i had renounced to the clause which says that I have those 5 days, so from there I found it all very strange and I started researching and found thousands of complaints and bad reviews about occidental Vacation club, and greater was my need to cancel my membership! I researched PROFECO and saw that this practice was illegal, so I did not want to risk me to lose all my money, then i fast contacted a company dedicated to cancel timeshare memberships, called Mexican timeshare solutions, I told them my situation and they told me that like me exist many other people in the same situation or worst. It is a whole mafia! Thank God MTS could cancel my contract and get my money back.

Never trust what they say those liars, if I had believed them and I had not moved surely i would continue giving them my money for 30 years, what a waste! Timeshare cancellation is possible, dont believe that not, be careful and stay sharp.