A coworker and his family wanted an island vacation and the wife chose St. Lucia. He came to me for recommendations for hotel and I told him to check out Bay Gardens Resort, since he wanted to be on the beach and also for the fact that Bay Gardens was locally owned. I had never seen someone so excited about going on vacation. A whole month before the scheduled departure that was all he was talking about, asking me questions on what to do, what is our national dish and questions like that.
It was my pleasure providing him with all info and of course I felt happy and proud to be from a country that people wanted to visit.
So fast forward to yesterday, he comes into my office telling me about his trip. After thanking me for recommending the resort he got down to the nitty-gritty (lol). They got to Vieux-Fort and met their pre-arranged vehicle for hire to take them up North. He didn’t give me the name of the driver (he forgot his name) but he did say the driver was very courteous and friendly. So they got to the resort and at first glance they are both already impressed and knew that they would be enjoying their stay. The staff was very friendly, the resort was clean and of course the best part was the fact that they were right on the beach. The family consisted of himself, his wife and 18 month or so old baby, so being on the beach was very important to them, in fact that was all they wanted to do. He told me by the time it was 7:00 am he was already on the beach since the baby wakes up every day at 5 (he came back with a little tan to prove it too).
They spent seven days on the island; they went to Castries to see the famed market and went around town and ate a lot of our local dishes. One qualm he had about St. Lucia was the price of food for the baby, but he said that was not a deterrent to them, since they are already planning on coming back. Now here comes my main reason for wanting to blog this visitor’s experience.
People, we must take pride in our country and if you are working in a service industry you must learn to be courteous to people. This family took the same means of transportation to head back to the airport, and when the van came to pick them up, the driver did not want the baby on board his vehicle. He did not give the family any apparent reason; he just said that he couldn’t have the baby on board. So my coworker is telling him that makes no sense, we used another guy from your service a couple of days ago and he had no problems with the baby, why would you have a problem now. At this time, he did not feel to argue, so he took his bags down from the vehicle and had to call a taxi for a much more higher rate to bring them down to the airport. I will not mention the name of the company nor the driver’s name, but it is a reputable company and I am appalled at such treatment to a visitor. I told him to send the company an email and make sure you tell them the driver’s name, because if they can get good reviews they can also get bad reviews.
If you work in the service industry you must learn to understand which side of the bread your butter is on. I understand you can maybe get some rude people but that does not mean that you should be rude in turn. This is the industry you chose to work in, so you should be nice to the people that buttering your bread!