Date of visit: Dec 1-15/08 We had read many of the reviews prior to departing for the resort, and thank the authors very much for their contributions. Despite the, by definition, subjective views of each of the reviews, it is FAR better to go prepared, than to run across something that someone else had found long ago, but which was not reported. And better to hear that the food is bad, from a few, and to find out it met our palette very nicely, than the reverse … With that in mind, then we offer our own personal comments about the Royal Decameron, and the support services offered through our local booking agent, Nolitours, and Ait Transat. Briefly, to deal with all of those before commenting on the resort itself:
* our local booking agent was in fact an online travel service, and I think we got the best rate possible. It was less than Nolitours itself offered, and what I got by calling was better than what they offered on their website … so, don’t always believe anything that folks say – it does not hurt to check a 1-800 number if they have it
*Nolitours: “ trying to book with them in advance, by internet, and then by phone, was exactly what they said on the website – might have done with them had we not first checked out the other one noted above (but heck, the price difference was only $30 per person, so no great shakes either way.) At the resort, we found that the Nolitours folks were always available – they could not make miracles happen, but it was apparent that they were there to help when required and feasible (eg., a French-speaking person needed help at the medical centre with the doctors who could not speak French). (One additional note that does not quite fit here, but we found out too late: it appears that if you want to do the two-hotel split [more details later], it needs to be done in advance, and I believe only possible through Nolitours directly – we tried to do this while there, and there was no possibility.)
* Air Transat: A good-enough airline, full plane, normal airline service (ie., these days, ie., nothing special, nothing tragic) – staff were friendly enough, check-in was painless enough. Only anomaly of note was that the check-in to return found our bags to be in total 3 kilos over the limit (and which would have been an additional $30) – we found this odd, due to the fact that such was not the case on departing, and our “leaving behind†weight was almost equivalent to our “going home weightâ€Â [suitcases, I mean – body weight was somewhat different]. So, we quickly removed a couple of items from the suitcases, and they got down to proper weight .. but that would have been an unplanned expense – making the few souvenirs very expensive.