we booked our wedding and honeymoon at the casuarina back
in may 2007 and we were assured that all renovations would be finished by july 2007. the completion date was then moved several times. in november i was told by a senior director at almond and by virgin that all the building work was complete and that there was only soft furnishing to finish. I then spoke to a friend who owns a villa close to the resort who informed me that in his eyes(he owns a construction company) and the thoughts of builders that he had spoken to at the resort that it could still be a year before the works would be complete. for eight months i called virgin and almond weekly and was lied to constantly by both partys about the building work. they will take your booking and then try to move you into the almond beach village at the top of the island or charge you more money to move to another hotel. eventually in january after hours of phone calls and endless broken promisses of return calls from supervisers and managers at virgin holidays they finally agreed to move us to the turtle beach resort next door at no extra cost, and that if any of our guests that were also booked in the casuarina contacted them they would also move them. when friends and family got in touch they were either told that the hotel was full or that they had to pay extra to move. by this time we had been it touch with the hotel direct and new that there was plenty of vacancies, so they all cancelled and either booked direct or with british airways (another lie by virgin)
on a positve note the turtle beach resort and all the staff were fantastic and we had an excellent wedding day no thanks to virgin or almond, who gave us nothing but stress and worry.
i have attached some photos taken on the 12th of april so you can judge for your self if there is just soft furnishings left to do.
also on our wedding day i paid the builders on the site $50 between them to stop work which they all did all 20 of them so there was no background noise. if every wedding party did this the place will never be finished.
a very very disapointed EX virgin client.