In March of 2010 I made a reservation at 9 Beaches for October of 2010 to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. Originally I booked a top banana cabana with an all inclusive package. I was thrilled when a couple weeks later I received a phone call saying that one of the paradise pier cabanas opened up. We were able to switch (there was an increase in price which was fine) to one of the cabanas on stilts over the water. So far the customer service was wonderful…very helpful…we were really looking for to our first trip to Bermuda.
In April I came across a review stating that 9 Beaches was delaying the opening date. This made me nervous so I called 9 Beaches and was informed that they had storm damage & the repairs were taking longer than anticipated. I was assured that there would be no issue with our October reservation. On Friday May 14th just before 5:00pm I received an e mail from 9 Beaches stating that they were not going to be opening for the 2010 season due to the storm damage. My husband & I were very disappointed to say the least. However we were pleased to see that 9 Beaches offered 2 other resorts that would honor the rate that we had booked. After many unanswered phone calls & e mails to 9 Beaches we finally got an e mail response on May 21st stating that since we had contacted one of the resorts they requested directly that they would be unable to transfer the reservation therefore our rate would not be honored. This will end up costing us much more money. The email went on to say, 9 Beaches was canceling our reservation and refunding our deposit of $680.00. I sent an e mail back letting them know that we had not put down a deposit at the other resort & asked that they please transfer the reservation for us. Several days later I sent another e mail asking 9 Beaches to advise me how to proceed…my e mail also said that I had a room being held (without a deposit) at the other resort & needed to put a deposit by the end of the business day (2 days later). Unfortunately the response from 9 Beaches didn’t come in time so I put down a deposit at the other resort. The next message from 9 Beaches came on May 26th saying that the deposit would be returned and that this may take a couple of business days. After I sent several more e mails inquiring about our refund on June 3rd I was informed that the refund of my deposit had been put on hold. I then requested to be put in contact with someone who could explain why our refund was put on hold. I received another e mail on June 4th stating that the refund had been processed. June 8th, the refund posted to my credit card. It doesn’t seem fair it took 17 business days before we received our refund.
I understand storm damage is unavoidable. However we feel it was unfair of 9 Beaches to not mention they were under going an $80 million renovation, that it was not just storm damage. What we found completely unacceptable is the way we were notified & the fact that nobody was available to answer any questions for such a long period of time.

Help! I just received the email cancelling my trip today! I leave June 19 for Bermuda! I'll just move over to another hotel they offer...at this point, I don't care! 9 Beaches is offering Pompono Beach as an alternative...but some of these posts scare me....Will they adhere to this????

Why did I just find out today ...when others found out sooner!!!!!!!!

What should I do? No one has replied to any of my emails yet from 9 beaches

I am the boyfriend of merde001 below who posted the first review about 9 beaches being closed “due to storms”. After MUCH work—i.e. hours of phone calls, waiting on hold and e-mails, and NO HELP whatsoever from 9 Beaches we achieved a refund from the travel site we booked through and are going to Tulum Mexico in a few weeks. And we are happy to put this all behind us.

But a new development is prompting me to post address this ordeal once more.

The entire reason that we had booked this hotel and decided on Bermuda for that matter was the cabana experience so the hotels offered as replacement did not fit what we were looking for at all. We had been communicating with the general manager of this hotel via e-mail after we learned that the resort would not be able to accept our reservation about two weeks prior to our planned arrival date. Since we had booked the hotel as part of a package, we were initially told by Orbitz we couldn't just cancel the hotel reservation without incurring a $150 change fee per airline ticket. In the meantime, my girlfriend had left the below review regarding our horrible experience with the hotel. The general manager immediately responded to our e-mail stating:

“…we are but a small privately owned hotel (with about 50 staff who rely on us for income in order that they can feed, clothe, and house their families both in Bermuda and around the world, literally). We are trying to work through this tragic set of circumstances which were totally beyond our control. Regrettably as Trip Advisor is so effective we have received many calls and emails since your posting appeared from people who wish to cancel their reservations. Under the circumstances could I ask if you can you feel any way clear to ask Trip Advisor to withdraw your comments?”

We responded that we could not remove the review because we did not want others to experience the same trouble and headaches that we had encountered. We also requested that the resort cover the change fees for our airline tickets, a total of $300. We said we would promptly remove the review if this was done. To this request, we received no response from the manager at all. Instead, the manager left the below response to our review here on Tripadvisor. After spending countless hours on the phone trying to re-arrange our travel plans at the last minute, we thought that this was not an unreasonable request. The sympathy that the manager had tried to extract from us by the mentioning that they are a small privately owned hotel had initially made us feel very guilty and regretful about the initial harsh review….

That feeling was quickly lost when we found out that “9 Beaches resort (was) to close for $80m redevelopment”.

See the link here: http://www.royalgazette.com/rg/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7da57cb30030000&sectionId=60

We received no response, no reimbursement and ultimately no resolution on behalf of 9 Beaches. After enough hours spent on the phone finally talking to right people, we were able to get a full refund of our trip through Orbitz. 9 Beaches did nothing other than ignore us and our requests and in addition try to make US feel bad for THEM ruining our vacation. The ethics and poor business practices demonstrated by this whole process will definitely make us steer clear of 9 beaches in the future and for you and your desire for a relaxing vacation’s sake, I would advise you to as well.

Just found out that our trip to 9 Beaches is cancelled b/c the resort will be closed for 2010 to make repairs to damages to their cabanas. Like the previous poster stated, they offered to put us up at other hotels, but that was not what we were looking for in this trip- we wanted the cabana experience!

DOES ANYONE KNOW ANY PLACES THAT ARE SIMILAR TO THIS 9 BEACHES CABANA STYLE RESORT- BERMUDA, BAHAMAS, ANYWHERE!?!?!?!