Misibis Adventures and Misadventures

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This is just my personal experience during my trip to Misibis Resort in Legazpi last April 14-16, 2010 when I facilitated an incentive trip for our Resellers (our group is composed of 88 pax, mostly business owners). Since I am handling the marketing and communications group of our company, I was tasked to ensure that all the needed preparations are well taken cared of. This means helping the team (2 product managers) plan the entire trip from check-in to check-out including room assignments, F&B arrangements, turndown gifts and activities for each attendee. For such a big group, preparations are indeed tedious. And since most of our guests have attended similar incentive trips sponsored by other vendors in our industry, we need to be critical and meticulous with our preparations.

Gifts and other items
On April 13, we flew to Legazpi to double check that the resort is ready for the big event. Days before our event, we have delivered a total of 24 boxes to the designated forwarder of the resort in Manila. These contains the turndown gifts for our guests. When we were in Misibis (around 11AM of April 13) to show to the staff how we would like our gifts to be presented, we were informed that 10 boxes are still in Manila as the cargo can no longer accommodate them. This upset us as we would be needing them on April 14. And no one bothered to inform us about this. The account executive handling our event, even told us that we need to pay an additional 20K plus for the shipping. I reasoned out that we will not pay for such inefficiency when we have delivered the boxes ahead of time. I pressed our contact to elevate our concern to the resort manager. At around 5PM, we were informed that the remaining boxes will be arriving in Misibis at around 12NN (April 14) without the need to pay the extra cost. She told us that the resort manager has managed to find a solution.

The items arrived at around 5PM. We were in a panic mode already as the items (lots of goodies including Nike shirts, Crocs, Dry Sac, Sports Bottle, Envirosax) need to be sorted out and prepared accordingly. The gift should be placed in the respective rooms of our guests before they enter the room for the bedtime. We were able to start the sorting at around 6PM. And we have to prepare 88 baskets. We only have 3 support staff from Misibis. We opted to be late for the group dinner (7 of us from our company) since we need to ensure that the gifts are ready before turndown. If only the resort has been prepared for our big group, we would not have experienced such disaster. We event sent them a photo of how the gifts should be presented (for Men, for Ladies, for Kids) days before our trip. We have also prepared individual gift tags for the shirts, Crocs, and bags.

At around 730PM, we finished everything and the resort have also started dispatching the items per room. At this point, dinner has already started at the Beach Front. Luckily our company president was around to talk and entertain our guests while we, the staff are busy preparing the gifts.

Suddenly, it started to drizzle so we have to move the dinner to the restaurant. This is always a problem with outdoor events. Anyways, the resort was quite fast in moving the food stations. After dinner, the weather got better so we decided to move back to the beach front for a short product presentation and update. My boss asked me if we have a production number from the resort since this is stipulated in the contract. My colleague texted the resort's account executive for the program but no reply so we decided to look for her and ran to the front desk. We waited for almost 5 minutes as we were informed that she was already on her way. As we don't know what's going on, we decided to ran back to the restaurant and there we saw our contact having her dinner. We thought she was already on her way to the Front Desk to address our concern. So we approached her and asked her if we are going to have the production or entertainment number as agreed upon. At this point, we can no longer contain our frustration so we asked her to endorse us to the resort manager. Would you believe, we are the organizing team and we have not even been endorsed to the resort manager by our contact? Little did we know that the guy she was sharing table with is the resort manager. Anyways, we asked the resort manager what's the plan about the production since no one bothers to communicate with us if we are going to proceed with it or not. He told us not to stress out ourselves in his own arrogant way since the program will proceed as planned. How can we remain calm when we have experienced so much inefficiencies?, we cut back. From the arrival of our guests, to the availability of gift items, to the preparation of the turndown gifts, and advisory on the status of our program. The reply of the resort manager shocked us. He said to us..."As far as I'm concerned your boss is our customer. Your boss is happy with us." I told him that just because we are the representatives of the company do not make us your customer? OMG. Where is this argument coming from!!!. You can not ask your boss to handle the details. This is the reason why we are being paid. And I will never ever ask my boss to carry out my responsibilities.

What disappoints me is his feedback about my boss being his customer. While my boss pays the bill, it is the responsibility of the staff to take care of the details and ensure that everything is carried out professionally and efficiently. This simply means that our complains have no bearing on him. This to me is an epitome of arrogance.

Another thing, I should have not recommended the resort to the group. I have to admit that I was one of those who strongly recommended the resort to be the venue for the incentive trip. But to my dismay, they're not ready to handle corporate events. Perhaps they're good in handling room and guests services. But events? So disappointing. We can always give way to some shortcomings but to be treated this way as If I inputs are nothing...is simply disgusting and unacceptable.

Another inefficiency that I simply can't pass is when I pressed the lotion container in the shower room and tried to apply them in my arms and noticed that they don't permeate the skin. I decided to put some water onto my skin and ohlala, handwash soap in a lotion container. I did not make a big fuzz out of this so I just called their housekeeping to give me some lotion. Maybe the assigned housekeeper made a mistake in putting the label.

Pardon me about my rants but I'm just so disappointed with the way they have handled our event. I am not saying here that the general experience is bad. These inefficiencies were not obvious to our guests. Our guests left the resort with a smile and that what matters to us.

If I am to recommend the resort to other customers who want to mount a corporate event...i don't think so.

Plus points:
Rooms are very nice.
Pools and Beach Amenities.
Landscape is beautiful.

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Comments

[joy eusebio]

beautiful place
how much will i spend if i will stay for 24 hours in misibis?