Our church was planning a retreat and this place one of top three locations. After some financial…read moreanalysts and group meetings, decision was made to hold our retreat here.
This center has one large building, which is like a dorm style. The surrounding is beautiful and I must admit, its one asset they have that's a selling point. Like a retreat planning, a site visit is a must and unfortunately, we weren't able to do a site visit, had we done a site visit, then I think we would have reconsidered our decision.
Per contract, someone was supposed to contact me a month prior to start of our retreat... so when I didn't hear from them with two weeks to our retreat date, I called and I was informed that they had emailed me with the information. Well, since I didn't receive the email, I asked them to resend it, the next day I called and informed them I again did not receive it, they sent it to my work and it came through. To be honest, if you haven't heard from your customer in so many number of days, wouldn't you want to call them and check to ensure the email was received??
Some things that I did not like about the facilities
- The facility is little older then other retreat centers that I have been too. The bathrooms only had one shower each and additional showers were located on the first floor, they need more lights on the 1st floor..
- dining time, you are only allotted 30 minutes to eat... talk about rushing people in and out... I'm sure they had their reasons, but we should at least be given 45 minutes (oh and I didn't know the 30 min policy until I got there).
- I asked for an overhead screen, they didn't inform me there would be a charge... so yeah, $15 charge was added.
- if you have one person stay in a double room, they will charge you higher fee, even though you had the rooms blocked.
Overall, while the staff were friendly, not sure if I would recommend Colombiere Center for next years retreat... but I do urge everyone to do a site visit.