It takes a lot for me to take time to write a review, positive or negative. In this particular case, I feel obligated as a consumer to warn others of Branson Travel Office.
When we called Branson Travel Office to make reservations at Fairway Condos for the weekend, we were ensured that they had an indoor pool to use (since we were visiting during a cold month). We have a two year old who's main mission in life is to swim. A place to swim is one of our only requirements when looking for a weekend getaway. When we arrived at the condo, the place was really nice. Plenty of space, and pretty accessible to the parts of Branson we were interested in visiting. After the 4 hour drive to Branson, my son was ready to swim! We got our swimsuits on and set out for the indoor pool that we were told was "right across the street". After driving around the complex for a while, the only place that seemed like it could be a pool, was the pool of another condo complex that had nothing to do with our condo. I was met by a stern lady who was in the middle of a board meeting for the complex. She asked me where we were staying, and when she found out we weren't staying in their complex, she quickly turned me away. We called the Branson Travel Office thinking we must have just missed the pool area to our complex. The person on the phone with my mom explained there wasn't actually a pool in our complex, but that they would be able to get us in to the pool across the street (which is where we were just turned away from). Sounds shady, because it was shady. After waiting 20 minutes for a call back from Branson Travel Office, my mom decided to talk to the stern lady in the middle of her board meeting to see if they would make an exception for a cranky 2 year old that just wanted to swim. When my mom explained what had happened, the lady told my mom that Branson Travel Office had tried to pull this many times before, there was no way they were going to let us swim. The entire board meeting listened to my mom tell our story, and they were very adamant about reporting this situation as it had occurred too many times before.
Still no phone call from Branson Travel Office, so we decided to make the trip to the office in person. As we were pulling up to the office, some 30+ minutes after the initial call, Branson Travel Office called back. No pool access. They must have been denied by the same stern lady we were denied by...
After a 20 minute conversation with the Branson Travel Office agent, we left with a disappointed two year old, and a $60 discount for the night. They refused to comp us tickets to the indoor swim park for the weekend because they told us that cost would come out of their pocket (I couldn't care less). After wasting 2 1/2 hours looking for a pool that didn't exist, and trying to explain to my 2 year old, that we weren't going to be swimming, that $60 felt pretty insulting.
One more thing: the "discounted tickets" to Dixie Stampede that we purchased through Branson Travel Office actually cost us $5 more a ticket (that's $20 extra for our family) than what they would have cost us had we just bought our tickets at the show. Had we done more research, we could have avoided this one, but a company that tells you over the phone they can save you money on tickets to shows...just seemed like the easy way to get everything taken care of in one phone call.
We enjoyed our weekend despite the customer service of Branson Travel Office. We won't ever use them again, and I hope this review saves you a little bit of trouble. read more
