Here’s an important reality every business today should take to heart: Every one of your customers may be writing up a review of your business and posting it on the Internet. As Internet reviews are often critical to future business, you need to treat every customer the best, and provide them the best possible experience.
I mention this because — as you’ve probably figured out by now — we’re just finishing a vacation in Escondido, CA. We’ve been staying at the Lawrence Welk Resort San Diego, having exchanged a week three years ago with Interval International (and thus we needed to use it before it expired). This is my write-up of my experiences here. In short: I’d come back, but I challenge them to do even better, because I know that they can. In Yelp ratings, call it ★★★★.
The resort, which looks to have been started in the late 1980s, consists of a number of small communities each connected to a recreation center: Melody Hill, Harmony Hill, Broadway Hill, Villa on the Greens, and their newest community, Mountain Villas. All of the communities are on golf courses that appear to be well maintained. There is a central plaza that provides a full theatre (with live theatre productions), resort shop, Pizza Hut Express, convenience store, spa, and restaurant. The recreation centers are mostly family-oriented with playgrounds, pools, spas, water-play areas, some water-slides, and recreation rooms. One (Melody Hills) is over-18 with a kid-less pool, dry sauna, fitness center, and weight room. Some of the recreation centers have board games, but nothing I would consider a good board game :-). The pool areas look very nice, although we really didn’t use them. The resort has a large variety of activities that are well publicized and that would serve families quite well.
The rooms themselves have a wide variety — as one expects in a timeshare — with full kitchens, beds, sleeper sofas, washer/driers, etc. Ours had a jacuzzi tub large enough for two! Our was reasonably clean and we’ve enjoyed our stay here quite a bit, although we haven’t partaken in any of the activities (other than their Farmer’s Market). There are barbeques everywhere for people to use. I’ll note that they do try to promote a resort tour in exchange for discounts for local attractions, their evening shows, or in the restaurant. Translation: they are trying to get people to buy into the new Mountain Villas development. We’re not interested as we already have a timeshare, but I could see it being appealing to families.
I also want to know that the Customer Service people we dealt with were, for the most part, attentive. Maintenance was a little slower, but then again, we didn’t make our maintenance problem a priority issue. So I’ll give them a very good on customer service.
With all of this, why the ★★★★ rating? Attention to detail. Although they have a fitness room, the machines are older and look it (but they work). Handrails could use paint. I noticed the occasional cigarette butt on the ground (that remained over 24 hours). The drain on our Jacuzzi tubs didn’t pop up; we needed to resort to a kitchen knife to pry it up. We had a light on the porch hanging by its conduit (which they fixed when we brought it to their attention). The grounds-crew is not attentive to the noise of their equipment (I understand the need to maintain the course, but there’s a difference between a lawn mower and using those obnoxious string trimmers or leaf blowers).
[Karen adds: I found a few annoyances – burned out light bulbs (2 in our unit), not really enough light for puzzling, comfortable reading or needlework, and this is the first timeshare I’ve done that didn’t have a mid-week light cleaning, sundries replacement, linen change-out and trash emptying…Other maintenance items showed that they aren’t paying close attention – a nasty burning smell emanating from the dishwasher when we used it, the flange on the shower arm was floating loose, and the very nice magnifying make-up mirror in the bath has an intermittent short in its power supply or cord – sometimes the on-board light worked, sometimes it didn’t … Also, unlike some of the other places I’ve been, very few activities were targeted to adults…enough that if I hadn’t brought my own projects, i would have been bored stiff…]
Additionally, the plugs near the desk are full, so there’s no place to plug in a laptop… and they have limited Internet speeds.Further, during this visit, the Internet went down — c’mon, how can you have a vacation with no Internet, furgodsakes — and it took them over 12 hours to realize that they needed to raise a ticket with their ISP (e.g., the problem was off-premises). I ended up going off-premises to a Starbucks 10 miles away to take care of conference email Thursday morning. That’s a grrrrr in my book. Once they raised the issue, it was fixed in a few hours (i.e., it was about around 930am, so it was down from 1p-930a). Now that my arm is complete again, there is calm in the world. Funny how that works.
In any case, these are the little things that distinguish a top rating (which I see in the reports from our home resort, The Whaler on Kaanapali Beach, which is ★★★★½ on Trip Advisor… and they work hard to maintain it). None of these are make it or break it items; none go to the level of sanitary problems or major safety issues. They all fall into the category of temporary light annoyances. Still, to my eye, to reach the excellent level there should be no annoyances.
Will we be back? Quite likely. When we do an exchange, we like locations in driving distance from home. My wife did Sedona once. We did Palm Springs last August, Las Vegas in May, and this August is Escondido. The location is great. San Diego is an easy drive. The facility encourages walking and exercise (I’ve walked or exercised for an hour each day – go me!). The pools and greens are beautiful. The customer service has been very good.
Lastly, when I mentioned we were at a Welk resort, people were going — but that’s for old folks. I’ll note that we’re seeing a large number of families here, and the facilities seem very family-oriented. Although Welk himself was known to an older demographic, his show was always family oriented and his resorts appear to be oriented that way. If you are looking for a place without a lot of kids, this probably isn’t the place. There are some of those in Palm Springs or Vegas. (Oh, and if you want Lawrence Welk music, visit the SVDP Thrift Shop in Escondido. They had loads of Welk LPs)
