Marlin Travel Presents: Destination Weddings by Kiki

Working with Kiki for the past 2 years was the WORST PART OF MY ENTIRE WEDDING PLANNING - even worse than having to postpone my wedding due to the pandemic!!!
I was referred to Kiki Dimakis of Marlin Travel and ‘Destination Weddings and Romance by Kiki’ because my friends’ booked with her. I signed my contract in Oct 2019 for my wedding in Cancun for Nov 2020 (we eventually had to postpone to Nov 2021). When we went to my friends’ wedding, 5 of the other guests approached me and warned me not to book with her for my wedding because they felt that she was very rude, not knowledgeable or helpful. Word spread very quickly about Kiki from my friends’ wedding so the majority of our guests chose to book on their own so that they didn’t have to deal with her (and they all found a better rate anyway). All of my horrible experiences with Kiki:
1. Kiki messaged me that one of my friends backed out of her booking and she “didn’t know why.” Kiki was so rude to her and made her feel stupid for asking questions about the travel insurance. Instead of clarifying the information, Kiki just kept saying it was clearly stated in the contract. Well, not everyone understands the tricky wording that contracts sometimes have so why is it so hard for you to explain it to your client! I’ve attached the screenshots.
2. In the summer of 2020 we decided to postpone a whole year since we weren’t allowed to travel. In Nov 2020, Kiki emailed us stating that she was charging us a $200 fee, that was not mentioned in our contract, to rebook everyone. Everyone who booked with her paid their deposits so she was holding these deposits hostage. Isn’t it the travel agent’s job to rebook everyone if something out of their control like a pandemic happens?! Why should we get charged for this especially if it was not mentioned in the contract? We calmly explained to her why we were upset over this fee and we went back and forth for 6 MONTHS! She didn’t try to understand where we were coming from at all and didn’t care that we were unhappy. She pushed us over to her mother, Lisa Dimakis, owner of Marlin Travel. Lisa, of course, just backed Kiki up and they wouldn’t budge on the fee. They said if we didn’t pay it then they would put it onto our guests to pay or everyone will lose their deposits. So we had no choice but to pay.
3. On the booking deadline, she tried to sway my brother-in-law to book a flight and hotel package OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTRACT with her directly! He would’ve been the 10th booking that we needed. Then she told us since we won’t hit the 10 room minimum we should book our flight and hotel package with her directly as well… trying to persuade us to book outside of our own contract! UNBELIEVABLE!!
4. She wrote in the new contract that the $50 per room fee would be in addition to the total room amount when originally she stated that it was included. I brought this to her attention and she said “oops it was a mistake.” If I didn’t catch it and bring it up she would have pocketed an additional $500 from our group!
5. When checking in to the resort, one of my friends’ name and booking could not be found in the system! Kiki didn’t do anything to fix it, but the resort was nice enough to give her a room based on her email confirmation.
6. My guests had to call the shuttle company to confirm their rides to and from resort because Kiki would not do it and I didn’t want anyone to get stuck without a shuttle.
7. Kiki told us that we had to pay in full first, then after the trip we would get reimbursed for a complimentary room, but we only got back a FRACTION of the money.
8. She gave endless excuses. She also constantly mentioned her side gig, which made us feel like she was putting us on the back burner and that our wedding wasn’t as important.
9. She seemed to keep mixing my guests up with one another and said to one of them “Can you just resend it to me? There’s so much back and forth especially from this group.” HOW RUDE!
Overall, Kiki caused me so much stress and tears. She’s all over the place, not organized, not trustworthy, rude and forgetful. She also has a really hard time owning up to her mistakes and will always blame it on someone or something else.