amstardmc.com

Horribly run money-grab organization that preys on captive resort audiences

Where do I even start with Amstar? A horribly run company. The people working there try their best, but they are saddled with a completely broken system and set of protocols.On our arrival, our arranged vehicle was not ready for us. They struggled to find our reservation because the name the reservation was under was *not* the purchaser, but instead, took the first name from the alphabetical list as the reservation holder. In our case, it was one of the children of the group. So not very helpful. It took 20 minutes to find a bus for our transportation, then another 15 to find the pre-paid car seat for a baby in our group (keep this in mind as a theme.)The drive itself was fine and the luggage loading and offloading were fine... again, the staff themselves do their best and we appreciated that.During our stay at the resort, we ended up booking an excursion online instead of the counter, due to the timing of our stay and our daily schedule. When trying to get information from Amstar via email, they informed me that we were to wait for our bus to pick us up for our excursion, when it was supposed to be on-site at the resort (as we had booked.) I only got clarification when I spoke with an agent in person and they had to call the actual excursion company to clarify. On the day of, we waited (with three other families) for our excursion at the pre-arranged waiting spot. 45 minutes later, and no excursion or signs of Amstar agents to direct us. Another family had already been waiting for an hour before we arrived, so nearly two hours for them. I finally walked back *into* the resort to find the Amstar agent desk (since the outdoor booking kiosk was not manned at that time.) After speaking with them wondering where our excursion was, they called the excursion host company to learn that it was likely to be canceled due to poor weather conditions. Even though the same excursion was happening the next resort over. I asked why we were never informed, and their excuse was because I had booked online, they didn't have my phone number to contact me. Even though they had my email and could have easily sent a notification (or an agent to communicate with the 10+ guests waiting at the beach.) We ended up canceling for a refund, and although I was given a snapshot of the cancellation and refund I still have not yet received an email notification.When we left, we had a ride booked complete with a pre-paid carseat. When we finally got to our bus and were getting ready to load into the bus, our driver was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was looking for a carseat. And furthermore, it turned out that there were no car seats. We had already been waiting 45 minutes to get onto our bus at that point. Their solution was for us to wait at the resort for another bus to come with a carseat from the airport (45 minutes away). For an international flight, this already would put us at 1.5 hours late to arrive at the airport. The solution that finally worked out for us was that the hotel bellhop had to loan Amstar his own personal carseat for us to use. Completely ridiculous... this was a service we had already paid for and they failed to even provide that!As my title suggests, Amstar is a complete joke of a company. The people who are employed and work as the staff at the desks and drivers are by and large fine. They were doing their best with bad situations. But a proper tourism and excursion middle-person organization should not have this severe lack of internal coordination to make peoples' trips enjoyable. They are supposed to be at service of customers, but reality is that we would have been much better off without having dealt with them. Unfortunately they were the only company licensed to serve our resort, so we had zero choice or options! We *had* to use Amstar, despite our increasingly negative interactions... as such, we will never ever book any vacations or resorts again that utilize Amstar as their tourism service. I will never pay them another penny.

Date of experience: Dec 20, 2025