We booked this trip super excited based on the reviews we read. Needless to say, I am truly disappointed with how the company has handled a recent situation. Long story short, we got a call 5 minutes prior to our tour check-in time, saying that the tour was going to be cancelled because the boat captain hurt his eye taking the boat out of the water just now, and was on his way to the emergency room and their other captain was already doing another tour that day. We immediately understood the situation, did not question that validity of the statement, and felt super compassionate towards the captain and company. They even informed us that we can ask around to other tours at the boat landing to see if they have any room for a walk on since we were already there and drove 45 minutes.
Luckily two days later, we were able to get onto another tour with a different company. Where I have a problem, is that TWO days later, while checking in with our new tour company, a lady next to me was asking if they had any room for her to come on this tour, as her tour with Makena Dive Charters was just cancelled 5 minutes prior due to the captain getting injured THAT morning and him being on his way to emergency room. We immediately discovered that Makena Dive Charters was still using the same reason two days later that it JUST happened. At this time, another woman indicated she was as well told that morning that the captain just got injured.
While I don’t doubt the captain got injured two days prior because we saw/spoke to a crew member who already had our lunches prepared with him. My problem was that they were using the same reason two days later and weren’t being honest with their customers. As a company, you need to be upfront with your guests and own the situation that somebody got injured two days ago and that you still can’t find anybody to captain the boat, so they may want to look elsewhere/ have it on their radar that it may get cancelled.
Due to this, a lot of people were screwed out of a snorkeling tour on their vacation because this company was not upfront about the situation and did not warn their guests that their tour potentially may need to get cancelled because they are having a hard time finding a replacement captain since theirs got injured a couple days ago. Instead, they continued to pretend that it just happened that morning. Finding this out was extremely upsetting, and the other guests and I immediately began questioning the validity of this company since they got the same exact reason two days later.