Black stain on local hospitality

Dear Editor:

July 24-26 of 2020 was going to be the Hulley Family Reunion in Penticton, family members that have not seen each other in over 40 years.

There’s a beach named after my Dad it’s called Hulley Beach, that was one of the reasons I chose for having our reunion in Penticton.

Due to the pandemic and the rules that were put in place as far as large groups, we thought it was best to cancel for this year and reschedule for next year. I booked our reunion at Lake Okanogan resort and they had a $1,000 nonrefundable deposit, but because of the pandemic, they had no problem refunding the deposit, which we ended up rebooking for 2021 and all the other places that my family had booked at, Air B&B’s also had no problem getting the deposit back.

Unfortunately, a few other family members booked at a different local hospitality provider, the deposit was $400. They refused to give my relatives back their deposit even though, as a large group, we could not have our family reunion, it did not matter to them about the circumstances. It didn’t matter that the whole world was shut down that businesses were closed, people were out of work, no one was allowed to travel we all had to stay in our homes.

Not having our reunion this year was out of our control, this pandemic affected everyone.

I’ve lived in Penticton for 30 years and moved to Calgary over 20 years ago, but Penticton will always be home. I know that Penticton relies on the tourists in the summertime, but this one business does not seem to care about the tourist because if they did they would have given the $400 refund back to my relatives who then would have in return rebooked for the following year but that won’t happen anymore.

We will be having our family reunion in 2021 but I can guarantee you no one will stay at the provider who refused a refund.

Bridgett Taylor

Calgary