Travel Agents Scramble To Help Customers Confirm Weddings And Honeymoons, And Obtain Refunds, As Ask Me Inc. Folds

Paradisus Palma Real. Photo: Sarah_Ackerman.

On Aug. 16, Miami-based travel marketing company Ask Me Inc. announced it was closing and told customers they would need to work directly with the resorts to confirm their bookings and payments.

Where clients made credit-card payments that were not remitted to the resorts, travel agents have been helping request chargebacks, said John K. Hawks, administrator of the Destination Wedding & Honeymoon Specialists Association (DWHSA) in Nashville, TN. Haskins has been helping DWHSA members and other agents by disseminating advice and news he has been compiling while working directly with them.

Still, some wedding customers and honeymooners will lose money, he said. “We have a few agents whose clients paid by check or wire transfer, unfortunately. We’ve gone out to our members asking them to start alerting us if they have clients who paid with anything other than a credit card. If those non-credit-card payments are not refunded by Ask Me in the near future, we’ll assist those agents and their clients in filing small-court claims and other paperwork to try to get reimbursed.”

But some agents are finding that working directly with the properties is paying dividends for their customers. 

“To their credit, several Melia and Paradisus properties have agreed to honor the payments made to Ask Me that they never received. They don’t have any legal reason to do that, probably—but they’re stepping up to the plate to help the agents and their clients.”

Attempts by TMR to reach Ask Me and Melia Hotels International have gone unreturned. Ask Me was founded by Marilyn Cairo and Hilary Lanzer, two former sales and marketing officials with Sandals and Beaches Resorts.

“To date, Ask Me has offered no explanation of what happened with the missing Melia and Paradisus deposits,” Hawks said. However,“they continue handling bookings for the individual resorts they rep (e.g., Coconut Bay in St. Lucia)—and agents who’d booked those resorts for clients through ASK ME are reporting that those resorts did receive the deposits and everything is OK with those bookings.”

Ask Me represents a number of Caribbean properties not in the Melia/Paradisus network.

So far, travel agents were unwilling to speak publicly about their experiences with Ask Me.

Hawks is taking this event as an opportunity to build stronger best practices for the destination weddings industry. “I’m talking to a few key suppliers in this romance travel niche about a new list of best practices for agents who book via third parties like wholesalers,” he said.