Review of Cavvanbah Beach Villa 4*

We had the most disappointing experience with this property. We were so excited to book a much needed 7 night getaway without our children, over the Easter Period in 2021 (4 public holiday nights and 3 nights in school holidays). Unfortunately however we were prevented from travelling, due to a COVID outbreak the week before, in both Brisbane and Byron Bay and the QLD Govt implementing a mandatory lockdown. The booking with Cavvanbah was originally booked through AirBnB for $3894 and we initially were advised by Cavvanbah that they would kindly give us 12months to use our booking, as it was completely out of our control that we were unable to travel. However, when we attempted to rebook our 7 night stay for October 2021, (1 public holiday night, 3 school holiday nights and 3 nights outside of school holidays) we were advised that we could only get 3 nights for the same price and that our credit was ONLY $3251.49 (the difference of $597.51 being the commission that Cavvanbah had to pay AirBnb! ) and that IN ADDITION we would have to outlay an additional $100 rebooking fee. Once again however there was a COVID outbreak and the BluesFest, which we also had tickets for, was once again postponed, so we did not book this period and decided to wait until the following Easter in 2022 when the BluesFest was rescheduled to. Once again in February this year, we attempted to utilise our credit with Cavvanbah for this period. As we are very time poor with 4 children and we run our own business', we requested to be able to break the booking into two small bookings of 3 or 4 nights, only to be advised we could not do this. Therefore we requested to book 6 nights (5 nights in school holidays and 1 public holiday night being Good Friday). The cost of these dates was $3360. ($534 less than our original booking and an additional $108.51 on our ADVISED LESSER credit amount of $3251.49! ) The first 4 nights of this requested stay there was a 3 night minimum but the 5 & 6th nights lead into 7 night minimum booking period. Therefore we were advised by Cavvanbah that we could not book the 6 night stay to utilise our credit, we HAD to book 7 nights and the difference due would be $108.51 as per above + $795 for the additional 7th night (double or triple their low season rate! + $100 rebooking fee = an additional $1003.51! ) Due to work and children commitments we simply could not stay an additional night and we did not feel we should have to pay an additional $1003.51 to stay 6 nights when 1. Our credit should have been worth $3894 and 2. That only the last two requested nights fell into the 7 night minimum booking period! In addition to the inflexibility regarding rebooking and using a service we had already paid a substantial amount of money for, the service we received was disgraceful. Our emails were not responded to on several occasions for over 2-3weeks and we had to continually chase them for an answer; when we tried to rebook this year we were advised that they had no details of our credit or that they thought we had utilised it already; emails were not personally signed by the person we were dealing with; and most of all the tone and language used within the emails was rude and disrespectful: Quote "You have been abundantly and repeatedly responded too. Our generosity of offering you a credit and extending the time for you to use that credit has proven to be administratively frustrating and taking up too much time. We will no longer be responding to your emails. "We will never ever recommend this accommodation and believe that charging $800per night in peak season (refer to Dec 2022 rates) vs $265 per night in low season, for exactly the same room is disgraceful and not the way to recoup lost revenue, due to the same natural disasters ie COVID which everyone has been affected by and FLOODS which we were also personally impacted by as we live in Paddington Brisbane. 😡