B FIRST LEISURE CLUB  Reviews

I’m sharing here my experience of booking a Caribbean cruise and an entertainment package in November 2024 with BFirst Leisure Club.
Tony Williams and his partner Sandra Jacobs are seemingly a nice couple but they are out of their depth when it comes to organising leisure trips.
Out of the 8 onboard and offshore entertainment events that we paid for, only 3 could be said to have delivered what was promised. For example, they organise a party night on the first night of the cruise in Barbados not taking into account that after a long flight from the UK, people would be too tired to go out as well as the fact that people’s suitcases would not be available in time for people to freshen up.
Another onboard event was advertised as from 9 pm till 3 am. The venue was the basketball court on the top deck with poor accessibility for guests with mobility issues. P&O had not agreed to give them an extension beyond midnight.The farewell party which was again in the basketball court was attended by only about 20 people out of 200! Most people were so fed up with the poor service from them by that stage and didn’t attend.
They chose to communicate with 200 guests onboard via WhatsApp whilst on board. Knowing that most people did not have WiFi onboard due to the extortionate costs. P&O had given them the option of using their onboard app but was freely accessible to everyone but they did not use it.
Their guests were entitled to £50 per person free spending onboard; after a lot of complaints, this was only provided on the day of disembarkation!
They organised a clinic at 8 am to deal with complaints but failed to show up. Some of the onshore venues they chose were not suitable for mature people with poor access to the sea and unsuitable for people with disabilities.
I’ve since asked them for a partial refund but at the time of writing, they have not responded.
Please not this is not meant as a malicious review but one based on my actual experience of this company. They make a lot of excuses but at the end of the day, they deliver a poor service and are not interested in the customer experience.

If I could score minus I would. The company organised a trip to Ghana (Love Ghana Experience) at the end of April 2024. I will only document what I experienced directly. The rep(s) did not make themselves visible at Accra airport - people had to use observation and osmosis to work out where the coaches were to take us to our hotels. When trying to book in the hotel had no record of my booking! B First acted as intermediaries with another company who payments were made to who in turn did not pass the bookings and payments onto the hotel. I will not name them here, but will write a separate review for them. B First were badly organised from the get go. They had no idea of the number of people they were meant to be managing, nor the numbers registered for each of the excursions they organised. The coaches to collect us were late on every occasion bar one. A few trips were running so late that people in the groups did not get to see all the features of a particular attraction eg not able to climb/walk the aerial walk at the botanical gardens. Despite the hot weather there was no water available for any one on any trip. On one occasion there was insufficient food ordered so people had to wait for more to be prepared; those who had stated they were vegan were blessed with a boiled egg on top of their meal! Towards the end of the break few had any confidence that the coaches would arrive to get us back to the airport on time and made their own arrangements.

The only thing that saved this break for me was that I’d been to Ghana before so could find my way around without B First.

B First to their credit hosted a meeting with people on the trip which was understandably firey. This was early on in the break but not as early as it should been (after 3 days). Things didn’t noticeably improve after that.

We returned to london on May 6. On May 12 we were invited to submit our complaints to a generic mailbox with a promise that we’d hear from them within 35 days. At the time of writing and after sending a follow up email reminding them of their deadline, I’ve still not heard from them.

I would never book a break with this company again