A family from Yorkton, Sask. says after they became ill while on vacation in Mexico, the resort they were staying at presented them with a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to sign before it would let a doctor treat them.
Now the family is reminding other travellers to opt for travel insurance and other safety measures before embarking on their trip.
Jesslyn Schigol, who was travelling with her husband ands two sons said they became ill shortly after arriving at The Royalton Riviera Cancun resort in Mexico during the holiday season.
Schigol says when they asked to see a doctor the resort presented them with an NDA to sign in advance.
“They said they would not send a doctor unless I signed this paper,” Schigol explained. “At that time, I said there’s no way I would sign this paper. This is ridiculous. You are going to deny me healthcare unless I sign this paper? I said there’s absolutely no way.”
The form stated that the person should not directly or indirectly disclose the incident or any other perceived negative experience relating to the incident to any outside parties, among other notes including that the hotel would not be held liable to the medical assistance provided.
“She kept on enforcing that this NDA must be signed, I refused,” shared Schigol, referring to the WestJet agent at the resort during the time of the incident.
“In the meantime, my travel agent was reaching out to the WestJet reps in Canada. It was only then when the WestJet rep in Canada stepped in, that’s when they dropped the NDA signing and it was handled with the WestJet rep.”
Schigol said that even though she did not sign the agreement, it was only after an agent from Canada got involved that her 13-year-old son was seen by a doctor.
“The resort is supposed to be your home away from home,” she voiced. “It’s supposed to be your safe space when you travel and that was far from the answer for us. We felt bullied, we didn’t feel safe.”
Since returning from the trip, Schigol said her family received full compensation due to the limited help from the resort’s WestJet agent at the time of the situation.
However, one tourism expert shared that NDAs are becoming more common at resorts due to online reviews.
“This is where this pressure is coming from because of the online environment,” Wayne Smith explained, Toronto Metropolitan University’s director of the institute for hospitality and tourism research.
“If people go on and do negative reviews, it knocks down [the resort’s score] which then knocks you on the second page, which costs you tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars, depending on the resort size.”
Smith suggested when choosing the best travel spots, people should check reviews that have a balanced and more realistic evaluation.
Despite their three-week vacation being cut to one week, Schigol said she plans on travelling again in the future, but will be paying the additional insurance fees as a precaution.
“From this experience I would say document everything. If you’re in some kind of situation where you don’t feel like, ‘hey this isn’t right or this isn’t safe,’ take videos, take pictures. Do what you have to do to protect yourself,” Schigol shared.
“Also, the other thing is to make sure you have travel insurance, both trip interruption insurance, health insurance, because the visit from the doctor was $210 alone. When you have a family of four or five people that adds up quickly.”
Based on her experience, she said she hopes people will still find the joy in travelling.
“The main thing is stand up for what you believe in and make sure that you’re well covered in case situations like this do happen that you know you have something to fall back on,” Schigol said.
