Pros
A bit of information before stating the pros of the company: This is a sales role selling timeshare. It's been re-named a PRC (Private Residence Club), but it basically means the same thing. This review is written based on an experience of working at the Vidanta resort in Riviera Maya. A lot of managers are American and Mexico is close to America so the culture if overall very Wolf of Wall Street. In the morning, workers are expected to come in early, have a motivational/quick training talk with their team, cheer and clap there and then head over to the centre of the room where all the teams come together. Here, more motivational talk takes place and sales made by people the previous days are read out. Expect a lot of, “Who wants to make some money?!”, (que cheering from audience), “I said, WHO WANTS TO MAKE SOME MONEY?!”, (que even louder cheering etc) Everyone then has to cheer and clap again and then some loud upbeat music will be played like ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or the actual Wolf of Wall Street song, as everyone ‘marches’ off to their tours that they probably won’t even get. Expect a lot of cringe. Just a bit of information for people aren't familiar with this kind of job role: If people applying for this job have morals and don't really want to rip people off, don't apply. Salespeople are told to advertise 4 weeks as part of the timeshare package, but are only given 1 week. Once they continue to upgrade huge amounts of money, then they will receive their 4 weeks. Some people are taking out second mortgages and using all their savings to buy these packages and are probably devastated once they discover this. ALSO, MAKE SURE THERE ARE SAVINGS TO FALL BACK ON! Pros: MOVE TO MEXICO – GET TO EXPERIENCE CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE Vidanta resorts are all based in Mexico, so this is good for foreigners who'd like to experience Mexico. A lot of the people working at the hotel are Mexican SPIFFS When people do sell, there will sometimes be cash spiffs up for grabs. The next day after selling, they’ll be called up to the front and given cash while everyone cheers and claps. Sometimes these prizes can be very good. CHRISTMAS PARTIES The company pays for everything when there’s a Christmas Party and there’s usually unlimited drinks. They used to go all out for parties but have calmed down over the last few years. TRANSPORT TO AND FROM WORK Not sure if this is still available, but free transport was provided to get to Vidanta from Mega in Playa Del Carmen at 6:30AM - managers and other workers will inform new workers on that kind of thing if asked. There’s also a shuttle that used to come by Vidanta hourly to take people back to Playa Del Carmen for free although they cut this down to just once at 1:30PM or 2:30PM depending on the day, so it may have been stopped altogether now. However, this is no good if the manager has made the worker stay past this time… NICE RESORT Vidanta is a very nice resort with lots of nice views. Workers aren’t really meant to wander off and look around but when they’re expected to be there for up to 12 hours but given nothing to do, of course it happens at times… They have a lovely beach and a couple of animal sanctuaries on the resort, including flamingos and alligators, which are fun to go and see. Not to mention the wildlife on the resort. There’s different coloured and sized iguanas that run around. Hadn’t ever seen an orange iguana before coming to Vidanta, so that was cool to see. They also have coatils, they look like a cross between cats and raccoons – they’re so cute! HOLIDAY Workers can leave the company for a while, to visit their hometown/country and return pretty much as much as they want. DIFFERENT RESTAURANTS Employees get to take their tours to one of three restaurants. They’re all quite nice and have good views.
Cons
BORING Waiting around for tours is boring, there’s nothing to do. Once there’s no more tours and workers are sent to just wait with nothing to do, it’s boring. Picture having to sit there for up to 12 hours sometimes, conversation can’t cover that much boredom unfortunately. NO SALARY Unless employees progress to a supervisor or managerial role, which takes a couple of years usually, there is no salary. People have to sell to earn or remain penniless. Unless of course they brought savings with them. BAD COMMISSION The commission for each sale is terrible when workers are making and have made so much money for the company. STUPID FINES AND FEES If employees aren’t selling, they don’t need to worry about this. However, if anyone sells anything, they need to pay the ‘roomboys’ $1000 pesos a month. This money doesn’t even go to the roomboys. OUTDATED TALK AND OLD FASHIONED VALUES ‘Roomboys’ are people in the room that will come over to an employees’ table while they’re with their tour and assist them with anything small they might need – getting a manager, getting drinks for everyone at the table, passing a calculator over. It seems somewhat demeaning and old fashioned to refer to people this way. Why they can’t be referred to as assistants, who knows… Workers are put with their tours based on generalisations: Black workers with black families or people that come in Young girls with single men VISA The company takes a long time to process the visa needed to work in Mexico for foreigners, this is so they can make employees reliant on the company. Most people had waited 9 months - 2 years for a visa to be processed which is something that shouldn't take long at all. The company basically employs foreigners and gets them to come on a tourism visa which is valid for 6 months, (people aren't allowed to work on these but the company still get people to work illegally). Once their tourism visa is expired, they then have to rely on Vidanta to process their visa as they'll get in to trouble if they leave the country. This also allows Vidanta to get people to stay longer than 6 months. NO TOURS Tours are allocated to salespeople by matching their personality or what they think goes with the salesperson's personality - unless they're new or don't sell much, then they're just given tours that aren't likely to buy as practice. People who sell more are usually at the top of the ranking for getting picked to take a tour first. Employees can go up to 3 weeks with no tour. When there are no tours, everyone is still expected to stay the whole day although some smarter people sneak off and start their day outside of the ‘workplace’. Employees are not fed unless they badger their managers for ages and then sometimes they might cave and buy a pizza for everyone to have 1 slice each. TRAINING Not sure why so many people go on about the training to be honest, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s repeated again and again then there’s also the way it’s presented which is pretty boring. When first starting at the company, the procedure is to shadow a different salesperson every day for a few days up to a week. After that, people are left to their own devices to sell. Even though employees aren’t paid, they are still expected to come to crash course training every month or so (along with stupid mandatory training in the day) and these sessions start at 6:00. Not ideal when people are already putting in long hours at a company that doesn’t pay them. People who aren’t given a tour will be made to go to mandatory training in the mean time to kill time. Sometimes the training is half enjoyable - depending on who’s running it and if it doesn’t last long – but the majority of the time, people would be stuck in a room having to watch YouTube videos of motivational speakers for hours on end… HIGH AND LOW SEASON Everyone talks about high and low season. High season being the best potential season to sell as there’s a lot more people on vacation and low season being the worst time for salespeople as not as many people are taking vacation. However, in 2017 and 2018, there was literally no change in months and the tours were all as bad as each other. LONG HOURS Of course, as already mentioned, there are long hours expected of the employees. This may not be a con to everyone but pretty much no one who worked there liked this.