I recently stayed at Margaritaville Resort Lake Tahoe, and what happened during and after our stay was the exact opposite of everything this brand claims to represent.
During our stay, my wife suffered a severely broken leg while skiing, hospitalizing my wife and forcing us to check out three days early. As you can imagine, this was stressful and unexpected. While I understand that situations like this happen, what stood out immediately was the complete lack of any goodwill, empathy or basic accommodation by Margaritaville during that moment.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning.
Just an hour after leaving for the hospital, I realized that in the confusion, I had also left behind my Apple laptop and headphones. I immediately contacted the hotel and was told they had a formal system in place to handle lost items. Under General Manager Thomas Mauman’s leadership, that “system” required me to wait 72 hours just to receive a link to submit a claim, after which I waited nearly a week for the items to be found and put into Margaritaville’s system.
Then came the critical failure: the hotel entered the wrong shipping address. Their mistake. Their system. Their responsibility. And that error resulted in Federal Express reporting the items as lost.
What followed defines this property—and its unfortunate inability to adapt to a straightforward situation such as mine.
Over the next several weeks, I followed up relentlessly—well over a dozen times—working with multiple staff members and ultimately escalating the issue to General Manager Thomas Mauman. At every step, there was acknowledgment of the mistake, but no ownership of the outcome.
Instead, I was told the issue was mine to resolve with Federal Express—even though I was not the party who arranged the shipment. That responsibility obviously belonged to the hotel. Margaritaville’s solution required additional paperwork and effort on my part, effectively shifting the burden away from Margaritaville despite their admitted error. I was also charged a $40 fee for this process, which was never reimbursed.
Let that sink in: a hotel makes the mistake, loses a guest’s expensive property, acknowledges it, delays the proper handling - and then seeks to shift the burden back to the guest at the 11th hour. Welcome to the inherent insanity of Margaritaville’s customer service procedure.
This is where the disconnect becomes impossible to ignore.
Margaritaville promotes a carefree “island state of mind”—“no shirt, no shoes, no problem”—a place to relax and leave stress behind. In reality, our experience was defined by stress, constant delays, and a total lack of accountability by everyone at the core management level.
This should have been simple: fix the mistake, take ownership, and offer a basic gesture of goodwill—especially given the circumstances of our early departure due to my wife’s injury. Instead, it became a six-week ordeal filled with runaround, deflection, and no meaningful resolution. Most recently, I was finally told directly that there was nothing further the hotel could do, and that I must contact Federal Express. Wow!
I travel frequently and have stayed at hotels all over the world. The difference between good hotels and great ones is simple: when something goes wrong, great hotels, those with good management, step up and take care of their guests.
That did not happen here.
If Margaritaville is supposed to be “no worries,” their Lake Tahoe location delivers the opposite.
Be very cautious with your belongings—and understand that if something goes wrong, you may be left to handle it on your own, because management will likely not help you.
In closing, this wasn’t just a service failure—it was a failure of management, and it shows. So all I can say is: choose your next stay in Tahoe wisely.
