Help for the cats of the Grand bahia Principe Bavaro!

In May the tourists Christina P. and Melanie P. asked for help for the cats of the Grand Bahia Principe Resort in Punta Cana. In June 161 people liked the review of Melanie P. on tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.de/ShowUserReviews-g147293-d478252-r490110551-Grand_Bahia_Principe_Bavaro-Punta_Cana_La_Altagracia_Province_Dominican_Republic.html#REVIEWS (view the English translation of the review in the text below) On May 23rd and July 3rd the manager of customer services confirmed the willingness of the hotel to get the resort cats spayed and neutered as soon as possible. Now, after changes in the management this confirmation shall be all of a sudden invalid and we were advised to contact the resort owner, the Grupo Piñero with seat in Palma de Mallorca that runs the hotel brands Bahia Principe, Soltours and Piñero with 26 hotels in total. We need your support! Please copy the text below, don’t forget to add your signature below ‚ Sincerely‘ and send an email to the following email address: contact@grupo-pinero.com To the Grupo Piñero, owners of the brands d Bahia Principe, Soltours and Piñero: Dear Sirs, like 33.399 others, I read the report on the vacation of Melanie P. and Christina P., two guests of your hotel Grand Bahia Bavaro in Punta Cana who stayed there between April 29th and May 15th 2017 on https://www.change.org/p/enforce-the-law-248-12-no-more-animal-abuse-and-poisonings-in-the-dominican-republic/u/20498453 and Melanie P.’s review on Tripadvisor https://www.tripadvisor.de/ShowUserReviews-g147293-d478252-r490110551-Grand_Bahia_Principe_Bavaro-Punta_Cana_La_Altagracia_Province_Dominican_Republic.html#REVIEWS (English translation of the review: I stayed in the Grand Bahia Principe Bavaro in Punta Cana from April 28th – May 15th 2017 together with a friend. I don’t want to critizice here our first room that was bug-infested and had mold , a leaky roof and flooded floors when it rained because we got a better room and could have enjoyed our vacation from then on. But as most tourists we come from a country with a pet-keeping culture and cherish our four-legged friends and the way the hotel staff was treating the resort cats was unbearable. We saw about 15 unspayed cats without food and water. The staff enjoyed chasing, kicking and – killing them! We were witnesses when a cat with 5 kittens locked away in a room was screaming in agony, the kittens running around in the front in distress. When we asked by-standing staff why the cat was locked in there and screaming so terribly one of them indicated that the animal’s throat was cut just in the moment when we heard the final, mortal scream and then – silence! We neer saw the cat again. The kittens that we fed disappeared one by one. One night we were severely harassed by hotel staff when feeding cats. They ran away quickly, tearing off their name badges, apparently afraid of the consequences following this attack but we still saw that a waiter from the Ambar Blue was among them. Our complaints led to a meeting of the hotel management and our travel agent of the German company Schauinsland where we had booked. The results of the meeting: The cats shall be spayed and a feeding station shall be installed. This was confirmed by our travel agent and by the director of customer services of the resort who added that the staff was going to be trained in the right treatment of animals. It was requested by Schauinsland to contact the local animal welfare organization RescátaMe to realize these plans. We demand that the plans made at the meeting are are put into practice immediately! The Dominican Republic is a developing country and that may hold true also in regards of the treatment of other beings – but we didn’t book Third world – we booked a 5 Star and we expect that the resort adapts to their guests’ standards! Besides, the Dominican Republic has an animal welfare law that punishes animal abuse and killing harshly with high fines or jail and we expect that the hotel management makes sure that the staff abides by the law of the country!) Nicole Moehler, your customer service manager has confirmed the resort’s great interest in putting these plans into practice quickly and, like many others who have also followed this I was looking forward to read about the improvements but now we have been told that due to changes in the management all said before is invalid and that you as the resort’s owners will have to agree to spay and neuter the cats on the resort grounds. I ask you kindly to make a decision in favor of the cats and let the hotel management cooperate with the local animal welfare organization RescátaMe as this will influence me and many others when choosing a hotel for future vacations, not only concerning the Grand Bahia Principe Bavaro but all hotels of the brands Bahia Principe, Soltours and Piñero. Sincerely,