Sophia at The Prahran Arcade — Local services in Melbourne

My fiance and I enquired at this venue, very excited to book a tour. When we finally booked a time and showed up at the venue, we were stuck waiting for almost 20 minutes just to be let inside the venue. We arrived at 2:30, rang the doorbell and waited. We tried again, ringing it multiple times just in case with no response. About 5 minutes in, we decided to try and call the number on the emails of the person we've been in contact with - no response. At this point it's 10 minutes past our appointment time so I send an email letting them know we are still outside and waiting - no response. I called the venue number - no response. At this point it's now been 15 minutes we've been waiting outside and there's been no communication. I tried the venue again and finally got someone on the phone. They apologised and informed me the person has been there the whole time and will be down as soon as possible. At this point it's 20 minutes over the appointment time and I'm standing there absolutely dumbfounded at how the person was there the whole time and didn't think to call us, check their email, or even just look outside to see if their appointment was there. We finally got greeted at the door and they apologised that the doorbell was broken. Again, why would you not follow up or check outside if you know the bell is broken? The tour went alright but my partner and I were pretty annoyed, we tried to stay positive because we really loved space. At the end we were told we would get an email with everything I asked about. I even double checked and asked before leaving to confirm we would be getting an email with the package information as well as information on the menu. A week later and we still have not received anything.

In my opinion the communication is very poor and honestly made us concerned about what communication would look like...

Our experience during the tour and consultation at Sophia with Atlantic Group was quite disappointing. From the moment we arrived, there was no warm greeting or rapport-building—it felt very business-like and impersonal. While we understand the importance of getting down to business, it would have been appreciated if there was some empathy, excitement or at minimum a mild amount of joy.

We asked for a package quote to be provided after the consultation, but a month later, we have yet to receive any follow-up or further information. We had to ask all the questions ourselves, and luckily, since we had visited several venues by this point, we knew what to ask. However, this consultation felt very cold and unwelcoming. Before we had even finished discussing everything (a conversation lead by ourselves), the salesman was on his way up stairs to his office, leaving us to awkwardly exit on our own. It was very apparent that our business was not wanted, and that the salesperson was eager to clock off work for the day. The whole experience felt rushed and uncomfortable, which led us to decide that this venue wouldn’t be the right fit for our special day.

Thank you, and I apologize for this review, but I do feel that there is room for improvement. We took time off work and rushed to consider your venue for our wedding, yet it felt like your staff didn’t extend the same effort or...

I cannot praise and recommend Sophia at The Prahran Arcade and Atlantic Group staff highly enough. We recently had our wedding reception at Sophia and it was undoubtedly the best night of our lives. The food was absolutely impeccable (so often wedding food is so basic, this was anything BUT basic...still dreaming about the yellow fin tuna entree), and the service was brilliant. No one ever had an empty glass, the gimlets were flowing, and everyone was so kind, helpful, warm and welcoming. I specifically want to leave praise for our Events Manager Emma Jolly who made it impossible for me to feel stressed. She put me at complete ease responding to my 1 million emails, was so attentive and organised, and made our day so much more incredibly special. She even left a beautiful bottle of champagne for us to take at the end of the night. I could not recommend her more, she was a dream. I wish we could do it all...