I’m in holiday hell is it even worth complaining to TUI?

[Thisisnotaholiday]

We are currently on holiday at a H10 hotel in Spain booked via TUI. It has been the holiday from hell and we are counting down the days until we can go home. We paid 5.5k for a weeks all inclusive at a 4 star hotel for me, DH, and DC who are 14 and 16. We saved up
for this holiday, read all the trip advisor reviews (rated 4.5 out of 5) and were looking forward to it after an incredibly stressful few months but it’s been the worst holiday ever.

We booked it as a family of 4 under one booking but when we arrived were told we’d be in 2 separate rooms, both on opposite sides of the hotel. We explained at reception we needed adjoining rooms or rooms at least near each other. We were told no. We did consider one adult sharing with 1 of the DC but both rooms only had double beds and what teenager wants to sleep with their parent. And why should they? Eventually reception said if we paid 200 euros we could have 2 rooms on the same corridor which we felt forced to do. I was not comfortable leaving my 14 and 16 year old in a foreign hotel room miles away from me.

DH and I were given a room overlooking the service entrance which means we are woken at 5am every morning by delivery trucks. At 7 am the sewage truck arrives and they spend hours pumping shit into the truck. The noise is horrendous and obviously from 5am we get no sleep. Can’t sit on balcony as view is of delivery trucks all day. Complained at reception and told TUIs contract with the hotel is for the worst located rooms and people booking through TUI are put in the non refurbished rooms. A reminder this is meant to be a 4 star beach hotel and we paid thousands to stay there.

The hotel is about 50% German and 50% Italian. We are the only Brits here it seems who booked via TUI. As a result there is no TUI rep here and we were told the rep is at another hotel about 30 minutes away. We walked there to find the German rep who was horrified and said she’d talk to the hotel. The outcome was that they could move our DC next to us but we said no as their room is on the opposite side of the hotel away from the service entrance we face and I didn’t want them being woke up from 5am too.

I could go on with the other horrendous things that have happened but would be here all day. Is it even worth complaining to TUI, will they even care? It seems like TUI have a shit contract with this hotel where the very few guests they send there way have the worst rooms but still paying expensive prices.

I booked a 5* all inclusive with tui to Mexico, I got food poisoning, which cost me £700 in medical bills and their rep wrote the wrong collection time down so we missed the coach pick up to the airport and missed our flight . I had photographs of the reps card with the wrong time written on it .

Tui acknowledged the complaint and then I never heard from them again , despite chasing, calling and emailing .

That was the last time I ever booked with them and I will never do so again . They are shite.

You need to kick up a big fuss. Twitter is a good one, and demand to be moved. It’s a hell of a lot of money to pay. Sure someone needs to be in those rooms but it’s those who shout loudest who get moved. Make a fuss of yourselves

This.

You are having a miserable holiday you might as well spend the time complaining everywhere you can.

Mumsnet is a pretty good place to start!

Ask to be moved hotels. We did when we were promised a disabled friendly hotel and the beach was down about 40 steps

Don’t know if this has been suggested, but also email the Tui CEO, [email protected]. I’ve found from experience that if you do email the CEOs, quite often you get a response pretty quickly. Our electric cut out a few weeks ago when the electricity company was doing some building by us. We were two days without electric, and ended up emailing the CEO on a Sunday afternoon. We got a response back an hour later, and someone at the house to sort the same evening. Worth a try.

Have you used the Tui app? You should be able to contact your Tui rep and they respond quite quickly

I don’t understand the situation with the rooms because first you said you felt forced to pay £200 to be on the same corridor but then you said you’re on opposite sides of the hotel? With a 14 & 16 year old I don’t think it would be presumed that you needed to be next door and holiday companies don’t Usually guarantee that. However, the noise etc I would definitely complain about and make sure you film it

Ask the rep for the number of Tui's resort office, and try to speak to the resort manager. It's peak season so I don't know if there will be room to move you, but it's worth a go.

Look at abta, if you get no joy from TUI then take it to them - am assuming TUI are abta regulated. A relative used to do mediation for abta complaints. Photos and videos but check everything against the contract. Relative watched a lot of holiday videos - horrors rather than fun, sea, sand - and while they were wise to every holiday being ‘a holiday of a lifetime’ it was the documentation that was important.

To be fair to Tui they will only know the hotel is causing problems if you do complain.
I’m guessing the hotel empty the cesspit early to avoid the worse heat and smell ready for the day. However clearly the room should be priced accordingly and not offered as a high quality stay.

You need to be objective. There are loads of ranty, disappointed travellers on social media. There will also be lots trying to get a free holiday. Tui will only be worried about people who have a big presence or could sue them. It would actually be cheaper and easier for them to give you an alternate holiday at a later date and they may be able to offer you something great to keep your custom. Maybe ask for that? Otherwise you’ll probably be offered a partial refund at best.

If you're not on Twitter join now and post pictures and complaints and tag them in plus DM them.

Tripadvisor now too.

Is this the H10 Rubicon? I very nearly booked this hotel as the reviews were great

oh wow was just going to post and this was where we had a complaint post holiday with TUI this year!
My advise to OP is take loads of photos, log everything and then unfortunately it’s a very standardised procedure. We were offered £300 refund on a £7000 holiday so don’t hold out much hope. (Refuse and you’ll get a bit more)
so sorry you’ve had a rubbish time! ☹️

and video the noise and disturbance.

It sounds really disappointing op but let's unpack this a bit.

It's the school summer holidays and prices are high and resorts full.

The payment was £5,500 so £1,250 per person. Let's take of £350 for flights, £50 for transfers, £420 for food so that's £820 leaving £430 pp for accommodation.

4* relates to bells and whistles:wi fi, TV, pool, etc., rather than the general.comfort and service.

Follow the advice and write to tui ceo with pictures of the service area, time stamped videos indicating 5am and also recordings of the sewage pump.

Meanwhile, is there stuff you can do to make the best of it?

I had to study the European laws of fair training between big companies and the consumer and took tui to small claims court . They are the worst for dealing with complaints .

Absolutely complain - and insist on money back. Did you pay by credit or debit card? I would also consider applying for a chargeback on the basis that this was not what you paid for and what they were contracted to deliver. I had a similar terrible experience booking with opodo and successfully raised a chargeback on my debit card which was upheld.

Just commenting to add to complain to tui now, in email or anything in writing, Also bumping this for as many people to see. Absolutely get your kids to post the pumping shit videos on TikTok and tag tui in them

Video at 5am and stick it on social media. I’d also video the other trucks and describe the smell and put that on there too!

Definitely go with the direct to the CEOs mailbox idea. Tag in the entire board of directors for good measure.
It works!

GO TO THE PAPERS, GIVE THE VIDEOS!

Simon Calder is a v good person to contact. Travel journalist and advisor. He does Instagram lives at 5.30pm at the weekend so should do one tomorrow where you can send him questions and comments.

Put it on twitter etc and then share here so people can share too?

TripAdvisor, Google review so that when people Google TUI or the hotel it will come up.

5.5k is so much money. You shouldn't have to put up with this. So sorry. Saving money is so difficult

You should push for money back or holiday vouchers.

Good luck.

I've worked in the travel industry my entire career both in resorts and within retail stores selling holiday. Did you book in a store or online? If you have booked in a store, contact them directly if you feel you have been mis sold and if there is an error on their behalf, like they assured you one room or two rooms together. If so, then they would need to do something about it for you such as covering the cost out of their shop budget to moving to another hotel which does give you what you asked for.

If you booked online then it's a little trickier as you would have selected the room types yourself so it would have been up to you to read the room descriptions - bit harder to prove something has been mis sold. If you have any booking confirmations showing different room configurations then proving you haven't got what you have booked should be easy enough.

The sewage issue is a separate one entirely and certainly worth putting in a complaint about that. I am very surprised that the hotel has mainly positive reviews and no one else has mentioned this, wonder if this isn't usually the case? If you don't get anywhere logging it in resort then take the videos into your local branch on your return and they should hopefully be able to escalate it for you and get a bit of money back. The H10s are not TUI exclusive as far as I know, so not owned by them. So if the trip advisor reviews are all positive then they may not be aware there are any issues. Hope you manage to make the most of your holiday and enjoy the sunshine at least!

The standard of accomodation might be worth complaining about but I'm unsure about the views, service noise etc....I mean the rooms they had originally allocated you might not have had this problem but you didn't take them. I wouldn't necessarily expect the rooms to be next to one another and I definitely wouldn't have expected them to be adjorning. Had you requested that? I'm surprised too that you hadn't requested a twin room too. No way would I want to be sharing a bed with anyone at their age, other than a BF/GF. It's not the hotel's or Tui's job to look at each room allocation in detail and 2nd guess what you might want.

Another one who was about to book a tui holiday and won't now - I hope they take notice of this.