AIBU to dread upcoming holiday? Or should I just relax?

[Opus17]

Afternoon all,

I'm an overthinker and would like to know if I should just tell my overthinking brain to do one, or if this is something worth worrying over.

Big family holiday coming up next month, postponed from 2020. DH, DS (2 years old), myself and 5 other family members. We've had this in the making since 2018 but ended up changing the location this year due to expense (now Europe).
I'm already worrying about family fallouts and my mum's snoring keeping DS awake, despite that I've been shopping for holiday clothes and allowing excitement to take over. However, I've just spent this afternoon reading reviews of our hotel and they are awful. Not just one or two, but all reviews posted in April and May, which are long detailed accounts of how awful their stay was (school trips and teenagers running around the hotel banging at all hours in the night, not getting enough time for breakfast and dinner because you queue for ages and then are kicked out, no beach balls or floats allowed in the pool etc).

I just want a nice, peaceful family holiday. I haven't seen my family properly in 3 years due to the pandemic and I'm just sitting here anxious about it now instead of excited.
Am I worrying over nothing? Or should we be bringing this up with TUI and trying to change hotel?

Well, I don't know about hotel, but I am same like you- worrying upfront. Hate it. It really makes everything 100x harder.

It really does. I've had some counselling to help with the anxiety and it's better than it was but sometimes I just can't shake this worrying.

I'd much rather be a person who just deals with things as they come 😥

If you are going with TUI, then there should be a rep at the hotel (or contactable), so make a decision first 24 hours and if its terrible, ask to be moved. In a months time it won't be school holidays so hopefully quieter than when other guests went.

Can you afford to go out for meals? Research local restaurants and see what options there are. How far is the beach if you dont like the pool?

Its going to be time with your family, so you will have a nice time. It just make take a bit of fixing if the hotel is as bad as you are worried about, but that's all something that can be sorted.

Is it a TUI hotel? If not it might be worth trying to change to one they own because they can actually control what happens at them better. We stayed at a TUI owned hotel a few weeks ago and it was lovely though it was in term time

2 negative reviews compared to how many positive ones?

A person who loves their holiday hotel may tell two or three people. Someone who doesn't possibly ten times that number. Some negative reviews have an agenda such as trying to claim compensation.

Just have a plan in case something is amiss.

I haven’t booked a holiday because of all the bad things that could happen, and I didn’t used to be like this !
I think we just all have to get in with it or we wouldn’t go anywhere.
And people only seem to go on Trip Advisor to complain, so don’t worry about it.

Thanks @MargosKaftan n that's a good point about the tui rep being on site. Hopefully if it's as awful as I'm reading, we'll get some sort of support and I forgot about the option to change hotel if need be. We're all inclusive so would rather eat at the hotel to save money but have just spoken to DH and even he's said if it's that bad, we'll walk into town if we have to and eat there. Focusing on the time with my family is what I'm going to try do now instead of thinking of what could go wrong with the hotel.

@motogirl I'm glad you had a positive experience recently! It's not a tui hotel unfortunately.

@19lottie82 I don't think I said there were two bad reviews? In the last 10 months, there's been 17 reviews, 12 are awful, 5 are good. And there's not one good one throughout April or May😬

@balalake I will remind myself of this, thanks. Hopefully it's just the small minority that were unhappy but the ones shouting the loudest.

@KangarooKenny thanks. I used to travel a lot too but just seem a bit nervous this time round