Help. Epic hotel choice failure

[BoffinMum]

So here we are in a family hotel in Italy on holiday, near Lake Garda. We are supposed to be here for two weeks and it's costing 5800 euros full board for four of us including DS2 (16) and DS3 (8). We have had a terrible year and this was supposed to be a special holiday to recover.

We all hate it. I hate it so much I could cry.

The hotel itself is really small and the things we thought we would use - spa and so on - are only open 4-7.30 daily (it said nothing about this on the website). We've just had a meal and it's reminiscent of school dinners - I could have cooked it better myself. You can only have dinner from 7-8pm. Nothing like the lovingly garnished offerings on the website, basically stodge. Even the teenager gave up ploughing through it. Our wine eventually came after we had fiinished the meal. There are no soft drinks for kids apart from Fanta, Sprite or Coke. The kids bedroom smells of smoke (as does ours) and has restricted ceiling height so DS2 is going to be banging his head the whole time. The decor reminds me of my grandmother's house about 30 years ago. There is nowhere to get away from the din because it's so small and i currently have a kids' disco under my window (it's 930 pm here) and DS3 is tired from travelling all day but it's too noisy to go to sleep.

I have been down the the manager to explain the problems but he just shrugged and said 'other people like it'. He said we have to stay at least a week otherwise they will have an empty room.

So we are trapped in this glorified youth hostel listening to a kids disco booming away under the window eating stodge and will have to spend 2900 euros for the privilege. And there may be nowhere else to go,

Help, what do I do?

wrinkles Patsy posted her room number!

I posted on here where I was sitting and about 60 seconds later Patsy appeared and asked me if I was Boffin. That's how we met. I had already met Mr Patsy when going up to the room the night before but we were both too British to admit we hated the place to each other.

Even better, Patsy works in the same office as DH's cousin. This was another quite remarkable coincidence.

By the power of MN!

PS Patsy is a truly vicious Pedalo Pirate so be very scared if you come across her in real life.

Stay strong girls.

Are you leaving on Friday Boffinio?

'Boff' and 'Patsy'.

It's like Jonny English meets Ab Fab

Wrinkles, that's exactly what it's like here, we have been sitting at the same table for 10 days (eating the same food).

There was drama last night at 11.30pm when someone leaned out of the balcony and told the party people to STFU. It's so v noisy and its not just the English complaining!

Boffin, of course we're playing - will see you at the fabulous breakfast buffet

In my mind, this is you two, heading AWAY from the buffet.

Have emailed Kinderhotels with a formal complaint.

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Dear Kinderhotels,

We are currently guests at the Hotel Adriana in Ledro, Italy. We found this hotel through the Kinderhotel website and we have had many Kinderhotel holidays before so we are very familiar with the brand.

Words cannot begin to express our disappointment at what we have been offered here in the name of a Kinderhotel holiday. This is a rather average Italian Pension charging us a great deal of money for not very much.

The hotel is very, very small for a Kinderhotel. The limited facilities are rammed together on an inadequate site with most of the modest play area up a slope and over a public road, so inaccessible to the children, unless parents are permanently sat on a bench in full sun in attendance. The pool is relatively small and there are no pool towels or bathrobes available, difficult for those travelling by plane, therefore.

There is minimal entertainment or relaxation space indoors other than a couple of sitting areas by reception with little atmosphere or service, largely used as a TV room and a thoroughfare. The limited outdoor bar area is incredibly noisy until the small hours and cigarette smoke drifting up from there as well as balconies means bedroom windows need to stay firmly shut, but even then it's hard to sleep as the noise gets through. It also makes the rooms incredibly hot and there are no room fans. It is impossible to lie in during the morning to catch up on sleep because a local church rings its bells at 7am and then all the children wake. So both ends of the day are a problem. We are getting quite short of sleep.

What limited children's facilities there are here are mainly suited to the under fives and appear to close quite frequently at the whim of the carers.

The hotel claims to be by Lake Ledro but this is a 10 minute drive away. It claims to be peaceful but the limited site and proximity to the road means it's incredibly noisy, more like a city hotel in a busy area.

One of the worst aspects of the holiday is the dining room and food. Poorly prepared and presented meals with an emphasis mainly on refined sugar and carbohydrates has meant we have had to cancel our full board and move into a bed and breakfast only basis, eating in local restaurants instead. The stodge was even too much for our teenage son. At the current time this is adding 100-150 euros a day to the cost of the holiday and we have no idea if we will be able to recoup any of our losses through a refund for the food we haven't been able to eat. The dining room itself resembles a youth hostel and combined with the institutional food, and the limited opening hours (everyone has to have dinner between 7-8pm) this is really a functional rather than relaxing experience.

We have raised our grievances directly with the hotelier who simply shrugged and refused to take any of our concerns seriously as, he claimed, everyone else was happy. This simply isn't true at all and indeed the family in the room next door to us have made identical complaints to him prior to our arrival.

We are leaving the hotel a week early as the one concession the hotelier would make was to 'allow' us to leave on Friday, and then he changed his mind to Saturday, as he felt he would struggle to relet the room in peak season near Lake Garda. We have been able to get a last minute booking at another hotel in the area but at significantly greater cost due to the limited availability at this time of year. The family next door were not so fortunate and have had to stick both weeks out.

We want to feed this back to you as we feel this hotel is not being honest with itself or its residents about its interpretation of the Kinderhotel brand, and we feel this is highly misleading. We consider that the people who are happy with it are not really familiar with what you stand for and are simply responding to the ready availability of a mini club and children's menus (most of which is routine in many hotels here anyway).

All in all, a very disappointing holiday for us this year and we can only hope the next hotel (not a Kinderhotel) allows for some recuperation.

---

Let's see what happens when they read that and ring the hotelier. There will hopefully be some fans then with things hitting them.

We do look strangely like that picture btw. Italy doesn't know what's hit it.

I hope things are looking up a bit and they take notice of your complaints.

Excellent letter. I could have sworn the website said 3 pools?

Never mind fans, they really should have air conditioning.

I think the two of you have made life long friend.

We have just returned from Torbole, where the food was also disappointing and school dinnerish. Dh wanted to eat out on the last night, but I managed to dissuade him, as for 4 it would have cost about 70 euro..
As it was, the final meal caused much hilarity, may I raise you ( pardon the pun) the beef penis?

Oh, and yes, those are tinned carrots on the side (vom)

Excellent letter boffin , and I hope the next hotel you move to is a vast improvement .

Patsy has established that the main overnight noise comes from the staff house adjacent to the main hotel. Who also play table tennis under our balcony until the small hours.

Oh god, I feel for you both. You work hard all year to spend all that money on this. How gutted you must be. It's great you both met.

I went to Bluestone once (upmarket Butlins in Wales) and said if I didn't get half my money back they'd get a terrible review - the room was dirty, the drains smelt, no one controlling packs of kids running riot late at night, accommodation bland and basic and unkempt, food over-priced and rubbish, service terrible. I got what I wanted.

Tell them straight - in fact go to the manager now - and show him the MN thread and say he'll be getting no customers from the UK if he doesn't refund you straight away for one of the weeks. Point out the garden thread of What and explain these articles regularly get picked up by newspapers such as the DM. I'd kick such a fuss up. Their own staff keeping customers awake by playing pingpong under their window?!

That's a stonking complaint Boff, I'd be proud of that and I sometimes idly fantasise about founding (and winning) the Complaints Olympics

The only thing I'd have added is a mention of the TripAdvisor reviews they can expect from both you and Patsy.

Dingit - Club Hotel La Vela by any chance? Definitely not 4*

I thought one pic I saw showed 3 pools, a larger swimming pool and 2 smaller, for paddling?

Lizs, no, Hotel Continental Nago, up the hill from the lake. Very Germanic, but not sure that's an excuse, we had fabulous food in Austria last year, and they are not normally known for their cuisine.

Some of the entertainment was also a hoot. Think a Russ Abbot type with a keyboard and karaoke machine. When he wasn't playing he showed random just dance videos, much to my dcs amusement
No clowns though, thankfully, as dd is terrified of them.

The food at the good hotel we now go to in Austria is outstanding. This year we were treated to the James Bond theme on the zither!

I think Kinderhotels kicking him up the rear end may hopefully refresh parts of his customer service ethos that other complaints haven't achieved. I am not sure we can get a full refund though. He made a massive fuss of letting us out after 5 days. He comes across as a rather greedy sort of hotelier.

Digit - DS3 reckons you just ate a large poo.

Dingit we seriously discussed getting you down here to the Hotel Aurora for cocktails on the beanbags with us right now until we realised you had left already.

Boffin, would have loved to join you. Looks like you have scorching weather there this week.

Ds refused point blank to eat the beef/turd/penis. He was grateful to have his mothers home cooked meals, which makes a pleasant change