Holiday from hell for one family

A family who saved for five years to pay for a holiday to Menorca, are challenging Tui refund them in full after a series of disasters.

The family who forked out £1,600 on a family trip to Menorca, say they were served raw chicken and found poo in the swimming pool. To make matters worse, they say the entire holiday was ruined due to poor standards, they were given mouldy food, sun beds Spattered in bird poo and dirty water slides. They booked their dream holiday through Tui, who advertised the resort as 4 stars.

Francesca Henley claims her family were…

• Served mouldy bread
• Rarely were given enough to eat, with drinks frequently running out and water coming out of the Coke machine
• Served ‘raw’ chicken
• Eldest child electrocuted by a hot drinks machine
• Given sunbeds ‘mouldy’ and ‘covered in bird poo’
• Forced to witness human poo in the pool and in the showers

The mum-of-two’s other complaints include the hotel allegedly routinely running out of food and drinks and her eldest being “electrocuted” by a hot drinks machine at Marina Parc Hotel in Arenal d’en Castell. Francesca, 33, claimed the hotel’s water park also wasn’t fully open, some slides were dirty and contained “leftover water from last year”.

In an attempt to make the holiday fun for the children, the family visited the water park, but were left shocked when they arrived to discover mould and bird poo on the sun loungers. The slides were filthy, and the family say the water looked like it was from the previous year. Francesca said: “The sunbeds were awful, covered in either mould or bird poo. The first day it was open the bottom of the slides were filthy, they had twigs on them and all the leftover water from last year, it was disgusting. One day there was kids’ poo in the pool, so they had to close the pool for a few hours – and there was poo on the floor of the water park shower. A few of the slides were shut and just had a chain across them with a massive 50ft drop behind it. My youngest could have fallen straight to his death there.”

Francesca, who spoke to the Sun newspaper, is demanding a full refund and compensation. A spokesperson from Tui said: “We are very sorry to hear of Ms Henley’s experience at the Marina Parc Hotel in Menorca and thank her for bringing this to our attention. We’d like to reassure customers that we frequently audit all the hotels we feature in respect of health and safety, including hygiene. We will be in contact with the customer to apologise and look into this further.”

Despite this, Tui have yet to refund the family the money they spent on the disastrous trip.