Luxury Tui Holiday Turns Into Nightmare

One families dream 4* holiday ruined after family are booked at unfit resort.

A family who forked out £11,600 for a dream holiday to the Dominican Republic, claim their holiday was ruined after they found cockroaches in the room, a filthy pool and drunk people vomiting in the hotel reception.

To make matters even worse, the family claim they came down with a sickness bug during their stay. Mr Hill told the Mail Online that their dream Christmas getaway was totally ruined. He said: “I’m a pretty well grounded, level headed person but even I was close to tears during this holiday. It totally ruined our Christmas, we felt like we were burgled of our Christmas. At one point we all wanted to do was just come home.”

The family had booked to stay at the Riu Bambou hotel and were assured, by Tui, that even though the hotel was a 4 star, it was an excellent resort suitable for a family holiday. However, the problems began when the family boarded the flight and found that none of the TV screens worked on their upgraded flights, leaving the 3 children with no entertainment for 9 hours.

It continued to get worse when they reached the hotel and found that the safety deposit box in their room was broken, the bedsheets were filthy and the bathroom door was hanging off its hinges. They were also repeatedly woken by 4 am wake up calls which they did not request.

In addition to this, the family also claimed that the hotel was totally unfit for families, despite what they were told by Tui when booking. They said that the pool was full of big groups of young people playing loud music and in the hotel reception, they found numerous people drunk and vomiting. They also explained how the pool was dirty and found cigarette butts and hair in the water.

Things didn’t seem to improve in the hotel restaurant, as the family say that the food was just reheated from the day before and this is probably how they contracted a food bug. Mr Hill described how he and his family felt like they were on a 18-30 holiday, he said: “When people were throwing up drunk in reception, you’d expect the staff to do something fairly quickly as there were children present. But they were just leaving them there and were just walking past ignoring it.”

After repeatedly complaining, the family were given access to a nearby hotels restaurant and pool, but the family feel this is not adequate compensation for a holiday that was totally ruined. He told the Mail Online: “We book consistently year on year with Tui and I’m a loyal customer, but when there is a problem, Tui don’t want to know. Tui said we’ve had compensation – they are referring to the second week where my family were in tears and they gave us wrist bands for the hotel next door. But I believe we should have the full cost of our holiday back and compensation for what happened. My family were traumatised.”

A spokesperson for Tui said: “we’re sorry to hear of Mr Hills experience. While we did try to resolve some of the issues raised in resort, we will be looking at the case once again and will contact the customer directly to discuss further.”