When you splash out on a holiday, you want it to all go perfectly.
You don’t save up your money all year just for some purposely disappointing travels – you want what you paid for. Or, at least what you thought you’d paid for.
And for this couple, their £2,700 all-inclusive holiday was nothing like they’d hoped.
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Clive and Rose Murray ended up abandoning their three-week five-star beach resort break after the hotel 'adopted a Benidorm model'.
The Macclesfield couple travelled to Hotel Riu Touareg on the island of Boa Vista in Cape Verde in April through Tui for a ‘relaxing holiday’ while they were in the process of moving house.
“We just wanted to relax… if only,” said the 65-year-old bloke. “Almost every day, we would walk 50 minutes up the beach so we could get away.”
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With their double room apparently stinking of sewage and the annoyance of ‘the noise’ of techno music from the hotel’s pool bar, the couple would trek in the heat to get away each day.
“So, we’d make our sandwiches in the morning at breakfast – remember this is an all-inclusive – and go sit on the beach as far away from the hotel as possible, so we didn’t have to listen to this constant noise,” Clive explained.
“And you could still hear it.”
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He's more than aware some people will call him ‘an old grouch’, but he says the hotel had a lot of ‘older people there and yet the hotel had adopted a Benidorm or Kavos model with really loud techno music’.
Although, the retirees did say the hotel’s food was excellent and the staff were always very polite and friendly. But they still ended up leaving early for an Airbnb.
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The all-inclusive five star Hotel Riu Touareg advertises a range of facilities, including three salt water swimming pools, a jacuzzi and Turkish bath, claims to offer an ‘unforgettable experience’ and promises to make guests’ stay ‘as relaxing as possible’.
That wasn’t the case for the Murrays though as when they opened their room door they immediately thought ‘there’s a bit of a smell of sewage’.
“So we opened the door and walked out on the balcony and literally, the white plastic furniture, I’ve seen better in skips,” he slammed.
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After their six-hour ‘crammed’ flight, they were looking forward to a warm shower, but Clive said the shower head was broken and he ended up using an elastic band to hold it in place.
Then, when he flushed the toilet, the button fell off the wall and he realised where the foul smell was coming from. He explained: “We were on the top floor and of course smells rise,” describing how every bathroom ‘is on top of the other’.
They complained to Tui reps about the smell, and were told grievances would be reported, but said nothing was done to fix it and when Clive brought it up with reception a few days later, it was the first they had heard of it.
But it was the ‘loud techno music’ that pushed them over the edge. “Some people like that sort of holiday and that’s great for them, I’m not judging,” the bloke said.
“But I went there for a quiet, peaceful, five-star holiday, I didn’t go to replicate Benidorm or Ibiza.” Despite having another five nights paid for, they booked an Airbnb in Sal Rei and left the hotel early.
Clive said the reps ‘just weren’t interested’ in their complaints and he won’t be booking another holiday with Tui anytime soon after spending roughly £3,000 in total for their trip.
TUI UK and RIU Hotels & Resorts have been contacted for comment.
Jess Battison