A mum has been left paying £1,500 for a ‘holiday from hell’, after checking into a hotel room that she compared to ‘a prison cell’.
Linda Martin, 64, from Cardiff, had been in need of some respite after recently losing her husband of 10 years, and wanted to book a holiday to celebrate her daughter’s 26th birthday. The mother and daughter opted for a nine-night, all-inclusive getaway to Kos in Greece through Love Holidays on what was meant to be a relaxing break in the sun for around £1,500.
The holiday didn’t get off to the best start when they departed for the Greek island earlier this summer, as a delayed flight from Cardiff meant they arrived at their hotel later than planned. Exhausted from travelling and with the clock striking 2am, Linda and her daughter were eager to check into their rooms at the four-star Kipriotis Village Resort, but were suddenly apprehensive about where they had booked.
“My daughter said to me, ‘This doesn’t look very nice’, but I thought, let’s just get to our rooms,” Linda exclusively told the Express. “They told us at the hotel reception that our rooms weren’t in the main hotel but outside. We got given our keys and were told to find our rooms on our own in the dark. It was a big place, with massive grounds. We dragged our suitcases down the steps and dragged them through buckets of vomit. So I immediately thought, red flag, this is disgusting.”
The mother and daughter said they struggled to find their rooms and sought help from a security guard, but were taken aback when they finally entered their accommodation.
Linda explained: “I opened the door to enter what I can only describe as prison cell block H. We were hit by stifling heat, it was stinky, and there were mosquitoes flying everywhere. There were three single beds, which were rock hard. The room did not resemble in any fashion the photos in the brochure. It was dilapidated. The curtains were not wide enough, so they couldn’t be closed, and the room was dirty. We had separate rooms, and my daughter looked at the room, and she just burst into tears and said, ‘I’m not staying here, I want to go home, I just want to go back to the airport’.”
Her daughter also said that there were “three men partying loudly in the room next door and the balconies were adjoining.”
Linda was left equally upset as she told her daughter, ‘We’re not staying here, believe me, this is not happening, I paid for a nice hotel.’ The mum said she “immediately” contacted Love Holidays on its emergency helpline to say they couldn’t stay in the hotel, and they raised her concerns directly with the hotel. Love Holidays said the hotel offered to upgrade Linda to two Executive Suites, but she declined.
Linda said she went back to the hotel reception to complain and was “handed a bottle of mosquito spray”. By this point, it was around 3am, and she claimed that someone told her at reception, ‘Look, I will get you into our sister hotel tomorrow, I can’t do anything now. It will have to be tomorrow, come back here at 11.30am.’
After a disruptive night’s sleep, Linda and her daughter returned to the hotel reception and waited until they could be moved. However, when 11.30am came around, they learnt that the person they had spoken to the night before was gone. Linda said they asked to speak to a manager about moving to the sister property, but claimed they were told, ‘You wouldn’t have been told that, this is not what we do, we don’t promise to move anybody’.
Linda shared: “By this time, I was getting a bit irate, and my daughter was crying again. I said, ‘We’re 100% not staying here, you have to do something for us’. But she just ignored me and carried on serving everybody else.”
Feeling deflated, Linda and her daughter left the hotel with their bags. Love Holidays said the hotel’s 4-star rating is based on Greece’s official hotel rating system and is in line with local standards, but they have temporarily taken the hotel off sale whilst they investigate further.
Linda said: “I rang Love Holidays again, having told them the receptionist is not doing what they promised, or offering us anything.” They decided to go to the sister property themselves, hoping to sort out a room.
Yet they were met with more disheartening news: the hotel was fully booked. The manager offered to help them find an alternative room at the hotel they had originally booked, and said they could use the facilities at the sister hotel.
They were shown alternative rooms at Kipriotis Village Resort, which Linda said were “marginally better, but were in no way anything resembling what was on the brochure.” She added: “When we walked around the pool area, it was derelict, the sun loungers were hanging, and I had seen nothing like it.”
In the hope of salvaging their holiday, Linda and her daughter found themselves an alternative hotel in the area and booked it for the rest of their stay for around €2,000 (£1,715). Thankfully, the hotel was “absolutely stunning”, complete with an infinity pool.
While they enjoyed the rest of their getaway in Kos at their second hotel, Linda said she’s had “the stress of paying for two holidays”. She revealed she was offered £300 in compensation from Love Holidays but refused it in the hope of receiving a full refund. “The first part was a holiday from hell, to be honest, the second part was paradise,” Linda said.
A loveholidays spokesperson said: “We are very sorry that Ms Martin’s recent experience at her hotel in Greece fell short of our usual high standards, and we have taken the hotel off sale while we investigate the issues she has raised. We have contacted Ms Martin to offer our apologies and reimburse her £1,772, covering 50% of her total accommodation costs and her taxi expenses.”
The Kipriotis Village Resort has been contacted for a comment.
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This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
