Below is a quote from the letter sent to the editor. The reader turned to the travel agency where she purchased the trip in order to obtain compensation.
Nightmare vacation. “Cockroaches annoy Poles again”
We were on vacation in Tunisia, in the city of Sousse.
We read the review and at the moment of booking the flight it was very good. On a popular holiday website, the hotel has a rating of 9.4/10, and the reviews are very positive, for example praising the cleanliness (which was important to us) and the food in the hotel.
As it turned out during our stay the unfavorable comments started pouring in, The rating has already dropped to 7.2/10.
We reached the hotel at night around 3 am. We were shown to the room with my sister and her son-in-law. The room was supposed to be separate, but you could go from room to room through a sliding door.
Upon entering the room, two cockroaches ran under our feet, so we immediately asked to change rooms. The four of us were led into more adjoining rooms. As long as the room next to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are fine, This is how my husband and I saw a completely unclean room, in which there were dirty towels and rolled sheets on the bed left by previous guests. The service man nervously started adjusting the pillows, then replied that the room was ready. We did not agree to this and were moved to room number 3, where we stayed for several more days.
Dirt, spilled water, destruction – this is how tourists were supposed to “rest”.
In addition to changing the room on the night of arrival, we changed the room again after being woken up at 2 am one day by a strange sound. After turning on the light, it turned out that water was pouring from the ceiling near the air conditioner, which had already wet the floor. Water was also pouring from the bathroom ceiling. After contacting the service, the masters unsuccessfully tried to find the source of the problem, which led to the destruction of the suspended ceiling.
Destroyed suspended ceiling
After quickly packing, or rather throwing things into bags, we were shown to another room of a much higher standard, much to our delight. We decided that this was compensation for the previous inconvenience. However, in the morning, at the reception, we were informed that we had to change the room, because it was a more expensive apartment, and we had a standard paid room. We didn’t agree to this, after a long discussion we were able to stay in this room for the rest of our stay, but it wasn’t cockroach free.
Cockroaches and dirt in a multi-star hotel
We tried to solve more difficulties by ourselves. Usually the attitude of the hotel staff was good, they tried to respond to our requests, although it’s hard not to respond when water drips from the ceiling. However, at some moments you could feel that they were just mocking us, starting to talk to each other and winking at each other on purpose, as if they were saying:
We were tired and frustrated, going to rest, we were constantly carrying suitcases, and every night some mystery would wake us up this time: cockroaches, a leaking roof or maybe something worse.
and out of the room?
The dining hall was filthy. Only the “center” has been cleaned. The cutlery was sticky, the tablecloths were dirty, had flies flying around and had been sitting on the food for several hours. One morning while waiting for the omelette, I saw a piece of dead cockroach stuck in the sauce falling all over the floor.
In addition, my husband and I had severe diarrhea throughout our stay, despite taking probiotics.
But there were also cockroaches in the corridors. One evening I saw that there was a bug that wanted to get in from under the door into our room, and when I asked the employee to do something, the guy replied that it was not his job.
Dirt in the corridors and common areas of the hotel
There were no sunbeds at the pool and beach. All sunbeds were occupied at 6-6:30, even though no one was on them at that time. Every day, four of us were looking for free sunbeds, sometimes we succeeded (at noon or later), sometimes we unfortunately didn’t. And it also happened that in a 43-degree heat we were sitting on the beach on the sand without an umbrella, because there weren’t enough of them. There were a lot of cockroaches in the toilets by the pool.
The beach was dirty, littered with cigarette butts and hats, despite the fact that its area wasn’t really that big. I think it would take about 15 minutes of three people to clean it each day. It was full of glass when it entered the water. There was security on the beach, but that didn’t stop the locals from following my sister into the water. There was also a group of three young men without wrist bands in the hotel who were photographing young girls on the beach, including us and a little girl from Slovakia who also noticed. After the security intervention, the guys quickly disappeared, but by the end of the trip we were pretty concerned about the whole situation.
Unclean private hotel beach
Shards of glass on the hotel’s private beach
These are not conditions for rest.
Starting from the first night to the last day for which we paid extra despite paying for the stay. Check out was at 2:05 at night and we had to leave rooms by 12:00 the day before. We didn’t want to do that, so in order not to waste another day sitting in the lobby with no air conditioning, we paid 30€ so we could only leave the room the evening before leaving. So we paid twice on the last day of our stay.”
reader
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