Fireworks in the evening? Water by the pool? Prompt service? A German tourist at a 4-star resort on the island of Rhodes had 1000+1 reasons to complaint about. The nights in the hotel were “sheer horror,” he wrote implying that especially children need peace and calmness during their vacations.
“We were sleeping at 10 o’ clock, suddenly there was a noise that woke us up. Fireworks were launched,” Franz wrote in his hotel review posted on platform for hotel reviews Holiday Check as well as on Facebook. Even the 20-month old son woke up -and probably never fell asleep again because “the toilet flush was so loud and would wake him up” every time mom or dad would seek the bathroom.
Together with his wife and his son, Franz spent two weeks in last June at a resort in Plimmiri that is run by a big German travel and tourism company chain.
He posted a long list of things every tourist could complain about.
- There were water puddles by the hotel swimming pool and there were never removed.
- The doors were squeaking and the noise would wake up the baby son.
- The child’s bed was not made by authentic real wood but of “cheap material.”
- The parent’s bed consisted of two single beds and not a big one bed.
- The drinks at the cocktail bar tasted salty.
Hotel personnel would regularly maintained turf and hedges making an “awful noise.”
And if this is not enough, the man complained also about “the room maid standing outside the door with two blankets right after he asked for them at the reception. The maid did not speak either English nor German,” Franz angrily noted.
The hotel responded to the alleged disappointed holidaymaker with lots of irony and sarcasmy and urged him to refrain from a booking in the hotel again.
“We also regret your stay in our club resort,” the hotel commented on Franz post. “Either you deliberately chose a club hotel with the intention to ask a refund as big as possible or you were given completely wrong advice by your travel agency.”
The hotel commented on each complain and wrote among others that:
- Fireworks belong to hotel program as he can see on leaflets and website sites.
- We assure you we never use salty water in our drinks
- The water puddles the pool are never manually removed because a) they quickly dry in the sun and b) every second a new puddle is there because the pool is very popular.
- You could not communicate with the room maid because you don’t speak Greek.
- We would have provided your son with a real wooden bed had we being informed about your expectations.
The hotel noted thought that that some of his complaints will be taken into consideration.
“We thank you at least for the decision never to visit our hotel again,” Magic Life concluded.
Ill-intended reviews by tourists on hotel evaluation websites are now a common phenomenon as more and more holidaymakers are temped to post negative reviews aiming at a refund or compensation of any kind,” notes Rhodes newspaper dimokratiki that posted also the original report by German newspaper Bild.
With more than 2,000 people reacting to his post -and obviously not the way he expected – Franz has meanwhile removed his post from FB.
PS So far the most weird complaint I read this summer was by an elderly woman from UK who complained that there were “too many Spaniards” in the hotel where she spent her vacation … in Spain.
