“Avoid this company!!
I have just found the same holiday for over £150 cheaper, it was only booked this morning (I used the wrong link as thought it was loveholidays). I rang On The Beach and they didn’t care, they stayed if I wished to cancel my holiday I would still need to pay for the flights, no goodwill gesture just much repeated hollow apology followed by some T&C’s”
“Would never use this company again, sold us a so called five star all inclusive holiday at the Diamond of Bodrum in Turkey and would of rated it a two star, was that bad we cut short our two week stay and left a week early which cost us an extra flight to get back to the UK. I find it so frustrating the fact this company is still sending and selling this awful hotel with a five star rating ! We were both at this hotel in April 2022 and to date we have never had a email or telephone call from this company after numerous emails we sent regarding our nightmare experience! We booked with Tui to go to Spain this month and all so far our service we received is absolutely amazing & professional, they even checked us in with the flights to our destination!”
“I have sent 3 email to on the beach feed back and no one has replied which is not a good service, i stayed in a hotel in Portugal and there was demolition work getting done so my whole 8 days holiday was thrilling and banging from the way keys and no reply from on the beach this is not good service”
“On the Beach say they will reply to emails within 56 days. Thant's right, it will take them 56 days to answer any questions you might have. Very friendly when taking your money, then customers services couldn't care less.
There's plenty holiday providers, use any of the others...”
“Having issues with the private transfer booked trough them. They never collected us from the airport neither from hotel. Was impossible to get on touch with them to sort the issue.”
“Went on holiday to Athens, hoel Myrto, outside of Athens. The hotel and the staff were very friendly. Nowhere on On the Beach website does it say that if you book economy then your room looks onto the dual carriageway and the 24 hour noise. The website also said there was tranfers from airport which I paid for. But there was no transfers, when I phoned the transfer company on arriving. They told me they had notified on the beach months before hand, that they don't do transfer to my hotel. On the beach have still NOT returned my transfer charges, never mind the cost of taxies to and from to the airport. They are now ignoring my emails. I do NOT RECOMMED THIS COMPANY”
“easy booking and reasonable prices. Transfer experience from Fuerteventura airport terrible via shuttle, 90 mins sitting on coach waiting to leave, had to load and unload own cases. Service at Fuerteventura airport by Ryanair staff appalling. herded like cattle down boarding ramp even before plane had arrived, discourteous and officious.”
“Very easy to book, access and manage booking and receive paperwork. We enjoyed our holiday but the hotel was somewhat lacking and definitely reflected the poor reviews we had seen online. Not very clean and dated. Our transfers were challenging - we had no instructions on arrival and queued several times before finding our coach (who then split up all passengers mid-journey onto mini-buses. Not what you need at 3am in the morning!) We were also dropped at the top of our steep hotel drive with cases et al. Would booking again but opt for private transfers.”
“Had a great holiday to Crete in September and everything was easy enough to set up and print off all my documents, book my seats for the flights, transfers etc
Only reason it does not get the full 5 stars was due to the hotel transfers, the company they used the driver was very rude who took us to the hotel and lazy. He made no effort to put the cases in hull of the coach, we had to do this ourselves. Then the return. they decided we would not be picked up from the hotel but down the road somewhere (about 5 minutes' walk) I was not happy at this with dragging cases down the road and if anyone had mobility issues and was not aware of this beforehand, this would have been an issue. The joke of this was then the coach went up to the end of the road where the hotel was, to turn around!! Was no reason I could see why this needed to be done like this as we were dropped off, right outside the hotel going, so why the change to be picked up??? These needs looking into as it will put people off returning and also the Hotel was not happy with this, for the very same reason.”
“October 2022. Just had a wonderful 10 days in Tigaki, Kos. My first time with On The Beach and everything was great. Booking was easy, changes on line were simple, Easy Jet flights were both fine and on time, Transfers on time for both journeys, arrived at Marianna Apartments at time specified, (I have used Holiday Taxis several times before and have never had a problem). Apartments were spotless, staff really helpful and friendly. Everything was exactly as described and advertised on, On The Beach Website. Perfect from start to finish. I cannot comment on Customer Service as I had no reason to contact them.”
“Easy booking process and the ability to ammend or change through 'manage my booking'. All paperwork delivered promptly, fast track through security, transfers at the ready. Have booked with On the Beach before and will do so again.”
“This company used to be decent but in recent times it has went downhill rapidly, customer care is zero. I had a simple claim for a £56 taxi fare that I had to claim back because our airport transfers failed to pick us up. I was instructed by OTB to get a taxi to airport as they couldn't locate the driver that was supposed to pick us up. They told me to get a receipt from taxi driver and claim it back when I got home. No problem I thought until I got an email this morning telling me a blatant lie that our transfer bus came to our hotel but we weren't there and they wouldn't be issuing a refund.
We never moved from the front of hotel at our pick up point from 1600-1700 but this company have the audacity to blatantly lie to me saying the driver was there at 16.33 . Unfortunately I have another holiday booked with this corrupt company which I cannot cancel without being heavily penalised, but this will be the last time I use them and urge anyone else to stay away from them, there are plenty alternatives out there with far better customer care.”
“This company is an absolute joke! Their team are incompetent and have no idea what they are doing! A holiday that was meant to be stress free was basically the holiday from hell.
We booked a shared premium shuttle from the airport to hotel (return) max 4 stops with on the beach. We waited a total of 2 hours to get our transfer and then took us 3 hours to get to our hotel with 6 stops and the driver taking a 20 minute break along the way. It should only have been around 1h15mins as said by on the beach when I booked. After a full day of travelling and landing at 7pm we didn’t get to our hotel until midnight! Furthermore, we confirmed our transfer as on the beach said via holiday taxi online to be given the pick up time of 4:15 only to be messaged by the taxi company the afternoon before travelling staying pick up would be 3:10am our flight was at 9am and we could only check in 2h30mins before our flight! We waited at the airport for over an hour and a half before we could check in!
Our hotel rep appointed by on the beach was difficult. We booked a few activities with him and the first one we booked we were unable to attend as messed up our transport to the destination and then tried to blame us! We waited 40 minutes for our coach to this activity. At 7pm we contacted Cengo to find out where the coach was to which he stated it was 5-10 minutes late and we should continue to wait. After 20 minutes had passed he said it was still on its way and we should wait. After waiting 10 more minutes he called the hotel to tell them the bus was not coming. Upon calling him he stated firstly the coach was no longer coming when asked why he could not give a reason and then he changed his story and said it was our fault as we had missed the coach! He said the next day he would give us a refund however we are still waiting!
The hotel food was appalling. To say the least it was the same food every night, cold, undercooked and caused some stomach upset. As a result, we ended up eating outside of the hotel at restaurant’s not using the “all-inclusive” aspect of our booking that we had paid for and spending more money than necessary. This is not okay and a waste of our money and time especially whilst on holiday.
A of total 3 members of hotel staff that we interacted with had a base level understanding of English and we’re able to communicate with us on our trip. The rest of the staff were un-accommodating and did not understand any English. They would nod and say yes when asked a question and say they understood you when I’m reality they have no clue what you’re talking about or do the total opposite of what was asked or ignore us completely. They were extremely biased towards us and would noticeably go out of there way to avoid us when asking for help or assistance and help Turkish residence instead. Due to the hotels poor wifi we were unable to use a translator app to help communicate with staff making it even harder.
The man we spoke with at the guest relations desk to try and book reservations for the hotel restaurants was rude and to put it nicely a piece of work. They only had one day (Sunday) where we could book in for a restaurant so in the end out of 3 hotel restaurants we could only chose 1! Please note: prior to this I had contact the hotel via the enquiry form linked on their website for information on any special extras or packages for the room and to see if we could book the restaurants before arriving so this issue did not happen however received no response. He laughed when I mentioned this enquiry.
On the beach customer service
My bookings team (portal)
The my bookings team via the portal were very unhelpful when I bought the issue of the transfer and the rep to them! they stated l they would issue feedback to the transfer company to improve their service which did not resolve my issue and when I questioned this further they stated they would be investigating this issue. After 2-3 days of back and forth they finally stated they could not help and I should email the customer care team and call the in-resort team.
In-resort team
I called the in-resort team and waited a total of 40 minutes with no response or anyone picking up before the line cut out and I was unable to call back! What is the point in having a contact number to use while away if it does not work or there is no one available to take the call. I made the call during working the working hours based on the UK.
Overall, I have sent a more in depth email to on the beach’s customer care team however taking 56days to reply to a complain is a joke. This was a poor experience with this agency. Going forward we will not be using them. Our money has gone to waste and who’ve returned home more stressed than when we left.”
“Booked and paid in full for our holiday then we have to book our seats with Ryanair. On the beach give you a unique e mail address to access Ryanair’s system where then you have to verify who you are. Tried numerous times and locked out. On the beach stringing us along for over a week saying they will sort it. Ryanair rudely hang up on you. We have now got to go to the airport the day before to see what seats are left. Will never use on the beach again. Lots of time out of work, additional costs for lengthly phone calls, now fuel costs and stress. I will never use them again NEVER”
“I booked my holiday for 2 adults, 1 child and 1 infant to Kos with transfers. The total cost was £1592.11. I wasn't happy with my room so I requested an upgrade and added an extra night. My request was accepted and charged accordingly, and I was sent the amended paperwork. This brought the total cost to £2317.97. after having completed payment I received a message to say that the supplier couldn’t give us the room we’d paid for due to my party exceeding the room’s capacity and they offered me I quote ‘a complimentary upgrade to a family 2 bedroom suite mountain view with sharing pool’ which was the exact room I had originally booked! I have all the supporting paperwork to prove this is the case. So what they tried to do here was pull the wool over my eyes by pretending my original room was an upgrade from the room I’d paid to upgrade to?! I of course objected to this and we went back and forth a few messages but still the supplier was adamant I could not have the room I paid for. I then decided I would call the hotel directly myself. The reservations manager explained that he received 2 requests to upgrade and rejected both due to the fact that the size of the party exceeded maximum capacity of the room. So at no point in time did they have a booking secure for me in the room that I had requested and been charged for. He advised me that I needed to query this with the supplier or the agent as the fault lay there and not with the hotel. So I did just that, I explained everything that had happened and simply asked for the extra that I had paid to be refunded to me. During this time my flights had also been cancelled, so I requested a refund and paid extra to book new flights completely separately. At this point I was advised that I would receive a refund for my flights (total £420.91) which is usually in 7 days. I didn't, and had to chase it. The refund was then issued to a card that I have never had which leads me to believe there are data protection issues here also. I received a message to say that the supplier would offer me a refund of £274.48 despite having paid an extra £725.86 for this upgrade. In my response I did express my frustration, but also did say that I appreciate I'd also booked an extra night in the hotel So would like the cost of that in my original room deducted from £725.86 and felt that this would be the only logical and fair amount that I should be offered as a refund, taking into account that this entire scenario has been at absolutely no fault of my own. In this message I also asked for a proper breakdown of how that figure had been reached. I went through a mock booking on the hotel website to checked the cost of 1 night in the family suite room which came to 225 euro’s which is approximately £194. So I’m aware of how much should roughly be deducted for that. I Then received a message back to say that the £274.48 was based on my hotel costs only and didn’t include flights. I saw this as a huge insult to my intelligence and the second time someone had attempted to pull the wool over my eyes as the cost of flights would of course not have any impact on the refund amount, as they were already included in the original booking total. This is simply a refund on the EXTRA I had been charged for the room only. Also despite having asked for a breakdown, I did not receive one, I just had the same figure thrown at me again and another attempt to push for me to accept it. I declined and expressed I would make a formal complaint, to which I then received a further couple of messages offering me the same plus an £80 gesture of goodwill which I also declined. Then to add complete insult to injury, 1 day before we were due to fly I received a message from an agent called Bruno A to say I quote’ good afternoon and thanks for your message (which just said that I was not accepting the refund amount offered) please note that the hotel cannot accommodate you in the original room. Apologies for any inconvenience’ and that was it! No solution, no explanation, no anything! This put my stomach in knots! I for a second time had to spend money calling the hotel to check they still had a booking for us which thankfully they did. It is now working day 74 since I complained and I still have not received a refund nor response to my complaint. My bank has been investigating and since, on the beach has unethically and totally against protocol, directly taken money back that had been temporarily refunded by my bank without going through the proper channel. Not only have that but now taken an extra £531.86. Words can’t express the infuriation. I will be pulling out every single stop and fighting this all the way until justice has been served here.”
