“Third world conditions, no air conditioning, sweltering and miserable in room at night. Stayed at protur safari park Majorca, at first we thought it was just broken in our room but when we went to complain the manager admitted it was deliberately turned off throughout the hotel to save money and refused to provide it. I explained I have a medical condition and really struggle with the heat and I would never have booked had I known they wouldn't have air conditioning. It was like staying in a developing country. This made me really unwell and not enjoy our holiday. Tui also couldn't care less, their answer was to keep sending fans to our room - we now have 4 and all that does is recirculate hot air, just like TUI complaints department.”
“Lied from start to finish, reps fobbed us off which almost resulted in us missing our flight home. TUI travel cards do not work on TUI planes or ships so no duty free and onboard purchases. Totally ruined our holiday”
“I booked a holiday for my family and paid the deposit. We had one room upgraded "free" to an Adult room, with no choice of changing it and after confirmation, we found that the adult rooms were in a totally different area of the hotel. Call 1 to Tui, I was told that it would cost to downgrade the room. Call 2 later that day, the operator escalated to a supervisor who said that the could do it and would come back to confirm - still waiting. Call 3 on 9/1/24 spoke with Mo who said he would get it rectified and would come back to me - still waiting! Call 4, spoke with Virgel to lodge a complaint - he went through all the booking said he could make the required changes (at last!) Once all that was confirmed he told me there was a £50 per room admin fee (£200 in total) to correct the errors TUI had caused through an inadequate booking process on line. I the spoke to his senior Joe, who told me he could do nothing about it. 3.5 hours wasted on all these calls with no customer service from their end and the inability to send an email or make a call when they say they will - who knows what would happen if there were an issue whilst away! TUI used to be a first class company, which we have used many times, but now unfortunately seems to have turned to dust.”
“We booked with TUI to stay in Mauritius for 14 nights. Our flight was with Air Mauritius, extremely cramped, the inflight meals were vile reheated garbage and only two drinks offered to us on a 14 hour flight. The hotel we were booked into was a shabby 3 star hotel marked up as a 4 star with apparently 3 restaurants. 1 buffet restaurant and the other two restaurants were chargeable. Being all inclusive what this meant is that we only had one restaurant to go to which served the same food day after day. The staff were friendly but the hotel was flooded due to a cyclone and everything got flooded including the restaurant. When I complained to TUI they said these things happen and would not offer us an earlier flight home nor alternative accomodation. They dismissed any liability saying that the third party is liable, not them. I will never ever fly with TUI ever again, for £4500 for 2 people this has been an utterly disastrous experience and TUI staff could not care less”
“Karen made booking our holiday so easy , without any computer worries on our part . It's lovely to talk to someone rather than try and navigate the internet.... especially when you're older . We'll be back soon to book holiday number 2 !”
“Booked a holiday with TUI and contacted them on Monday the 18th December to add child onto booking, we had booked a room that accommodates 4 people, was told that everything was fine and given a price, however they encountered a problem with the flight as their system was down, however after several phone calls to tui this simple request has not been fulfilled,
Phoned again today to be told the accommodation is the problem, last week it was the return flight, there is not a problem with the accommodation at all, another family group are booked on the same holiday with the same room and the same amount of people after adding one of the children onto their booking as they are twin boys.
Have just spoke to them again to be told the problem js that when they added the child onto the booking they only added him onto the accommodation and flight out.
Have spoken to someone who claimed he was a manager just now and he says he has contacted the relevant department regarding the flight as a matter of urgency so he should get a reply if we can give him 5 days.
The customer service has been diabolical, promises of phone calls from them on 9 occasions not one received, told the issue would take 24 hours we are now 10 days later and the so called manager now tries to blame the holiday period for slowing things down.
We are now in a situation where two children came to live with their father after a family breakdown and one is booked on this holiday and the other we have no idea what the outcome will be as we've been told so many conflicting things by TUI.”
“Rated 1 out of 5 stars
DO NOT FLY WITH TUI
DO NOT FLY WITH TUI
My partner had heat exhaustion which i explained as he tried to hold his balance from fainting on my arm as he wobbled towards the aircraft
We were both then spoken to like children (by a larger woman named Sue - Blonde Hair)
he could hardly speak and needed water, she said we were both 'drunk' and that i won't be participating in any drinks from the trolley (wasn't my first priority- Luke was)
I did however try and stick up for myself and then was accused of being aggressive (all is what i said is that i video recorded myself in the toilets crying my eyes out and i said i would put it on Tik Tok to explain my case!
I tried to video what they were doing as luke was denied water and then got told to delete it which i showed them I DID.
Tui, I got called a disgrace as i left the flight as i was trying to explain crying my eyes out of how they wasn't listening to me to give Luke water and just thought he ' passed out' from drink
I have A 'BAN' - Which i do not appreciate having on any record that I am a supposed 'threat to fly'
We have spent almost £10,000 on Tui for the past two years travelling to our favourite place in Mexico, Playa del Carmen for two weeks at a time.
And will certainty NOT be now.
I want the ban OFF record as this was absolute discrimination- this has also happened to two people in 2023 as I've read on the news - one woman who was denied flight as appeared 'drunk' who had autism (absolutely disgraceful- was also spoken to like a child after accidentally walking to far)
They said on the letter how i made threats? I made told them i would NOT let this go and what they were doing was ILLEGAL
and that i would take this to social media which I AM GOING TO DO. I WANT AN EXPLANATION BEFORE I MAKE THIS VIRAL.
You could of killed my fiancé!
You should be ashamed of yourself!
I also got told by the brown haired girl that she looked at me very aggressively and told me that i wouldn't want to know what would happen when she brings out the captain threatening me with piercing eyes that actually scared me! I got told by a nice man on the plane that it was disgusting behaviour as i was waiting to cry in the toilet!
I Want the ' threat to fly' off my record, you are absolutely disgusting!!!!
Ffion Tilby - Luke Phillips
Date of experience: 15 December 2023”
“Always great customer service in Ebbw vale store so helpful especially Jo she knows what I like and is so helpful would highly recommend top class service never go anywhere else don’t need to”
“5 star price, 1 star holiday. Royal Dragon Hotel through TUI
We booked a 5star all inclusive for 2 weeks in Turkey through TUI. We booked a superior double sea view room, with various restaurants in a country notorious for top service. Unfortunately, none of the above is what we were met with.
When we arrived the reception staff were nice but the manager just seemed really angry with something and directed this to us. He said some choice words in Turkish and then stormed off.
We went to our room where we found we had been allocated a partial room although we paid to be upgraded through TUI when first booking. We then found dirt marks all over the toilet seat and so we headed back to reception.
We explained that we were in the wrong room however, the manager simply said we are not and went to continue on his day. We reiterated the mistake and so I showed him the rooms on their website and TUI’s and the one we had booked. His response this time was “Can you see the sea? Yes, so it is a sea view.” And “does it say ‘full’ sea view in writing on our website? No, so it is a sea view”. We tried to explain rationally that the rooms are different hence the two options, very different photos and prices etc.. eventually he said they were full so there is nothing he can do. We knew this not to be true as the staff had already told us that they were at 40% capacity.
We persisted regarding the room and were told there actually was one available.. this turned out to be a room with single beds at the back of the Hotel, not ideal for a couple who had booked a double room. We explained this still wasn’t fixing the problem and again the manager said we have no other rooms. Shortly after he said we have a room but you won’t like it. Not hopefully we went and viewed the room. He was right, it was a very low, partial sea view (at the right part of the hotel at least this time) but it had an awful smell of damp and smoke and was incredibly dirty.
We didn’t know what else to do and so we waited to see our TUI rep who we were informed would be in the hotel the next morning.
The TUI rep didn’t turn up without warning so we spent 1-2 hours of our first full day waiting until one of the other reps found out he wasn’t coming in. The same happened the next day and so we emailed TUI. We were asked to come down at potentially 2/3 different times the next day via email by TUI as the rep might be in, although they wouldn’t be sure when. As you can predict they were not going to arrive. Finally another rep came in as last minute cover and we explained everything so far to her. She was lovely and really tried to help but was only available for a short while. She took pictures of our room and sent these to TUI and called her manager to explain we were in the wrong room and explained the situation we were in. Unfortunately in short this was not going to lead to any results. We requested a transfer and this took days to get into motion and finally we were offered out the blue a transfer if we replied to an unexpected email within 50minutes confirming all additional charges we would incur for admin, hotel transfer cost and so on. It also said there might be more u disclosed charges and we would need to agree to this. Furthermore the hotel was around one hour away and we would need to pack, and find our own transport there and cover these costs too.
We were unable to confirm all of these details in time and found it somewhat unreasonable to have this expectation, especially given the fact this was a couple of days later out of the blue so we didn’t see it with maybe more than 20minutes left, it would have cost at least £200+ and was only going to be for the last 2 days of our holiday.
A separate issue was our door lock. We realised you didn’t need a key or card to open our room as it was totally unlocked. After around 14 hours it fixed itself for approximately 2 days and then did this again. We spoke to other guests who said their cards worked for other guests rooms they had met out on the holiday too.
The restaurants were described as multiple Al La Carte restaurants available however, these were only open one per day (not every day) and to a low quality.
The hotel gust relations manager did confirm we were not in the right room and tried to find an alternative but they had booked our rooms out.
Our transfer home was changed and we were not informed. Other guests didn’t even receive a notification to say they had a transfer or any details of this.
We had continued to email TUI and whilst their emails were apologetic and seemed sincere, it has now been 4days since they stopped replying.”
“WE WOULD NOT RECOMMEND TUI OR MARELLA CRUISES. AFTER RECENTLY BOOKING A CRUISE AND RETURNING FROM THE CRUISE IT WAS A SHAMBLES FROM START TO FINISH. AS THE CRUISE WAS BOOKED WITH IGLU - THEY BLAMED IGLU AND IGLU BLAMED TUI. WE HAD NO JOY WITH OUR ISSUE OF THE PRICE OF THE CRUISE. THE MARELLA DISCOVERY 2 DIDNT HELP - CONFUSING US WITH MOVING US TO A CABIN ONLY TO ASK US TO MOVE BACK WITHIN HALF AN HOUR AFTER MOVING ALL OUR CLOTHES AND TOILETRIES.
SO UNPROFESSIONAL. THEY SAY IT WAS ALREADY BOOKED - EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO ONE IN THE CABIN? OUR CRUISE WAS SPOILED WE WERE UNHAPPY, ANGRY AND UPSET. IN OUR OPINION AND EXPERIENCE WE WOULD NEVER USE TUI OR MARELLA CRUISES AGAIN.”
“Just bad !
We decided to book a ‘package holiday’ (we normally book independently)for several reasons this year. Never again with Crystal.
We decided on Wengen, a resort we had been to before and were, fortunately as it turned out, familiar with.
The booking process was painful, took a full 3 days for our travel agent to be able to speak to anyone. So long in fact that the contingent of our group that was flying from a different airport booked with Inghams … and what a better experience all round they had!
Vouchers for pre paid lift passes, travel passes, train tickets and ski lessons had to be chased by ourselves, and then the information was sketchy.
We were travelling on a Saturday and received a train timetable for Tuesday.
We weren’t told that the ski pass voucher needed printing, otherwise the ski pass wouldn’t be issued (big thanks to skiset shop in Wengen for printing this out)
On arrival in Geneva we were told we could ‘if we wanted to ‘go see the travel rep on the way out of the airport to the train station. We did so, thinking she may be interested to hear we’d arrived safely and beable to give us some info on best trains to get. She seemed a bit surprised to see us, spouted a lot of platform numbers to us (there are 4 train changes to get to Wengen) and left us to get on with it. I have to add that the flight time from Manchester means there’s little room for late luggage or flight arrivals to allow you to catch the last connecting trains to Wengen.
If you were unfamiliar with train travel or the Swiss train system this would be a very stressful experience. Fortunately we have done the journey several times.
I must add, I can’t fault the hotel (Wengenhof) at all - they were fab and even fed us at 10pm.
The rest of our party had travelled with Inghams and had a ‘Welcome’ pack full of useful information
Nothing for Crystal holidaymakers!!
No direction as to where to go to find out what day, time and meeting place for ski lessons, no telling us the ski pass voucher needed to be printed, no direction to ski hire shop or opening times. What a shambles. I really can’t imagine how stressful this would be if you were unfamiliar with the resort, or, even worse, if you were unfamiliar with the whole ski holiday experience/organisation/ how to do it.
Departure day …. Inghams guests had a note to suggest the best time train to get - nothing for Crystal … no surprise there.
Really struggling by now to see what the ‘package’ bit of this holiday is. We really would have been more informed, more organised , less stressed and spent less money if we’d have gone independently. There was no ‘package’ at all - just commission to crystal for putting all the various add ins through their system.
Geneva airport was a nightmare. Maybe not directly Crystals fault, but as they use EasyJet and EasyJet use Geneva they have to take some ownership of the issues.
We queued , snaking in and out of the building, with no seats and no drink for a full 3 hours (we’ve done some travelling in our lives, and this was a record). On asking what the issue was , to 2 separate staff members, we were told it’s always like this on a Saturday - too many passengers and not enough staff. How can this be, the airline and airport were fully aware we were all travelling that day, to my knowledge no one woke up that morning and said “Let’s just pop to Geneva for a flight today” - we’d all booked weeks/months in advance!
After 3 exhausting hours of queueing (thank goodness we don’t have young children) we were rushed through security and hustled to the plane- no time to grab a drink or snack. Another hour of standing and, at long last, after 4 hours of standing in line we get on the plane. Our worst airport experience in 35 years , and , bearing in mind one of us used to travel weekly for business meetings to various parts of the world, that’s quite a lot of experience to draw on.
We can categorically say never again will we use Crystal and will avoid Geneva airport whenever possible.
Inghams and independent travel are the only way.”
