RE: Hotel Miraluna, Turkey 11th – 18th October 2010

My partner and I decided to book a holiday abroad, we were really excited as this was to be our first holiday together.

We visited lots of travel agents but decided to go with Thomas Cook because of their sound reputation and also family members use your service over any other. However, this was to be our undoing.

We booked a holiday to Turkey after looking at the hotel in the brochure, everything seemed fine. Again, we had saved up for this holiday and were really excited.

Firstly our flight was delayed by approx 2½ hours. When we eventually arrived at our destination, a number of different Thomas Cook flights also arrived at the same time. Consequently, this resulted in standing in a queue for 2 hours and this was just to get into the airport and through passport control.

We then boarded the coach which took over an hour to reach the hotel, not 30 minutes as stated in the Thomas Cook brochure! When we arrived at the hotel we then had to queue for a further 2 hours in the pouring rain just to check in to the hotel.

During the meeting with our Thomas Cook representative, she informed us that all of the delays were not the fault of Thomas Cook and proved to be quite rude and ignorant of people’s complaints.

We finally arrived in our hotel room at 6am which meant we were literally going to miss a day of our holiday sleeping. We took one look at the room and just couldn’t believe our eyes. The room was nothing at all like the picture in the brochure we had been shown. On further inspection we found cockroaches, mouldy shower equipment and the shower curtain when we opened it actually fell off and the pole hit my partner on the head – it was like a scene from Fawlty Towers. The bathroom also had a putrid smell about it due to the drains. Also I might add the toilet seat was only half secured.

In the bedroom we noticed two single beds pushed together instead of the double bed that we requested and paid for! One of the beds was broken. There were plug sockets and light switches literally hanging off the wall. I pulled a string switch to turn a wall lamp on and the full thing fell off the wall. The walls were covered in mould and the screws that held the wardrobes together were falling out.

There was a fridge provided which had the door tightly closed and was not plugged in, hence the covering of mould inside. There was a TV, however this did not work. The room even had contents left from the previous occupants. I have photographic evidence to substantiate this. HSE would have closed the establishment as soon as look at it.

We went to see reception to be moved as there had obviously been some kind of error. We were informed that nothing could be done until midday the following day. We therefore had no alternative but to sleep in that room in the state of squalor that it was in. We didn’t even unpack our cases.

We visited reception at midday and were told to ´come back at 4pm´. We eventually moved into another room at approx 6pm: the second room was the same as the first other than it was slightly cleaner. Still the same smell from the drains which you could not escape.


We now did not have a balcony or a view as stated in our letter from Thomas Cook. The door handle actually fell off the door when I opened it – I also have photographic evidence of this.

We were provided with towels that were covered in dirt and what looked like tanning spray or make-up. The showers were freezing cold every day barring one. We were not the only ones to change rooms, everyone was complaining.

The brochure said that the bar served Sprite, Coke and Fanta from the pump. Wrong..they had bottles of own brand pop which was warm and flat. The carbonated alcohol was no better and the glasses were always dirty.

There were cat faeces under the restaurant tables, the food was almost inedible. Nothing was labelled; we had to guess what the meals were. The only item labelled was the soup which said ´proper decent soup´ OR ´turkish special´. When we asked what was in the soup the chef did not know!

The food was cold and possibly leftovers from the previous meal time, i.e. leftovers from breakfast were served for lunch and leftovers from lunch served for dinner…

The restaurant was crawling with flies and the food remained uncovered throughout our stay at the hotel.

We resorted to eating pasta and rice throughout the holiday as people had been taken to hospital with severe food poisoning and gastroenteritis from the food at the hotel. We did decide one day to try the chicken which resulted in both me and my partner spending all day in the hotel room with sickness and diarrhoea.

We spent most of our holiday money on eating and drinking outside of the hotel, even though we had paid for All Inclusive!

There was a rainstorm one day and the restaurant roof actually caved in. The staff were shovelling the rain water out with baking trays that they used for cooking – no wonder people were ill!

The weather was poor as it rained every day. There was one day where the sun came out - we walked to the beach and got comfortable on a sun lounger - and it rained so we went back to the hotel. We realise that the weather is not under your control but you can do something regarding the promoting of this hotel in your brochure. However, when we booked our holiday, we were told it would still be warm and sunny. We were gravely misinformed by Thomas Cook and are deeply disappointed.

On the plane on our way back we fell asleep and missed our in-flight meal which we paid for as the staff did not wake us for this. Also we had checked that the airline accepted VISA on our outbound flight. However after selecting approx £100 worth of duty free items the card machine would not accept payment. When I asked the reason, I was told that the machine is ´temperamental´. So…we ended up with no duty free items some of which were gifts for family members!

This has got to be the worst holiday I have ever experienced in my life.