I want to begin by saying that the bar staff, pool staff, cleaners etc. are the friendliest, most welcoming people and so this review does not reflect on them at all.
So we booked for 2 adults and 1 child (13years) through trip.com. After an overnight flight and being extremely tired, we finally arrived at reception to be told that no, we had only booked for 2 adults.
We quickly showed the reception staff our email which said '2 adults, 1 child (13years)'. The man on reception told us that there was a comma and not a plus sign and so that meant that it wasn't plus 1 child. This completely baffled as why would the email have a child and age if not booked regardless of commas/+ signs and we continued to insist that we had booked for all of us.
After some back and forth, he decided to ring the manager who promptly said that it wasn't something she would accept and that we would have to pay extra for our child.
The man told us this and said that as we hadn't booked through the hotel, this wasn't his problem and that I could take it up with trip.com.
Now, 2 flights, no sleep and the fact that I have various conditions that effect my mental health so much that I am registered disabled, I admit I responded harshly at this point.
How can you advertise through a 3rd party website, be shown the confirmation, and still tell paying customers that this is your problem, not mine? Even if this were true, wouldn't a more appropriate response be 'You clearly have a booking and have come a long way, let's get you settled in a room and then we can either contact trip.com or help you contact them to get this sorted out'?
I then asked to speak to the manager myself- the member of staff phoned her but she refused to come to the phone and said if we were unhappy, to cancel our booking and then shut the phone. Cancel and go where with what money? Were we supposed to walk back to London in order to have somewhere safe to sleep?
There was no budge and around an hour after arrival, we were told by trip.com to pay the extra and they would refund us. Kudos to them, we were refunded within 2 days and they were extremely helpful.
After all of this, there were so many issues with the hotel itself - street digs in the pool, ceiling in living room crumbling and falling, dirty sheets and tiles, the shower flooded every day and at one point was a waterfall down the stairs into the living room and we had to use wvery towel we had to soak it all up, ants everywhere, the list is endless and I have added pictures so people can see it for themselves.
I am so disappointed the whole experience was an absolute shambles.
To top it all off, I was telling a friend who lives in Cyprus and he knew the owner. He phoned the owner to tell him and the next day we were offered a free meal as an apology - so just because I had a contact, and the owner told you off, you give me a gesture of goodwill? What if I hadn't known anyone, would this gesture have even existed? Or would you have just told us it wasn't your problem? We refused.
Disgraceful.
98 Reviews