As we go through this holiday season, I never fail to be amazed by the tenacity of the travel industry’s abililty to explain away its problems.  Equally, I never fail to admire and respect the holidaymakers, who, exposed to appalling hygiene conditions and suffering with holiday illness, will always seek to try and make the best of their holiday, or sometimes accept blindly the reasons and rationale given to them as to why they may become ill!  This ladies and gentlemen is partly how holiday claims are managed in 2010!  Plausible deniability is the key strategy, providing ‘aerosol’ phrases to mask the real problems and difficulties, instead of making sure that holiday properties are fit for purpose!  Holidaymakers are often told that they WILL become ill with: ‘Pharoahs Revenge’, ‘Montezumas Revenge’, ‘The Turkey Trots’, ‘Norovirus’, ‘Winter Vomitting Disease’, ‘A Virus on the Island’, ‘A Virus brought in by holidaymakers’ – and – our favourite for the 2010 holiday season so far, where following illness suffered by a child in Turkey, the parents were told that it was as a result of an ‘Epidemic in Turkey that affects those under 2 years of age’!  We wrote an article recently on other ‘excuses’ provided to holidaymakers which is worth considering! Read More

The range of holiday illness reports for 2009, was probably the worst we had experienced since this organisation was formed 15 years ago!  Sickness complaints are the most common form of complaint that we receive!  Salmonella, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E-Coli O157, so-called Norovirus were just some of the many confirmed diagnoses we received; this did not account for the many holidaymakers who were affected by serious gastric illness complaints and those who were not ill but nonetheless had to care for their sick relatives and friends and suffered in many cases, a complete loss of enjoyment!  Chidren on drips, old people suffering serious illness often in isolation, ambulances taking holidaymakers to hospital, people populating medical centres in hotels because they are too ill to stay in their rooms, wholesale administration of anti-biotics which in some countries are drugs that are actually banned in Western countries – these are the real experiences of British & other European holidaymakers!  The problems are well illustrated by the holidaymakers stories illustrated on this page!  We have only reproduced these stories from our e mail contacts.  These holidaymakers stories have been presented to the EU Commission in our campaigning reports!  The stories have been left largely unedited; they are in the words of the holidaymakers who have contacted us.  The names of travel companies have been removed because we consider the story or the experience of the holidaymaker is central! Read More

Principle Information: Read More

Principle Information: Read More

Just when you thought that it could not get any worse, we hear that within one hotel in Turkey, the staff have a unique way to announce faecal accidents within swimming pools!  We are told by holidaymakers that pools are closed on a daily basis, due to the fact that holidaymakers suffer an ‘accident’ whilst they are in the pool.  When the ‘accident’ is discovered, the ‘entertainment crew’ make an announcement over the tannoy of ‘Code Brown, Code Brown’ – the pool in question is then temporarily closed (there are varying reports as to how long the pool is usually closed and as to what kind of treatment of the water is provided) whilst the offending article is removed!  Read More

Those who have been following the almost daily catalogue of comment on the internet, with regard to Holiday Village in Sarigerme and Holiday Complaints, may have noticed that we have now written two open letters to the Ambassador, His Excellency, Mr Mehmet Yigit Alpogan.  Those following that correspondence will note that upon publication of the second open letter, the matter was eventually forwarded to the ‘Go To Turkey’ Organisation.  However, those following that post will have noticed that the letters never reached the Ambassador and we were advised that ‘process’ must take place and that we should ‘bear’ with them as ‘the process does take a while’! Read More

HolidayTravelWatch has noted that one Travel Industry newspaper, Travel Weekly, has reported our call to the Turkish Ambassador, to bring to the attention of the Turkish Health Authorities, the growing number of complaints concerning The Holiday Village (formerly The Pegasus Palace & The Pegasus Tropical) in Sarigerme in Turkey. Read More