Thomas Cook booked my family and me the holiday from HELL… should we get a full refund?

Tina Kanetis had only ever been on two package holiday before last October, but she won’t rush to book another any time soon.

After a tough 2024, she booked a holiday to Izmir, Turkey, with her husband and youngest son for the October half-term holiday.

It would be the most expensive holiday they’d ever been on, and after a series of issues with their original booking, they were relocated to a top-rated hotel.

But their experience was anything but 5-star. In fact, the family say they were confronted with the holiday from hell.

It might be a surprise to some that Thomas Cook is still selling holidays. The company liquidated in 2019 after which Chinese conglomerate Fosun International launched Thomas Cook UK, which offers flight and hotel package deals.

Tina had never used Thomas Cook before and had only been on a couple of package holidays.

She says: ‘The times we have done it we’ve wanted absolutely zero stress, that’s why we decided to use it this time. We’d had a tough year and we just wanted somebody to do all the hard graft for us.'

She initially booked the family holiday in August with her husband and youngest son to a ‘beautiful-looking resort, which had water slides and lots of activities and entertainment’.

When she found out her eldest son’s reading week at university coincided with the trip she asked Thomas Cook to adjust the trip to include him.

But as she was about to pay, Thomas Cook said the hotel would be largely closed for the season, meaning there’d be no entertainment or access to water sports.

‘They definitely could have told me that before. The only way you could have found out was by contacting the hotel, it wasn’t anywhere on the Thomas Cook website,’ Tina says.

She asked to cancel the holiday but was told she would only get a refund for the hotel and not the flights.

Instead, Thomas Cook found Tina and her family another hotel but this came with a heftier price tag, nearly double the amount they initially paid. She felt she had no choice but to take that option and pay far more.

She says: ‘It went from the original booking for three for us for £2,000, with adding on my eldest would have cost an extra grand. Changing it and moving it all to a new hotel, new city, ended up costing close to £5,000.’

The holiday problems started before Tina and her family had even stepped foot in the resort.

The bus transferring passengers from the airport to the hotel did not have enough seats, meaning Tina’s 10-year-old son had to sit on someone’s lap with no seatbelt.

Meanwhile, Tina was left sitting on the driver’s beer-filled cool box in the front while he weaved in and out of traffic, and she says he even tried to sell her a beer whilst she clung on for dear life.

When Tina and her family arrived at the new resort, they immediately wanted to leave.

They were greeted by staff in the ‘glamorous-looking reception area’ but looking beyond that, they could see it was far from the 5-star experience they were promised.

The communal areas had glasses left for days and were covered in rubbish, which Tina said reminded her of the street in south London where she lives.

It didn’t get much better when they were shown to their rooms. There was creeping black mould in the bathroom, nicotine-stained walls and the thick dust coating most surfaces caused Tina’s youngest son to have an asthma attack which required medical attention.

They were offered a move to the hotel’s ‘penthouse’ although the room was smaller than their original.

But rusty nails protruding from spa seating did little to quell their horror, nor the woeful food and drink offering.

‘The restaurants were completely booked until the end of the season, although every night they appeared empty. A fellow guest informed us the Italian restaurant did not do pasta so this may have been a lucky escape,’ says Tina.

Unnervingly, halfway through the trip, the hotel was handed over to what Tina described as ‘an AGM from a massive Turkish Ponzi scheme’.

She describes ‘1,000 zombie-like delegates swarming around all wearing black spots on their necks, which was some sort of vitamin patch.’

To rub salt in the wound, when Tina got in touch with Thomas Cook to ask to be moved, the service was so slow that they were home by the time they received a response.

She says she spent 36 hours on the phone with customer services, 18 of which were on the holiday itself, and she even had to take a day’s holiday at one point to sort it out.

Once Tina and her family were safely home, she was offered a refund for the hotel transfer and says ‘there was lots and lots of chat but no substance and no solution’.

After some time, Thomas Cook offered Tina a 50 per cent refund of the stay at the hotel.

She says that's not good enough and if she had known how bad the holiday would have been, she would never have got on the plane.

‘I’m not interested in what the hotel gives me, it’s what Thomas Cook give me as the company responsible for the package,’ she told This Is Money.

‘I would never have taken the flight if I’d known the hotel was that awful. If it’s five stars, Thomas Cook has to do the checks to make sure everything’s good enough for their customers.’

Tina asked for a full refund for the hellish experience but Thomas Cook would not budge.

Even after This Is Money got in touch it said it would not hand Tina and her family a full refund.

A spokesperson for Thomas Cook said: ‘We’re really sorry that Ms Kanetis’ holiday wasn’t what she had hoped and sorry that we weren’t able to resolve it to her satisfaction.

'Our team have worked hard with the hotel to secure a refund of half of the cost and we’ve passed that on in full. Equally, the transfer fell short of the standards we would expect and similarly we have secured a full refund for that as well.

‘Unfortunately, hotels do sometimes decide to close some facilities a few days earlier without telling us which is what seems to have happened here and we’ve made it clear to the hotel that we expect more notice in the future so we can work with our customers to let them know and update any bookings accordingly.’

It did not respond to questions about the checks it makes on its hotels and why it had taken so long to reply to Tina.