Club Riza Resort

Well, where do I start? I have contemplated this review for days as there was simply no way to express our dissatisfaction on a review typed via a mobile phone. I apologise in advance for the length of this review, but visitors MUST be warned and be aware, so I urge you to read the full review. This must be, bar none, the worst two nights stay we have ever had to endure in our travelling life (around 20 years). In my earlier days, I have stayed in hostels and dorms, and this place ranks amongst those, however, it is not advertised as such.

On arrival, the entrance and foyer are chic and contemporary and alludes to apartments that will be of the same quality, unfortunately, this illusion is shattered as you walk out of the foyer and into the corridors towards the rooms.

The first thing that hits you is the smell. It is musty and dank, something I do not think I have experienced since I used to visit my grandmother towards the end of her life (some 40 years ago). The corridors themselves are dark, dingy and depressing, with some very odd ceiling material that looks like a decking (yes, similar to what you would use for a patio or boardwalk), yet many of the “planks” are ill-fitting or broken. The sea of very brown doors that you pass by hints at what is to come.
Getting into the lifts is the next challenge. These look as though they are from buildings erected in the 60’s and remind me of a friend’s lift in the UK whose flat dates to this period. They feel rickety and are awkward to keep open as you attempt to get your luggage inside.

Finally, you get to your room, which for us was a studio apartment…..

Now, we are timeshare owners with our home property in Greece, and we had exchanged our week via RCI. Our own property is a studio apartment but is of a very good quality. It has a proper full size double bed and a small but perfectly functional kitchen area, and has a light, contemporary feel, given it is updated and refreshed. We expect, nay demand, that the room we exchange with is of equal or better quality to not only our home resort but also our own home. We should feel as though we are in a place that we can relax in, that makes us feel we are on holiday, and that we can call home for a week or two. This apartment was none of these things.

The room was super small – ok I can forgive that, but where was the bed??? It turns out that this was in a cupboard, effectively nothing more than an old pull out camp bed!!! Honestly!! In today’s world who in their right mind would offer a camp bed as the main sleeping accommodation? I can understand if this was a secondary bed perhaps for kids, or in the above-mentioned hostels, but this is neither a hostel or a secondary sleeping area. My partner now suffers from severe back issues and there was no way she was going to sleep on this thing.

The rest of the room looked as though it was straight out of the 1970’s. Not the cool 70’s like Starsky and Hutch or early David Bowie, but the really bad 70’s like a bad Val Doonican jumper or a wobbly TV set. It felt like this was the original fixtures and fittings that were used in the room when the apartment was originally built, and had not been touched in 40 years. It was horrid and incredibly depressing. My partner was almost in tears.

Of course, we immediately complained. The guy on the front desk (who was the only staff on duty in the entire resort), then phoned through to a manager. We were informed that all the rooms are the same and that the room description outlined that they have these types of bed! Honestly and again, what resort (apart from a hostel) would even contemplate such sleeping accommodation in 2017? I can see that this might have been chic and cutting-edge design in the 1970’s, but things have moved on. However, the manager offered us an upgrade, yet we would HAVE to pay for this privilege, another €75! We honestly thought about junking the resort entirely and just see if we could get another hotel, however, the manager then informed us that if we did this, then RCI would not help us further. As it turned out, this was sound advice, however, for this night (and indeed the next) we would be forced to pay and move into the “upgrade” apartment.

When I say upgrade, what I mean is a slightly bigger 1 bedroom apartment. It was still horrid, poorly fitted out and dirty. The bathroom had broken tiles, a scummy bath with a very tacky shower curtain. The bedroom did seem to have updated furniture, although updated from this point of view was to the 1980’s. Again, it was awful and had two single beds that were also very uncomfortable, and glaring fluorescent strip lighting. The outside table was a disgusting plastic table that looked as if it had been purchased from a cheap store, again about 20 or 30 years ago. The sofa was grubby and stained, and there is just acres and acres of bad broooowwwnnnn decor. Ugh. Everything is in drastic need of a full refurbishment, and oh, that smell, it follows you everywhere – even opening the windows doesn’t clear it. We even had the displeasure of the dogs barking in an adjacent property (that I have read in other reviews), although thankfully they did not bark for any great length of time.
So, what did we do? Well, after a horrid night’s sleep we just wanted to get out so walked around Saint Paul’s bay. During that walk, RCI phoned and said they would consider moving us to a new location. Several hours passed but then they phoned back and said that the Radisson Blu had a room although they were unsure of its state. We were going to be in the Saint Julian’s area the following day so arranged to drop in and check out the room.

From the moment we arrived at the Radisson Blu, we were taken care of. We saw the room at 6:30pm and by 8:30pm we had moved from the awful Club Riza and into the Radisson. However, we were not done yet. On checking out of Club Riza, they still had the audacity to charge us €25. To be honest, at this point I just paid to get out with the minimum of fuss. Credit to RCI again, they have at least given us a credit on our account to cover this as well.

So, what should be done going forward? Apparently, many apartments in the area (and even the Mediterranean) are similarly furnished, however, I personally think this is something that therefore needs to be addressed across all timeshare properties. As mentioned, I think owners should expect at the very least a like for like, and I am disgusted that rooms and resorts like this are even listed on the RCI exchange site. NO resort should offer camp beds as their main sleeping accommodation in ANY room, period. I personally think that resorts that do nothing to their property to refresh the rooms and communal facilities should be dropped completely from the listings. After all, this is what we all pay a significant amount of money to buy into a timeshare and pay the ongoing maintenance.

I expect to be taken care of when I exchange properties. I expect the little things to be in place, including cleaning materials such as washing up liquid and a scourer, but also expect that the larger items to be sorted as well, such as well-designed décor and a comfortable living and sleeping environment, even if the room is only a studio. These resorts can get away with providing the bare minimum, meeting just the items written in a list (such as bedroom count, number of plates, etc.), but honestly, there should be a minimum quality level as well. I would not have my own home to be as poorly built as the rooms are in the Club Riza, so that is just wrong, and needs to be addressed.