Burnside Park

 

Half Term holiday ruined – avoid if you can

So where do I start…

We have enjoyed visiting UK destinations in Feb half term week for a number of years, RCI swaps for our Tenerife week in the main. Always been very happy with the accommodation and space as we are swapping good accommodation to get the UK equivalent.

Pre-arrival communication excellent, email confirmation of times and how to pick up keys and when we arrived at 4pm, lovely friendly staff and a glass of bucks fizz – the holiday was starting well.

Sadly, that was the highlight

Imagine the pictures on the website of a comfortable apartment, with a separate dining area, and plenty of space for 4 (it was advertised as privacy for 4…). Now half that size in your mind and that is what you get with apartment 36. Basically a bedsit with the living room, kitchen and a small table where 3 can eat but you are literally on top of each other.

So first impressions were that we were not getting what we expected but we would make do and still have a good holiday.

Then we load the fridge and the door won’t shut…

A quick trip to reception and a maintenance man was sent and after about 40 mins, we had a fridge that would function and he said he would fix properly another time.

I enquired about paying to upgrade the apartment but the site was fully booked so we carried on unpacking

Then kitchen cupboards revealed leftover food and crumbs, at least I hope they were crumbs but the best was yet to come, unfolding the sofa bed in the living room and there were hairs and crumbs, the hairs being of a distinctly dubious variety, luckily a hoover is provided and very close by.

Just to be clear, when the sofa bed is down, the bottom of the bed is actually just at the start of the kitchen area with little room to move around at all

The whole place is given a thorough clean by us but we now feel grubby and just not able to relax, sleep was unlikely given the start to our holiday.

In fairness to the lady in the reception, she phoned to check that all was ok on Sunday morning (presumably as she knew I was unhappy with the size of the unit and a broken fridge) but I told her we were planning on checking out Monday am after breakfast and our holiday was ruined. Cleanliness is the most important thing in holiday accommodation and this unit was unfit for use without a better clean – it’s not as if it would take long given the size…

I was then offered another apartment (so not full now with some juggling..) with an upgrade fee of £50 which I would have paid but our faith in the cleanliness of these units had gone. At this point, I am told not Hapimag’s fault as they use an expensive company to do the cleaning, I would suggest it is their fault and if that is the quality of cleaning, get another provider.

We cooked once in apartment 36 (will be shown as 536 on any booking form). This was breakfast on Monday but as the apartment is so small, the smoke detector is located almost over the oven so you will need all windows and doors open if you don’t want to have this going off when cooking.

So, we duly left on Monday when we were booked in until Saturday, holiday ruined but at least they had the good grace not to charge me for the electricity used in the previous day and a half. I showed the reception staff their website and the units on display and they confirmed that unit 36 is the smallest – how they can misrepresent to that extreme must be borderline illegal.

Bowness is lovely and the location here is perfect, within 5 mins you are lakeside with a vast choice of food and drink options.

Good luck to anyone who has the misfortune to be allocated the bedsit that is unit 36, we won’t be back and will make sure we tell everyone about our holiday from hell.