Advice on hotel worries please ...

swivellingmonk

I recently booked 6 days at the Sea Sun Hotel in Dahab (Egypt) for early next month through Travel Republic.

This is for a cheap diving holiday so I wanted good value. The hotel is listed as 3* and, at the time, the reviews on tripadvisor were very good.

It appears the Hotel Manager recently walked out and the standards have slipped dramatically. Although I normally take tripadvisor reviews with a pinch of salt, they have all been appalling over the last week or so.

I would prefer not to cancel - Travel Republic will charge me to change the booking and i've already booked diving with the on-site dive company and transfers from the airport.

Has anyone any advice please? What do I do if I get there and it really is as bad as they're now saying? Since i'm not part of a package, do I have any choices available to me?

pinkstarsx

Why don't you contact the company you booked with & ask if it's possible that you can move to another hotel? There might be a small admin charge but it will be worth it for a peace of mind if the reviews are better!

Saint_Chris

I used to work part-time for tripadvisor and this comment

I know its great for reviews but sometimes the hotels competitors ... ahem... have been know to put on some false reviews. I am not saying its happened this time but if you cant get anything sorted before you go, you may be able to cling to this eventuality.

is false, hotel reviews do not go on the tripadvisor site straight away, they take a few days, and in this time, checks are done on the ip address which adds the review, if the review is on a hotel in Egypt and the ip address is from Egypt then this review would not go on, it usually doesn't get this far, as the wording in the reviews are a give away.

Also something to remember is Americans, You can get great reviews for a hotel all from english people, then an american comes on and doesn't class the 3* hotel in Europe a 3* as they compare it to American 3* ones.

As for the forums, well that is harder to control, as posts automatically go on, they are read by staff, but it can take time, we rely on members reporting a thread for us to look at it. This results in some threads on forums not making sense as tripadvisor have removed some posts.

Have you also tried other review sites, ie holidaytruths,

swivellingmonk

Thanks for all your comments. Unfortunately, tripadvisor seems to have the only recent reviews and they're from English people! :(

Clark80

Hopefully the admin charge should be small and may give you peace of mind? Ring and ask...

swivellingmonk

Result .......... there is now a bad review on the travel agent's own website so when I asked them to transfer the booking and waive the admin fee, they obliged!!

My thanks go to Travel Republic. :beer:

duchy

Kudos to Travel Republic