Marhaba Royal Salem Review

Overall Rating

Great beach.
Excellent water.
OK between the city and the harbour.

All inclusive at the Marhaba Royal Salem really stinks.
A bit noisy, lot of kids, very open hotel.
A lot of people, in the highest season.

We liked the hotel and we liked the dinner. However, we hated the All Inclusive concept the way they ran it, I don't think we ever been so irritated on a vacation before, ever. From day one we had the feeling that we already had paid, so there was only a minimum of service to us, we really were treated as second rate guests.

1)The term All Inclusive should actually describe what we have bought and paid for: An all inclusive hotel. But no way it was so. In the beach bar the only inclusive things we're a boring piece of Today's Pizza or chips. There were about 20 things to eat on the menu but none of them were covered by the all inclusive and even those two rather lousy things could only be obtained after 12:00 Noon. In the garden snack bar it was almost the same, though there were some extra choices like cake, ice and sandwiches. However you could only get something to eat on all inclusive after 15:00. Point is that this was at most a Full Board Plus, there were so many things you couldn't get, that it was kind of a bit of exclusive really.

2)The hotel runs a politic saying, one card / one drink or one card / one something eat-able. This means you get in the line, order a cup of coffee and something cold to drink but you are not allowed to do that! First you can get the drink, go down to your chair, wait 5 minutes, go back in the line again and order coffee for your drink. This is incredibly stupid and irritating. It feels like you just have to stand in line all the time and everybody gets irritated. It's like the main target is to make it a big problem for the tourist's, who already paid to eat for 1 Dinar less per day, to get what they want, instead of making the visitors so happy that they come back next year.

3)When you buy a beer, you get 0,5 litre. When you use the all inclusive cards, you get something in between 0,25 and 0,3 litres. This mean you have to run and get in line again and again and it really shows that they really don't care about you, who paid in advance.

4)The snack bar only opened for all inclusive food between 1500 and 1800. Nevertheless I came in to have a piece of cake and a cup of coffee around 17:45 - 17:50 but they wouldn't serve me because they claimed the time was over 18. I then said some bad words, went to the cafe by the reception to get coffee, where I could see the reception watch showing 17:52. It's just unacceptable.

5)I stood in the line at the beach bar and there were two people before me and two after. The first one after me carried a 10 Dinar note, all the others had cards. So the waiter moved from behind the desk, went back down the line, took the 10 Dinar, went back and served that guy first! Talk about second rate people but let me remind you again, we paid too, we just did it from home!

6)In the snack bar you got wine from a real wine glass if you paid on the spot. We, who had cards, had wine in lousy, small plastic glasses. It's just so irritating and humiliating.

7)The cards themselves were a rather irritating solution. You have to carry them all the time, the waiters almost every time had problems with the reading / registration.

Proposals:

a)Treat people decently and equally. They should please all customers so we come back, instead of treating the all inclusive customers disrespectfully.

b)Make a real all inclusive solution or dump the whole thing. It's extremely irritating to buy something that turns out to be seriously limited: don't half do something like that. Same food, same glasses, same treatment all the way. Better to raise the price a few Dinars/day than to make people constantly irritated.

c)If they keep the all inclusive, change to armbands instead of cards, that is much easier and much quicker.

My conclusion is clear: As long as I'm treated second rate, I'm not going back to the hotel, even though it's rather nice and the beach it terrific. I won't spend my holiday time being irritated.