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“Marmaris, Club Viva Hotel - We arrived at the Club...”

written by mariamoo on 23/06/2004

Good Points
No good points about this hotel.

Bad Points
Food poisoning, pool dangerous, loud music played at full bass 08.00-24.00, some music of an adult nature with children around. No children's club. Watered-down alcohol, mosque at back of pool using loud speakers 24hrs per day. Dirty rooms.

General Comments
Marmaris, Club Viva Hotel - We arrived at the Club Hotel Viva, 2 adults and 2 children, and were given a family room overlooking the pool, and unfortunately, the local mosque (which announced its prayer times 5 times a day via 8 loud speakers, just what we needed at dawn!). On arrival at this hotel, all looked OK at first glance. But just how sorry we are for entering this hotel.



They advertised a children's club and there was none, unless you want to count the Play Station 2, which was charged by the 15mins(£2.50), and the pool table again charged for(£5.00), the children's paddling pool had a safety barrier which constantly fell down into the adjoining deep swimming pool. There was broken glass around the pool area and grass, a child badly cut his foot. Chickens were running loose amongst the hotel sun beds, fouling the grass. And not forgetting the very loud music played through full bass speakers, so loud it made the hotel room vibrate 3 floors up, from 8.00am until midnight, with a choice of house/club music on full bass only to suit the bar-men, other hotel guests repeatedly asked for the music to be turned down, changed. Such songs as the "adult XXX version of Yogi bear, and the adult XXX version of horse racing sponsored by Durex condoms," where the horses were named after body parts. Both of these were full of foul language and of a very sexual nature and were repeatedly played in the presence of young children.



The only other entertainment in the Club Hotel Viva was the weekly Turkish night, where the entertainers themselves came around the hotel guests with a hat for collecting payment, and a local jewelry company selling raffle tickets for prizes which did not materialize. The gym turned out to be one old exersize bike, the games room an empty room. The first aid room again empty room, there was not even a plaster to be had!



But our main complaint at the stay at this Hotel Club Viva, was the terrible food, absolutely un-edible, and the unacceptable standard of hygiene and food health and safety and selection of food in this all-inclusive hotel was the worst my family and I have ever experienced.



The breakfast consisted of 6-8 trays of olives, 2 types of local cheese, 2 types of local luncheon meat( curling up at the corners with a strange brown/greenish tint), both uncovered and un-refrigerated, with flies crawling on them. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber - again uncovered with flies. Swimming in grease, fried eggs, gone cold and hard, complete with flies. Hard boiled eggs (cold). Bread and butter. Tea bags, a kettle - never any water in it!, a milk jug, again uncovered or refrigerated and yet again with flies. And some strange looking cornflake-type cereal again un-covered, but in these there were only dead flies amongst the cereal! A juicer machine was present, but once you used it, the cost would be added onto your bill without warning along with tea or coffee at any time other than breakfast or cookie time (we ourselves received a bill of 70,250,000 TL for un-itemized drinks) one family was knocked awake by the security guard at 03.45am to sign for 2 cups of tea! Same every day. . . .

Lunch and evening meal was no better. Mainly we had a choice of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrot peelings and, as above and complete with flies, uncovered and un-refrigerated. A pot of very weak and tasteless soup, with bread and no butter. 4 stainless-steel cabinets which looked suspiciously like bread bins, which should have been hot, but a lighted flame, electricity or even hot water was never placed anywhere near them, so the contents were always cold, which doesn't take a lot of common food health and safety to work out the outcome when such foods as cooked chicken and rice are stored in them. They always contained the variety of cold hard French fries, plain pasta, rice, greasy chicken or greasy weak stew, all cold left for the duration of the meal time with out being changed/refreshed/topped up, temperature controlled or checked.

Needless to say the outcome was an outbreak of upset stomachs, diarrhea, vomiting and food poisoning amongst the guests at the hotel. The way the hotel dealt with this was to then charge the guest for using too much toilet roll, and started to sell rolls at reception. And then the water system went wrong, brown foul smelling, and what was almost like sewage started to appear in the bathrooms, showers.

A meeting was called amongst the sickened holiday makers from various holiday companies, In-shore Travel, First Choice, Regal Holidays, etc. And the various reps from the holiday companies were invited to the meeting, all the other holiday companies reps attended the meeting, our holiday company did not turn up at the meeting, despite the fact that I called their local office in Marmaris twice, and was assured a rep was on there way to us. My partner even called their office here in the UK for assistance, and was informed that they would be straight onto the problem and phone us back within 15mins. They failed to phone us or attend the meeting in the hotel. Other guests from other companies were moved into another hotel.



But, despite this, we were left in the appalling and terrible un-healthy conditions of the Club Hotel Viva, suffering and extremely un-happy, worried for our health. We could no longer tolerate or risk the effects of eating in the hotel, and were left with no other alternative, than to eat out in bars and restaurants, where we did find an acceptable and good quality of food and drinks, in not just one but all of the local bars we had to eat in, at a cost of £700 during our two week stay at the all inclusive Club Viva Hotel, as even the Club Viva's drinks were served un-chilled and flat soft drinks, or completely "watered down" alcoholic drinks! I'm no drunk, but like most adults, I don't need to be insulted if I do fancy the odd glass of wine or beer or even a mixer whilst on holiday with my family.



But on top of this, the final straw was not the ill-health of my family from the food, not the loud BOOM BOOM of the club XXX adult music, but the fact that the hotel maid decided to leave a "drinking water bottle" labeled spring water, in our hotel room next to the bathroom sink, containing not water, but BLEACH. We have a 7 year old daughter, she doesn't expect BLEACH to be in a drinking water bottle, in reach for her to drink .



We calmly talked to the hotel manager, pointing out our complaints and concerns of just how terrible everything was. He simply did not care. He told us face-to-face, he did not care. In fact he said his budget was too tight to provide healthy or quality of food, or choice of food. He did not care about the sickness, the doctor being called to guests ill or the amount of complaints he was constantly receiving. He also did not care about the maid's error; he was very un-helpful to the point of being rude.



His way of dealing with customers who complained, was to ask them to leave the hotel, we were not the first to be told to leave, and yes, we had to pack our bags and not only leave the hotel, but the manager's way of doing this was to invite a police officer along, who did not speak English, my partner and I, and the children were so upset, so terrified. But thankfully we did manage to get hold of our rep., who doesn't speak much Turkish, but was accompanied by her Turkish speaking partner. He then kindly explained to us that the manager wanted us to sign a statement written by himself, wording that we could only stay in the hotel if we agreed not to complain to Regal Holidays on return to the UK, about the terrible conditions at his Hotel Club Viva. Or we had to find our own accommodation and transport to another hotel. Our rep contacted Regal Holidays local Marmaris office, who said they were not prepared to do anything for us. We refused to sign such a statement; the complaints were far too serious.

We then had to pack our bags, find and search and walk to another hotel, Which thankfully was not a Regal holiday hotel, and took a serious view of health and safety amongst its guests and staff, was clean and the food and drink, entertainment, sun bed's and pool- area all fantastic.



This was a HOLIDAY FROM HELL. One so bad that reduced my partner to tears during and after the holiday. I even tried to get an early flight home, to escape the terror of Club Hotel Viva.