DISASTROUS EXPERIENCE WITH LOVE HOLIDAYS, APPALLING CUSTOMER SERVICE. THIS IS NOT A TRAVEL COMPANY, JUST A BOOKING AGENT WHO TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF THINGS GO WRONG We are a family of 6. Although my husband and I have travelled extensively in the past (including to India), we have never taken the children abroad as we did not have the money whilst they were growing up. This year we offered to take them on a special holiday and after a lot of juggling of work and other commitments, were able to identify a 6 day holiday to Marrakech. We chose a 5* star hotel with fully inclusive option, hoping to have a premium experience. This was a relatively late booking but the flights and hotel were showing as available, we paid over £5,000 which was debited from our account and were given no indication of any problem. During the weekend prior to our planned travel on Thursday 10 August, I started to become concerned that we had seen no travel documents. An email had been received from you advising us to access these through 'manage my bookings' but no documents were available. I instigated a live chat to enquire and was told that there had been a problem with flight availability and that 'someone should have been in touch' to let us know. They were unable to give us any further detail and left us with the option only of waiting until the following Monday before our planned travel to try and find out via the customer services helpline what was happening. This filled me with horror as I had previously found any attempts at telephone contact to involve sitting around for long periods of time trying to get through. Athough this issue was a disaster for us as a family, the response we initially got to our worry was offhand, disinterested and with no attempt at empathy or customer care/service. It took multiple time consuming and worrying attempts to even get to speak to someone who would listen to us and have any authority to take action or make a decision about how to resolve this. The action eventually agreed on was that Love Holidays would refund the flight element of the holiday and we would try to secure our own flights as we did not want to disappoint the children. We were initially told the refund would take up to 5 days and we did not have further funds to use so our holiday was once again in jeopardy. After further pressure, they agreed to make a quicker refund and we spent two stressful days of waiting for the return of the flight money, searching for flights which were eventually not confirmed and paid for until the day prior to departure. Instead of approaching the holiday in a calm and happy way making last minute arrangements, we were stressed, worried and exhausted. The flights we managed to get were long involving a midnight departure from home and with stop-over/plane change/hanging around in Madrid half way rather than the direct flights we had selected with Love Holidays. We were also advised that the pre-paid transfers would be changed to meet our new flights. However, this was not done and we arrived in Marrakech exhausted with no-one to meet us. The hotel was not of a 5* standard - we would rate it more as 3*. The rooms were relatively clean but basic and one of them smelled of slight sewage. The hotel whilst potentially lovely was like a holiday camp with loud music played around the pool most of the day and sub-standard 'entertainment' (mostly a man singing with an electronic piano) very loud until 11.00 pm each night. I had filtered our holiday search through the Love Holidays website to only include hotels with gym/fitness facilities as 3 of our 4 boys use a gym daily. These and other facilities such as any acceptable eating places other than the inclusive buffet which was making us all ill were at an additional cost. The gym was the equivalent of £9/day for single use per person. In the end, we compromised and I paid £30 each for two of the boys for a 5 day pass which only allowed for a single 1 hour entry per day. In the end, they were both so ill that they hardly used it. 'Inclusive' drinks included miniature size paper cups in the poolside bar, sometimes served with drinks after witnessing the bar staff fishing flies out of with their hands and continuing to serve. Our most serious concern was relating to food/illness. We booked the all inclusive option believing this to be a premium option and wanting to spoil the children a little for their first foreign holiday together. However, each wearing a yellow plastic wrist band all the time entitled us to only access a sub-standard buffet dining room where food was laid out for several hours with flies buzzing around and smelled so awful that we all felt nauseous upon entering. The same range of salads and ass produced mini desserts appeared at virtually every meal and the pile of bread rolls was not removed between meals. We all very quickly became ill and had varying degrees of nausea, vomiting and diaorrhea. After several days of not eating, my 14 year old passed out in the dining room, banging his head and face on the skirting and tiled floor. He had a cut on his head and nasty cut and bruise to his face. The guest relations person had an uncommunicative and unfortunate manner/disposition for the role she was performing. She asked if we would like a doctor to check him over. We said yes as he had had a nasty bump to the head and had an open wound. She then returned with someone with a badge marked 'Security' and a first aid box saying that the Doctor wouldn't come as he couldn't be sure that he would be paid. He had suggested that we should call an ambulance to take him to hospital. My son at this point was very shaken and scared at the thought of going so we said we would take him to his room and stay with him/watch him carefully for any signs of concussion. Whilst this was happening, my husband was in our room with vomiting, diaorrhea and severe abdominal cramps. We later expressed our concern about the food/illness to the hotel and asked them to record our concerns and my son's accident but they said they were not responsible and had no system for recording such things. We had at this point not had a holiday at all, we had all been ill, had spent most of our time in our rooms and my son was no longer able to use the pool or be in the sun due to his face. We all felt ill and none of us trusted the food and were mostly not eating at all. My two younger children and myself reluctantly decided to pay £750 to arrange earlier flights back to England on the Monday night prior to our planned departure on the Wednesday. The whole experience was a nightmare starting with Love Holiday's inability to provide the flights as booked and then providing accommodation which was not as advertised and which had seriously sub-standard food/hygiene standards. There was no support on site to address any of these issues or system in place to do this. Signal in the hotel was poor and mobile calls very expensive and impractical for trying to address these issues through the 'in resort' customer service line. Any calls to Love Holidays prior to departure had been slow and unresponsive and would have been horrendously expensive for us at a cost of £1.40/minute for mobile call. We were also all ill with sickness and diaorrhea and obviously more focused on coping with that. Love Holidays have responded that they are not responsible for any failure to provide services as advertised on their website, that our agreement is with the third party providers. However, our contract was made and money paid to Love Holidays and our complaint relates to the significant failure on their part to meet the service advertised relating to flights, hotel or transfers and overall inadequate customer service. We returned having been ill and injured, feeling worse than we did before the holiday. It was a complete waste of money and not in any way as presented on the website. At the time of booking, I believed this to be a holiday company. What I did not see when searching holidays was the disclaimer right at the bottom of each web page indicating that it was just a booking agent. When going through the search/booking process, I did not have any need to scroll right to the bottom of the page. This fact is not prominent or transparent. This is not a holiday company - the name is misleading - it is a booking agent with no integrity or accountability if things go wrong and no on-site support to remedy any problems or any concern for customer care or experience. We feel we wasted a large sum of money and have returned not having had a holiday and feeling much worse than before we went.