Choosing your honeymoon destination can be a tricky affair, I mean, theoretically, you're only gonna do it once, so it's gotta be good, right?
And as one couple discovered, if you don't choose wisely, you will live to regret it.
Magdalena Brylinska-Beaton and husband Andrew Beaton, from Inverness, Scotland, recently checked into the Sun Club El Dorado in Majorca.
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Ahead of their romantic trip, the couple had a look to see what other guests thought of the two-star resort, and while they weren't all exactly glowing, they thought it would do the trick.
"There were bad reviews but there were also good reviews saying, 'Not as bad as people say'," Magdalena explained.
"All together, we paid around £860 including the transfer and extra luggage.
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"It did say that the hotel was basic, but that wasn't a problem for us provided that it's clean, because we wanted to go out and explore anyway."
Suspicions began to surface, however, when they hopped in a taxi upon arrival at the airport and told the driver where they were staying.
Safe to say that he knew it well.
"We went up to the transfer desk and the driver asked where we were staying," Magdalena, 36, recalled.
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"He said, 'Oh Sun Club El Dorado' and then started laughing. That was the first thing I should have picked up on."
And that's where their nightmare began.
When they checked into the hotel, Magdalena and Andrew were handed two plastic cups and apparently told they had to bring them whenever they wanted a drink, like, literally, whenever they wanted any drink.
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"The first night I went to the bar and asked for a sangria and the guy says, 'Where is your cup? You must have been given cups at arrival?'," Magdalena said.
"I was like, you have got to be joking me. They expected us to use the same cups for the coffee the next morning - it was the weirdest thing."
As a result, she said, she resorted to washing her cup with her own shower gel, which is pretty bleak.
So upset with their experience, the couple decided to move to another hotel, forking out £425 for five nights.
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When she went to the front desk to ask for a refund for the remaining unused nights, Magdalena said that she was offered a total of '€11 tourist tax money'.
Well, responding to their criticism, a spokesperson for the hotel said that it tries its best to give guests what they want.
"Since Covid, customers' expectations are very high. It's normal for a website to advertise the best photos of a hotel," the statement read.
"They have to take into account the value for money and this hotel is one of the cheapest."
And loveholidays, the company Magdalena and Andrew booked the trip through, has also offered its own statement on the whole saga too.
It said: "We're sorry Magdalena Brylinska-Beaton's experience did not live up to her expectations on this occasion.
"While we always encourage customers to raise any issues with our dedicated in-resort team at the time so we can address them, we've reviewed her case and issued a refund for the days she did not use the hotel."
Topics: Travel
Dominic Smithers