Monday 1 August 2022 11:36 AM British couple's fury at £5,000 'luxury' Caribbean holiday next to 7am-4pm ... trends now
Dawn Brett and husband David, both 59, had splashed out £5,100 on the two-week holiday booked with Tui at the Riu Palace Antillas Hotel on the island of Aruba. But when they arrived, they found a noisy building site towered 'over the pool'
A furious couple have demanded a £5,000 refund after their luxury Caribbean getaway turned into the holiday from hell as a noisy building site towered 'over the pool', leaving them needing painkillers every day.
Dawn Brett and husband David, both 59, had splashed out £5,000 on the two-week holiday booked with Tui at the Riu Palace Antillas Hotel on the island of Aruba.
For five grand, they were expecting the holiday of a lifetime.
But the mum-of-two claims that when she arrived at the adult-only hotel last month, they were met with a building site where a hotel was being constructed next door.
Footage shows the building work towering over the pool and almost 'obscuring the sky' as the sound of banging rings out as nearby holidaymakers try to relax.
The 'horrific' noise from drilling and machinery was so bad that Dawn claims it forced her to take painkillers for headache relief every day.
The 'horrific' noise from drilling and machinery was so bad that Dawn claims it forced her to take painkillers for headache relief every day
The holiday is pictured as advertised on the left, with the couple finding the noisy construction of the hotel ongoing when they arrived on the right
The GP receptionist says the noisy machinery whirring up at 7am every day except Sunday and didn't finish until 4pm.
She considered cutting her holiday short by a week because of it, she added.
Tui claim they sent a letter to the guests explaining that building work was ongoing - however the letter said it could only be heard 'sporadically' and Dawn says they never would have gone if the extent of the work had been made clear to them.
Now the couple are demanding a full refund from Tui and are 'refusing to let the issue drop' until they do.
Dawn, from Orpington, Kent, said: 'When I first saw the building work it I said "oh my bloody God".
'We'd been saving a while. It's a lot of money and we'd been looking forward to it.
'It's heartbreaking. It was constant banging, drilling and machinery. You just couldn't get away from it. It was horrible.
'We're sitting around the pool people but you couldn't relax, it was horrific. You can turn your head to not look but you can't shut your ears.
'I'm not letting it go and accepting what's happened. I won't book with them again. 'It was such a shame and really sad.
'It was bang, bang, bang all the time and you couldn't get away from it. It was the whole of our holiday.
'That's why I'm demanding my money back. I could demand compensation. I could ask for 10 x 20p for the Ibuprofen because I had to take headache tablets all the time.
'It wasn't great at all, it was awful. We had to suck it up. If they'd have shown us the building works, we would have cancelled.'
Dawn says that by day seven of her holiday, they were so desperate to escape the noise that they considered packing their
