British Family Stranded in Marrakech After TUI Booking Blunder

A traumatic and stressful experience. This is how Manjit Hear and her two children Jo, 7, and Gyan, 13, sum up their experience. Arrived at the Be Live hotel where they were supposed to stay peacefully, they learn that TUI had not confirmed their reservation. They tried to contact the company. Without success. "We arrived at the hotel, exhausted and hungry. [...] We were told that TUI had not confirmed our reservation, so we quickly started calling them, but we had no luck. [...] We sat for hours, it dragged on and on," Manjit told Deadline News.

Hear’s two children had to sleep on the floor in the hotel lobby. With another family in the same situation because of TUI, the family managed to find a place in a neighboring hotel at 3 a.m. The night was billed at £650. After dozens of calls from the Hear family, the company finally contacted Manjit late the next afternoon to say he could return to the Be Live hotel with his children.

It was a traumatic experience for the Hear family - especially Jo - who spent £3,200 on this trip. "My youngest has ADHD and it’s just unacceptable that he be left in this position. He was my main concern. He was so distressed, the poor child. He was traumatized. He is stressed by the slightest change, so all this uncertainty was so difficult for him. He kept asking where we were going to sleep that night. He paced the lobby. You don’t expect that kind of stress on vacation," Manjit lamented.

"I have no doubt in my mind that if we hadn’t found our own accommodation, we would have slept in the lobby all night. [...] It was a nightmare. We lost the whole first night trying to find somewhere to stay. [...] Then we lost the second day because the departure times meant we had barely slept," he continued.