just got back on friday from sunrise royal makadi and have already booked 2 weeks in july it was fab.We had already stayed 4 times at the palace and both hotels have there good and bad points.We went to the palace reception but all they would say was that the contract had run out with my travel and they wont be starting a new one with a british company in the near future i think if you liked the palace youll like the royal mind you it is a bit buisier and a lot more arogant nations there but if you ignore them youll love it nice food nice rooms staff love the brits overall well worth it hope this helps with some worries cheers

Hi Walkreman,
Glad you had a great time we are now going to The Royal and are looking forward to it.
big-si Direct holidays did also try to convince us that our holiday was ok however I was very persistant and eventually The Operations dept told us we would not be going to the Palace due to the Thomas Cook takeover and them not renewing contracts.
I hope that you can get through to them as this is so unfair they did try to tell me If they were going to change hotels it would be 8 weeks befor the holiday but I didn`t settle for that ,Our holiday is in August.
Good Luck Mel.

I have just returned from Hurghada, we where staying at the sunrise holidays hotel and just though i would let you know that whilst we were there 8 bookings where only told when they got to hurghada that there hotel had been changed to ours. They where all suppost to go to the Makadi Palace, i know there had been some queries as to wether booking where being honoured...

All the people who arrived at our hotel instead of there choice where understandably very upset, there where also some where they should have been going too Mamlouk Palace...

Sorry but i hope this has helped you

If they went with the Thomas Cook group and only found out when they got to Hurghada then this is disgraceful. A company such as this shouln't be able to sell holidays in this way, knowing full well of the changes they have made but not passing this info onto the customer. Is this not fraud?????

I take it I am not allowed to use a certain word that means deception for gain?

chelsea1 wrote:

I take it I am not allowed to use a certain word that means deception for gain?

I'm afraid not, no. Unfortunately words such as this have been known to cause us big legal headaches in the past. Sorry.

Pippy

I am due to travel to the Makadi Palace mid May. I just had a frank discussion with Direct Holiday customer service representative who maintain my holiday is fine. My request to speak to a supervisor refused!!!! If I do not pay my balance by fri I will lose my deposit. I have spent 5 hrs trying to get thought to Thomas Cook Customer relations plus sending Email to Direct Holidays without any successful replies! Can any of you seasoned campaigners give my any advise how you got your holidays sorted. Desperate and running out of ideas and time

I have had numerous discussions with them and stil they are adamant that we are still on for the Makadi Palace.

If they do change it ABTA will be recieving a complaint and I will be persuing legal action.

Just got back yesterday from the Palace and for anyone due to go shortly i would advise to stand your ground and dont let them change your hotel as you will not be disappointed it was FAB and you can use all its sister hotel The Grand next doors facilities as ive mentined before they tried to move us but we refused
Thomas cook group have defo lost the contract with this hotel and in future months you will only be able to book this hotel directly which is expensive or thro i believe a GERMAN company who are going to sell package deals in England for the Palace

I managed to speak to someone in operations dept on Tues, initially they maintained our holiday was fine and would go ahead as booked. After I produced evidence to to prove it wasn't they finally confirmed that the contract has been cancelled.
Anyone travelling for the May half term such as myself will recieve notification the week before they travel as to which hotel they will be allocated and it might not be in any of thier brochures .
I wasn't happy and asked for a free tranfer or my deposit back they told me I wasn't a priority!!! I threw a paddy and they agreed that I could change hotel but had to pay any additional charges or cancel with a full refund. They wasn't able to find a suitable alternative hotel.
At the moment they are working on end of march beginning of April departures the royal Makadi sunrise is not available to people traveling with young famlies as there is no family rooms available.
B.e.a.w.a.r.e I was given a direct number to ring back on weds to sort out my cancellation and refund but on weds that number had been temporarily suspended and I am still trying to contact them to sort it out. yes, I fell for it !!!!!

I have again been onto Thomas Cook operations who have denied any knowledge and while have admitted they have not renewed the contract they have said they are honouring our booking, so I think I'm going to suck it and see

Stick with the palace as you are for starters in a junior suite instead of your typical hotel rooms ours was FAB
Secondly you have 2 hotels at your desposal numerous restaurants pools bars etc so its tremendous
value for money and you will not be disappointed
As for the building work its a third Makadi hotel they are building next door its close to the beach screens up and its beside 1
of the grills at the beach end of the Palace and believe me you cant hear a thing
ENJOY

Hi all

New to the site, but have been looking through this post and have major concerns about my holiday to the Makadi Palace in August 2008, with my family (a wife and 2 young children, 5 and 8 ).

As we have young children, we booked the hotel back in August 2007 to ensure we had a chance of getting a family room at the Makadi Palace, which we did get, but also, as I booked early, we got a really good deal, as we got a free child place and only paid 1/3 of the Adult price for the other.

Since I read the post a week or so ago, I have contacted our travel agent (Going Places) who, as soon as I asked them about my concerns over the hotel have never once denied or confirmed that "Everything is OK" and that the hotel will be available for our holiday, which hasn't filled me with huge amounts of confidence.

As soon as I mentioned that we wished to look at alternatives, they were not trying to convince us not to do it, so we asked them to work out the pricing for an alternative hotel, which they were happy to do.

We've priced up another holiday (this time in Rhodes) and has come out £300 dearer, even though the adult prices are cheaper, but because we no longer get free kids places and the other one goes at 1/2 the adult price. Ok, not a massive difference in price, but still annoyed that we no longer qualify for free kids places !!!

They also want to charge us £180 to change our booking, which we're refusing to do and have taken up with ABTA. They said they would contact their "Operations Dept" to see what they can do about these fees, which, after 3 phone calls and a visit to them, we still had to wait 5 days for them to come back to us, only for them to say that although they cannot 100% guarantee that we won't be going there, they are sure that our booking will go ahead. If we want to go ahead and cancel, we will still have to pay the charges.

Contacted ABTA for advise, they can't really help until we write an official letter to Going Places and get a response.

Don't know who we should contact to speak to, Going Places branch aren't helpful and can't find number for Going Places / Airtours Operations.

People have mentioned on here that they have contacted Thomas Cook Operations and been given help and advice, seeing as though Airtours have been taken over by Thomas Cook, does anyone got the telephone number I can call ??

Anyone else booked through Going Places and going with Airtours that can offer any advice or have heard anything about what's going to happen, to give me some confidence ??

Our problem is that, as we have 2 young ones, we can't afford to wait until a week before hand to find out that we are / aren't going to be staying at the Makadi Palace or elsewhere, without the family room we need. This is why we've started looking elsewhere, and we're still early enough to get a booking with one the family rooms that we might need.

I'm gonna be SOOOOOO annoyed if 1 week before hand, we get told that we're going else where, especially as we tried to do something about it 4 1/2 months before.

Thanks for all your help in advance.

Paul

Paul,

See pm. Have another number if all else fails.

regards

Stew

i was due to go to makadi palace back in feb(you may have seen my earlier posts) i chased directholidyas etc for almost 2 months to get an answer about wether i would be going to palace after hearing that redsea hotel chain were nolonger going to contract to thomas cook/airtours. i was assured up until 1 month before i went that i would definately be ok and go there, however i understood that the contract ended at the end of april (winter season ). i didnt want to go to a place where i worried that staff etc would have lost all loyalty/interest in thomas cookk/airtours etc customers. when i got the building work letter approx 1 month before i decided to use this as my main reason to canx.which i did and eventually got a full refund. i do think that i may have ended up at makadi palace afterall...but i also worried that i too would end up either being told at the very last minute of a hotel change, which would leave me too late to rebook anything else ( family of 4 feb half term ). anyway i rebooked and went to mamlouk palace in hurghada also with thomas cook and had a brilliant holiday. i would still persue this with your travel agent and get them to contact operations on your behalf( i work as a travel agent myself and we spend alot of time ringing companies on customers behalf.,for stuff like this, afterall customers choose to book through us,rather than booking on web etc). we also sometimes have to ring customers at very short notice with hotel changes etc.( which was something i was very aware of when deciding what to do re my holiday. i mentioned all the stuff on this and other well known travel forum that i had read , when i rang operations, also people are having just as much hassle re other hotels in this chain....especially ghazala gardens in sharm. if you need any more info just pm me.

Received my invoice from TC yesterday still on for the Palace, spoke to operations and they insist that they are honouring existing bookings.

Hope all goes OK as it's my birthday while we're there

I hope you all check your flight details, we booked with Going Places last year to go to the Le Meridian Makadi Bay in June 2008, we were given all the details. Then later in the year we were given new flight details following the merger with TC but the invoice was from Panorama and the flight with Monarch. We contacted them a couple of weeks back to pay the balance and purely by coincidence the person told my wife that the flight had changed again back in January, we now fly with TC also different times again, nice of them to let us know, good customer service NOT.

Just arrived back from Makadi Palace last night. Excellent holiday and resort was spot on. Evening entertainment wasn't up to much and you had to pay for imported drinks but that was OK as we stuck to local stuff which was fine. Snorkelling from the beach was second to none but be careful if going out when tide is out as getting past the corals can be tricky.
Massive sister hotel being built next door but although you can see it from certain parts of the resort you can not hear anything and it was no problem at all. All the main structure work looks like it is finished so they are working on the inside.
Excellent resort but alot of Europeans mainly Germans.

Thanks to melandmark and chelsea1 who helped to "eventually" get our holiday sorted out.

From our experience over the last few weeks, everyone who is due to go to the Makadi Palace, please be careful, as I think you may be about to get stitched up.

Basically what has happened with us since my last post is this"¦..

We kept on phoning and visiting the Going Places travel agent to get the problem sorted out..."¦. I wouldn't even bother with speaking to your Travel Agent, go straight to Thomas Cook Operations (0870 0102373 use option 2)

Going Places were still insisting that everything is OK with our holiday, so we contacted ABTA to find out how we would stand, if 1 week before we go, we find out that we are not going to the Makadi Palace and were getting sent elsewhere with the possibility (and probability) that we wouldn't get a Family Room as we booked. ABTA said that we would have a good standing for compensation, but would have to start the ball rolling by getting everything in writing from Going Places / Thomas Cook.

We fired off a complaint letter to Going Places, explaining our circumstances and saying that we would seek compensation if we were moved last minute elsewhere, especially as we were trying to pre-empt any problems 4 months in advance. We also said that we had been in contact with, and advised by, ABTA to get everything in writing. We also wrote that we didn't think we should be paying £180 cancellation fees, as we were 99.9% sure our holiday would be changed later.

We sent the letter off on Monday morning and whilst we waited for some kind of contact from Going Places, we also contacted Thomas Cook Ops (number above) on the same Monday. We spoke to *****, who said that he would do some investigation and let us know. Unfortunately, the battery on our home phone packed up and we were cut off. Unless you ring at exactly 9:00, you have ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of getting back through to them again that day. So on the next day (Tuesday) my wife phoned up again at exactly 9:00 and spoke to someone else, who said that we shouldn't be phoning them unless we were from a travel agent. After explaining the circumstances and saying that she'd spoken to ***** the day before, she said she would help. She said that ***** had found out some information already, but wasn't sure what exactly, but something WAS wrong with our booking. So, after waiting 15 minutes hanging on the phone listening to some cheesy music, she accidentally dropped the phone whilst trying to IRON !!! and got cut off again !!!!!!!!!!!! Even though, both times she called them, they had our telephone number, but didn't ring back once, or attempt to contact us. On the Wednesday, my wife phoned up again and spoke to ***** in Ops Processing, who said that ***** had done a lot of digging around and confirmed that we WOULDN'T be staying at the Makadi Palace and that we were being moved to the Royal Sunrise Makadi. Fair enough, the Royal Sunrise is a nice hotel and not wanting to put anyone off from going there, but it just wasn't the hotel we booked and the one we really wanted to stay in.

In the meantime, Going Places finally pulled their finger out and contacted us on the Thursday, saying that we wouldn't be staying at the Makadi Palace and said that we would be at the Royal Sunrise....... Funny That"¦.... we already know !!!! Why is it that we had to do all the dirty work ourselves for weeks and weeks to find out that we wouldn't be staying there.

I personally think that everyone does know what's going on, but just won't admit to it. They were pushing and pushing for us to pay £180 for us to cancel our holiday and re-book elsewhere. Some people, if they didn't push like we did, would just pay it and move on. From Thomas Cook point of view, why not get £180 per family to cancel, rather than themselves getting nothing for customers cancelling, including all the grief, complaints and any complications that they know are going to happen when they do move people.

Think about this..... If they still insist that you are going to be staying there, but we know that the contract ends at the end of April..... Ask them "What reps are going to be looking after me when I'm over there ???" Thomas Cook reps...?? Airtours reps.... ?? I don't think so..... the contract will be finished !!!!

PLEASE BE CAREFUL IF YOU ARE DUE TO GO TO MAKADI PALACE, although I can't categorically say it, but I don't think anyone will be going there and you WILL be moved elsewhere, which may not be suitable for your needs. Whatever you do, just keeping pushing and pushing and get them to admit to what's going on. Speak to ***** in Operations, he seems pro-active and found out the information we needed. Query it now before it's too late and nothing else is available.

Anyway, on the plus side, we off to Rhodes now in August . We're not happy that we didn't get the free child's place that we got when we booked last August for the Makadi Palace, but at least we know where we're going, we're All-Inclusive and that we have a guranteed Family Room.

Good Luck everyone.

Paul

Hi Paul,
glad to hear you got sorted at last but I thimk is is awful the way people are being treat.
Again I have to say (Stew)chealsea1 helped me all the way.
Thanks again to him.
Mel