Booked a hotel last year with them, and specifically requested that hotel as I stayed close to it the previous year with another company.
When we got on our coach our driver told us we were at a hotel I'd never heard of. After a short debate and showing him our paperwork he agreed to drop us off at out chosen hotel.
When we got there, we were told Ola had overbooked and had relocated us to another hotel - a depressing looking building up the road.
We had no call, no email, no letter explaining of this from Ola coming up to the holiday. Strange how the coach driver knew more about our holiday than we did!
We booked a room with a sea view and ended up with a room in a grotty hotel with a view of a road, which was completely obscured by a tree that had grown on to our balcony.

After many calls to Ola which took forever they simply told us it was in their terms and conditions to relocate if required and if we wanted to complain we could by letter when we returned. End of. Goodbye sucka, thanks for the money!
Needless to say we wrote an exhaustive letter with photos, price lists from both hotels and send it off to them through recorded delivery.

We were offered a £20 off voucher with them in compensation.
Ohhhh how I laughed.

Wish we'd never booked with them. No wonder they've changed company names.
It seems they make money by promising the best hotels, charging for them, and then move people to cheaper hotels. All the while doing this unscrupulous operation within their own T&C's.
We know this because several other people in our hotel had booked with them too and had to be relocated, as well as seeing other customers reporting the same.

Do yourself a favour and avoid like the plague.

i booked with travel ola to benidorm and we had fab time, hotel you could not fault and the transfers were fab too, would book again with them.x

Hmmmmm!!

i booked with travel ola to benidorm and we had fab time, hotel you could not fault and the transfers were fab too, would book again with them.x

Strange when so many others have problems. Could not possibly be because you work for them.

fwh

lol i certainly dont work for them, i just had a good hol with no problems with this company

and you just managed to find this forum, and this thread that's been inactive for nearly 6 months!

I can understand the suspicion, given our previous experience of staff posing as customers. However, this topic does actually sit very high in search engine rankings, one of the reasons it is so easily found by anyone with something good or bad to say about the company.

David

OH CRIKEY!! - I've just booked a holiday with this firm....

Given that a lot of the bad stuff goes back to quite a few years ago, I'm still worried ...

Oh well, let's see what happens... the email confirmation of my flight came through Ok, have been told to expect confirmation of Accom/transfers on tuesday.....

I'll keep you informed..

ATB,J.

Well, I now have downloaded and printed out all of the required paperwork... boarding passes, transfer coupons, accommodation vouchers...

It all looks good so far...

ATB,J.

Unfortunately you will also find Ola and TravelOla mentioned in our Complaints forum. I hope we don't see a post from you there!

luci

Well, I'm back and all I can say is that everything went like a dream...

No complaints from me!!

I'd use them again..

ATB,J.

Booked for Santorini with these guys 3 x self catering apartments. On arrival given 2 rooms only and one self catering room. I showed the hotel owner my booking confirmation which clearly stated 3 x SC rooms. He showed me the booking from OLA which showed only 1 x SC and 2 x room only with a big difference in price the owner wanted 200 euros to upgrade the other two.

I contacted OLA by email and they said I had to ring them even though I was in Greece. On the phone for 40minutes at a cost of 22euros and they kept me on hold till I ran out of money. Great.

The holiday was good but the company were and are crap. Fortunately after being given the run around being told they only accept complaints by letter I finally gave up they offered me £ 20 off another holiday.

I finally got £ 180 off by claiming back via my credit card for expenses incurred eating out.

This company are totally useless they lie and avoid dealing with you never ring you back never let you speak to anyone. If you want a stressful time book with this company. My advice is AVOID them at all cost no matter how cheap the deal is. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

linzismum wrote:

I put previous post on to say I was a bit concerned about holiday booked with Ola for my daughter. Since posting I have been contacted by them with regard to complaint I made with the way the booking was taken i.e. the agent described holiday as full package when in fact it's a dyamic package. Anyway to update, I have received the email confirmations and transfer vouchers together with confirmation invoice and receipts. I did have to telephone twice, once to confirm acceptance of change of accommodation and 2nd time to request the confirmations be sent by email which they were while I was actually on the phone. Also I would have to say in my case, both calls were answered quickly, one went through in a minute or so, 2nd call a bit slower at around 10 minutes in total. I did notice some posters say they didn't have necessary transfer vouchers etc and some posters said that they hadn't received their tickets. Tickets aren't sent as such, just transfer and accommodation vouchers by email and written confirmation of all bookings by email. Anyway hopefully holiday itself will go OK. It's not till half term break in October, so fingers crossed. Good luck to all with their holidays.

:sun2

Yes these guys are totally to be Avoided if at all possible,. They will try every trick in the book to avoid resolving problems.

pls1745 wrote:

Booked for Santorini with these guys 3 x self catering apartments. On arrival given 2 rooms only and one self catering room. I showed the hotel owner my booking confirmation which clearly stated 3 x SC rooms. He showed me the booking from OLA which showed only 1 x SC and 2 x room only with a big difference in price the owner wanted 200 euros to upgrade the other two.

I contacted OLA by email and they said I had to ring them even though I was in Greece. On the phone for 40minutes at a cost of 22euros and they kept me on hold till I ran out of money. Great.

The holiday was good but the company were and are "swear". Fortunately after being given the run around being told they only accept complaints by letter I finally gave up they offered me £ 20 off another holiday.

I finally got £ 180 off by claiming back via my credit card for expenses incurred eating out.

This company are totally useless they lie and avoid dealing with you never ring you back never let you speak to anyone. If you want a stressful time book with this company. My advice is AVOID them at all cost no matter how cheap the deal is. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

Just an update. OLA still haven't contacted me but the other couple from the hotel have sent me an email. They were booked in the same hotel and again had no self catering room. They have also been offered £20 by ola who again have said they breached the company's terms and conditions by not contacting them and making their complaint whilst still in resort to the rep or the company directly.

Strange as they also emailed the address I gave them and were told that someone would be in touch whilst in resort. No one did there was no rep. They have not been able to claim anything back yet as they paid a deposit of £ 200 by credit card and the rest by a different credit card which apparently negates your protection. They have contacted ABTA who say that this issue is not covered by their guarantee they only cover for holidays that were not provided or were substantially different from that purchased So being on the correct flight and in the correct hotel although not in the right type of room is not ground for complaint.

Looks like OLA are quite subtle about the changes. Please Please Avoid you have been warned.

[center]** OLA HAVE NOW CEASED TRADING**[/center]

The Essex-based online agent, Ola Holidays, has ceased trading with 500 customers overseas and also had around 2,000 forward bookings.

More information can be found here http://www.travelmole.com/news_feature.php?c=setreg&region=2&m_id=s~dvbvv&w_id=9479&news_id=2009146

Graham