Did you book this holiday as a package ie flights and accommodation? Was anything written on your invoice as a special request?

Tour ops T&Cs usually have a line that says Special Requests can't be guaranteed. What you need is the reply email that says this one can. Armed with that you ought to have a case for breach of contract, without it things may get messy.

Rather than return to the UK after 3 days could you not have eaten outside the hotel and kept the receipts for the extra meals and then tried to claim some of this back from the travel organiser?

That said, from reading your post it seems the travel agent passed on your request to the hotel - could you not have shown the reply to the email to the hotel management and sort resolution that way if indeed the hotel had said that they could cater to your special needs? I'm really surprised that some meals could not be prepared for you, or for some food on the buffet not to be suitable for you. What about salads, soups etc?

As steve8482 says - they may just say it is a special request and that these requests are not guaranteed.

Not meaning to derisive in any way------------But surely you could have found something to eat

I assume that you have not just been diagnosed with this condition.

Have you never been on package holiday in a hotel before?

Sorry if I cannot sympathise but I feel you are trying to blame someone else for your problem.

Booking a package holiday will limit what food is available. It is mass catering and difficult if not impossible to cater on an individual basis.

My eldest son is a chef and whilst he will try he is not always able to cater for specific dietary needs.

fwh

Well fwh, if it's impossible they shouldn't have told him he/she was fine! In writing too!

My guess is though that they will turn around and say there was food on the menu that you could have ate!

i have to agree, there must have been something you could have eaten even if the choice wasnt great, i used to work as a cook in a nursing home and 1 of the patients was on a gluten free diet and he could eat some of the normal food other patients had, but it was mainly wheat products that was the problems, so he had his own, pasta, bread, cereals etc

A lot of it also depends on the type of package booked. Was it All Inclusive, Full Board, Half Board or B&B/Room Only?

Perhaps the OP can clarify this.

Mark

Did you fill in a complaint form with the rep? Did you just book yourself a flight and come home? Did the TO rep have anything to do with you leaving the hotel, did they assist you in any way?

I think we need a bit more information than you have given us.

It does seem a bit drastic to fly home after 3 days because of the hotel food. What sort of complaint did you make in resort with regards to your promised special diet?

See, if there was no paperwork filled in whilst in resort then the TO might well say that you just didnt like the food and decided to go home.

Sorry, but I'm finding it incredibly hard to believe that you couldn't find something to eat.
I've never been in a hotel in Spain that doesn't put plain lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, carrot and cheese on the buffet"¦.followed by some sort of fresh fruit.
Bread, salad and fish are the staple diet of the Spanish and they eat platefuls of salad piled high.

I appreciate that you wouldn't be able to eat the bread, but to say there was nothing to eat at all, is a little hard for me to grasp, what is wrong with bacon, eggs and fresh tomatoes for breakfast or the cheese and ham that they usually provide for the continentals.?

Maybe when the hotel said they would cater for your diet, they probably looked at their menu and though, well if she can't eat one dish, she can always have a fresh cheese or ham salad that night.

Many diabetics who control their diabetes by eating a controlled diet, they seem to be able to go abroad and find something to eat, and some take their own diabetic jam and marmalade for their breakfast.

The worst scenario....you could have gone to a restaurant and ordered a salad , it's not what you would like, but rather than come home, you could have saved the receipts and then taken up your complaint.
Photographic evidence also comes in useful at times.

Sorry this may not be what you want to hear, but unless you have it in writing and can prove that there was no alternative"¦then I think you haven't got a leg to stand on.

Sanji

If someone was in a wheelchair and was told that they would be in a ground floor room and arrived and were on the top floor and told to lump it, everyone would be up in arms about it. Coeliac disease means you cant eat gluten, which is in flour, which eleminates 90% of most mass produced hotel food. the fact that the chef was unwilling to prepare anything astounds me, a kitchen should be willing to do ANYTHING within reason to make a customer happy. To some people leaving after 3 days might seem extreme but why should someone have to eat salad everyday? would anyone have budgeted for eating out everyday if you thought your meals were provided?
a bit more info is needed, were you on all inc or half board. i hope that you have everything in writing, keep us posted

Senor Beaver

I think that is an important factor - what board was booked? Until that information is provided we're all making assumptions. Any advice given on this complaint is going to differ on whether it was an AI hotel or a hotel booked on RO.

Mark

There is a big difference between a Chef in a large hotel catering for several hundred people with a set menu of dishes (usually rotating on a one or two week basis) in your average package tour hotel, and a Michelin starred establishment, where dishes are prepared on an individual basis for the diner.

Whilst you may request food for special dietary need most of these places are simple not set up that way.

The Chef (who is probably more like a catering manager) will supervise a staff producing dishes to a menu prepared by him.

fwh

Having catered for hundreds of people in the UK and overseas, as long as we had notice it really isnt hard. I know some people take advantage of this, but having informed them way in advance they have can have no excuse.

But IF it was booked on a RO basis, would there be a contractual basis for the hotel to provide such meals?

Mark

If it was RO then the complaint wouldnt hold any water

Although it might seem drastic to have come home, knowing friends who have coeliac, eating 'out' isn't necessarily as simple as it might seem. Gluten containing foods (not just wheat based products) merely have to come into contact with other foods to contaminate them, so the pasta in the salad can't simply be picked out etc. All Coeliacs have different levels of tolerance and we don't know what Leehan's is. Just to pose a question- if you were in a foreign country with a food intolerance and eating the wrong thing could put your health at risk possibly even landing you in hospital, would you risk it? Think back to the case of a nursery child a couple of years ago who died having been fed a product containing milk despite having a known intolerance- my daughter also had the same problem, yet her reaction wasn't to go into anaphylactic shock.
Having gone on rather, I do think Leehan has a point, if reassured before going that gluten free meals were guaranteed, when in fact they weren't, if it's in writing surely there is a case to be answered. Food related conditions shouldn't be trivialised and dismissed.

Good luck, I think in part this comes down to a lack of understanding of the condition.

Pam

May I just remind members that we're here helping somebody asking whether they had a valid complaint.

Whilst discussion of celiac disease may be interesting, it perhaps is best that we wait for answers from the OP on questions asked previously in this topic.

MarkJ HT Mod

Well some facts are needed!
If the poster was told by the TO that they would get their request then they should get their request, regardless of any other matter that has been posted about chefs, amount of guests, etc!

That is the point here!

If the hotel couldn't provide this then don't tell the customers you can!