Cardiff couple’s Turkish
holiday blighted by food poisoning
Source of Article: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/01/17/cardiff-couple-s-turkish-holiday-blighted-by-food-poisoning-91466-22712863/
Jan
17 2009 by James McCarthy, South Wales
Echo
Cardiff couple’s Turkish holiday blighted by
food poisoning
A CARDIFF couple have told how they too were victims of a
holiday from hell at a Turkish resort.
Earlier this week the Echo
revealed how Barry’s Tracy and Paul Swannick had
their wedding wrecked when their 25-strong party suffered crippling food
poisoning that left them and their guests with vomiting, diarrhoea
and stomach pains at the First Choice Holiday Village Hotel, in Sarigerme, southern Turkey.
They and 400 others are to sue
holiday firm First Choice after their nightmare trip last September.
Now husband and wife Gareth and
Sarah Mitchell, of Llanedeyrn, Cardiff, have told how their holiday was
also ruined last August after they too fell sick at the hotel.
The disgusted couple spent four
days holed up in their room with son Thomas, nine, because they were too sick
to go out. Their daughter Kayleigh, 12, was the
only one to remain healthy.
When they did emerge, they
refused to dine at the resort.
Builder Mr
Mitchell, 37, said: “My son was bad and we had to take him to the doctor. Myself and my wife had it as well. The little one lost
weight. My wife reckons he lost about a stone. He was all bones.
“We were all-inclusive but for
seven or eight days we did not eat at the restaurant.
“You’d see kids sticking their
fingers in food (to be eaten by other holidaymakers).”
Mr Mitchell was left sickened by the state
of the swimming pool, having seen a member of staff scooping human excrement
out of the water and cleaners disinfecting the water with chemicals while
bathers were still in it.
Mrs Mitchell, a kitchen assistant at Llanedeyrn secondary school, said: “It was just a holiday
from hell. I said to the rep you need to have health and safety officers
here.”
Food previously served at
dinner was being offered up again at breakfast.
Mrs Mitchell added: “This is why we were
bad. What we were eating was making us ill.”
First Choice have promised to
give the Mitchell’s £725 compensation – but said they would continue to
contract business out to the complex, claiming the “vast majority” of travellers had a “really good experience”.
A spokesman for First Choice
said: “Customer satisfaction is of paramount importance and we were sincerely
concerned to hear of the Mitchell family’s disappointment with their holiday.
We will be offering them £725 as a good will gesture and further apologise for any inconvenience caused.
“We are aware that there was an
outbreak of sickness at the property while the family was on holiday. A
specialist consultant, who made an immediate site visit as soon as we learned
of the sickness, concluded that the illness was an airborne virus and not a
result of any services provided by the hotel. The health and safety of our
customers is our primary focus and we are genuinely concerned to hear of any
illnesses reported. We closely monitor all the hotels to which we operate to
ensure that the strictest health, safety, hygiene and comfort levels our
customers expect are maintained.
“This hotel is and continues to
be very popular. More than 46,500 passengers travelled to the hotel last
summer and the vast majority of these customers rated the hotel very highly
in customer satisfaction surveys. We are confident that guests due to travel
there in the future will experience the excellent levels of quality and
standards they expect from a First Choice property.
“A customer service
representative will be in touch with the Mitchell family in due course.”
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