I am writing this complaint after being subject to food poisoning on my recent holiday with yourselves.
I have returned from a 7 night holiday, with my partner. We stayed at the Rui palace Boa Vista, Cape Verde. This is classed as a premier holiday, 5* hotel with yourselves and cost us over £1600 for the week.
Unfortunately on Wednesday 8th of May 2019, the fifth day of the holiday I got very violently ill, very quickly. This particular morning was no different from the first few days of our holiday, we went down to the buffet restaurant and ate breakfast . This was approximately at 9.30am and I ate nothing unusual. Bread, Eggs, mushrooms and smoked salmon. Within 15-20 minutes of eating breakfast, I started feeling severely unwell. Symptoms of extreme cramping and waves of nausea.
Within 45 minutes, I was back in our hotel room, vomiting severely. The vomiting itself was extremely violent and constant. From 10.30am to 3pm, I vomited every 15-20 minutes, in total around 45-50 times violently. In-between the vomiting, I had extreme hot and cold sweats, excruciating stomach cramps and abdominal pain and a feeling of such intense nausea.
The violent vomiting was extremely painful especially as time went on and created an agonising pain in my abdomen. I knew to keep hydrated however I couldn't even keep the tiniest sips of bottled water down.
At 1pm my partner had gone down to ask reception to see if I could see a doctor. Unfortunately to no avail. Reception said the doctor was out and would need to be called back to the hotel especially for me at €120 cost instead of €60 charge.
I didn't feel this wasn't correct as we were told prior to starting the holiday, their was an on-site doctor during certain hours for our hotel.
After two checks back down and to our booking operators Tui, he managed to find a representative. They agreed this wasn't correct information and that a doctor should be on site currently. I got an appointment at 3pm with the doctor.
This was an awful experience in itself. I had to walk across from my room, through main reception area and into the parking area at the front of the hotel to the doctors bay. Which to me for sick / ill guests is an awful place to have put the doctors bay. I was greeted by a nurse who asked me details etc of what I had been experiencing. After filling in the information, she assessed me. In which I had a high temperature/ fever like symptoms, extreme nausea and my abdominal area was extremely painful/cramping. I was severely dehydrated.
The nurse on site in your hotel took 3 attempts to place a drip in my hand. Once in the side of the wrist and twice in the front of the hand. Something which was extremely uncomfortable and painful considering how ill I already was. This wasn't good enough.
Once placed on a drip, I was also given anti sickness medication/cramping relief and anti diarrhoea medication.
The doctor was not onsite as I had been told and the whole time the nurse was dealing with me in the doctors bay. She was consulting the doctor via the telephone and just kept saying ‘he will be here soon'. After nearly an 45 minutes to an hour of me laying there, feeling absolutely awful, a doctor finally arrived. He examined me for not even two minutes, by pressing on my stomach (which was extremely painful) then making his diagnosis. He wrote my diagnosis as ‘gastroenteritis' and prescribed medication to aid this. Again in my
Opinion, this wasn't enough time or expertise to diagnose me.
I do not believe this was ‘gastroenteritis' at all, as no other checks were completed by the doctor nor a stool sample for food poisoning. Even though I requested for this.
Gastroenteritis is a stomach bug, which usually develops from 12 hours onwards from digesting food or coming into contact with someone with the ‘bug'.
It sits in the lining of your stomach causing its main symptom of watery diarrhoea- which I did not have. My time scale of my events does not match up also to allow this ‘bug' to develop this as my illness was very instant of digesting a food contaminated and then my body being violently sick.
After 1 and a half hours I was able to leave the doctors bay, pay my doctors fee and return back to my hotel room.
I continued to feel unwell with frequent bouts diarrhoea and nausea. It wiped me out the rest of the duration of our holiday.
I did log my complaint in the hotel with the Tui representatives, who took my details. Please can I also state that I did not drink anything but bottled water the whole holiday nor did I eat outside of the hotel at any point.
Food poisoning due to your hotels mistake has had a massive impact on our last 3 days of our holiday. These holiday days became non existent and wasted. I am severely disappointed in how our holiday ended due to no fault of my own. Considering this Rui hotel is a brand new establishment and classed as a 5* premier holiday, I would of absolutely thought better precautions would be done to prevent issues with food poisoning arising. My partner and myself wasted the use of all the amenities of the hotel for the last three days and after saving long and hard for this holiday this is not what we expected to come away too.
I frequently travel and use packaged holidays mainly staying in the trust name Riu. I feel so shocked and disappointment with the whole end to our holiday experience. Not only did it ruin my holiday but my partners also. We both did not expect to be going on our first couples holiday to obtain food poisoning so severe that the other has to care for them the rest of the duration.
Since being back in the U.K, I have been checked over by my doctor and had a stool sample sent off. The side of my wrist has bruised from the attempt of a cannula but I am back to myself.
We both feel as if our relaxing couples holiday we planned and worked hard for was taken away, with the horrendous sickness, stress and severe pain the food poisoning caused.
I look forward to hearing your response on this matter.
Yours sincerely
Lauren Clark
[protected]@msn.com
Hi I experienced a very similar situation at this hotel and tui have refused to acknowledge that there is an issue despite many more people reporting the same .
We were there January 2020 our 2nd week of holiday ruined as husband had food poisoning at same hotel Rui Palace boa vista