A dad and daughter endured a miserable holiday after spending three weeks in a hotel room with bed bugs, they claim.
Sara and Joe Palmer stayed at a hotel in western Turkey having jetted out from London Gatwick with TUI, only to face a number of stressful experiences, they claim.
The daughter, from Blackheath, claims she ended up on a drip on the second week of their holiday after suffering from painful bites, she claims.
Meanwhile her father, Joe, needed six stitches after falling and cutting his head open in the middle of the night, Sara alleges.
Not only did Sara uncover what she believes were bed bugs in her room, she captured a huge cockroach wandering over the floor, she alleges.
"It was terrible," Sara told The Mirror. "We were scared to sleep because we were being bitten constantly."
She added: "I was constantly itching and uncomfortable."
Like many other Brits who have travelled to Turkey this year, Sara and Joe had been tempted out to the holiday hotspot for some sun, sea and sand.
They arrived at the beginning of October as the weather in the UK was beginning to take a turn.
The dad and daughter were having a good time until Joe started noticing that he had several bite marks, Sara claimed.
Once they'd mostly cleared up by the second week, Sara started suffering from similar bites which she showed to the hotel doctor, she alleged.
The discovery prompted the hotel rep to send her to hospital where she was put on a drip for an hour and given four different drugs to deal with the swelling and bites, Sara claims.
After returning to the hotel later that day, Sara "continued to get bitten for the rest of the holiday", she claimed.
She alleged that her and Joe checked their sleeping set up and found bed bugs, which she photographed as evidence.
"We contacted head of guest relations who said they would clean and disinfect the whole room," Sara said.
"We were still in the room when what we took to be pest control turned up which turned out to be a cleaner with a spray bottle of bug killer.
"She said she would spray and come back. She sprayed across the edge of the pillow and across the top of the curtains and left, saying she would return later.
"We contacted guest relations and asked if it was ok to return to our rooms. They said 'yes, all done.'"
Sara said she was gutted to return to the room to discover "very little had been changed", with the "dirty dusty cover on the bed base" still in place.
The following day she claimed they found more bed bugs before a much larger visitor scuttled by.
"Later on we found a large cockroach walking across the floor so we captured it under a glass and told the TUI rep," Sara said. "She told us she would get someone to collect it."
Later on that day a house keeper dropped by to pick up the large bug, Sara claimed.
The holiday had a final negative chapter in the early hours of Sunday in their second week, when Joe got up to go to the bathroom, lost his balance and fell backwards, Sara claimed.
The daughter alleged he hit his head on the edge of a coffee table, "causing a very big cut with lots of blood."
Joe was rushed to hospital where he was checked over and given six stitches for his wound.
"The whole holiday was a nightmare," Sara said.
When the Mirror put Sara's claims to TUI, they said a representative had spoken to her and that the matter was "resolved", compensation was provided and "the customer is very happy with the outcome".
Sara said the company's alleged offer of a £400 holiday voucher was "laughable".
The TUI spokesperson later said: "We’re really sorry to hear about Ms Palmer’s experience.
"Our customer care team has contacted her to apologise and offered her a holiday voucher as compensation.
"We’re not aware of any complaints regarding cleanliness at this hotel so we thank Ms Palmer for bringing this to our attention. We’ll conduct an investigation directly with the hotel.
"We’d like to reassure customers that instances like this are rare."
