"An Extremely Disappointing Experience at Hotel Riosol – Poor Cleaning, Lack of Follow-Up and Unsatisfactory Customer Service
Unfortunately, we had a very disappointing experience at Hotel Riosol in Gran Canaria, and our stay turned out to be far from the holiday we had paid for and looked forward to. We travelled there to relax, enjoy the sunshine and have a lovely all-inclusive holiday together. Instead, we spent far too much of our holiday dealing with cleaning issues in our room, contacting reception, waiting for staff who failed to show up as agreed, and repeatedly explaining the same problems without seeing any genuine solution.
The most frustrating part of the entire experience was not simply that there were problems with the room. Mistakes can happen at any hotel. What really matters is how the hotel handles these problems when guests bring them to its attention. Unfortunately, in our experience, the way our complaints were handled fell far below what guests should reasonably expect.
Cleaning Problems from the Beginning
Early in our stay, we began experiencing problems with our room. There was an unpleasant, sewage-like smell coming from the toilet and bathroom, and the cleaning was not up to our expectations. Among other things, there was dirt behind the bathroom door and around the toilet.
When you arrive at a hotel room, you naturally expect it to be properly cleaned and ready for guests. We do not believe it is unreasonable to expect a bathroom where you can shower and use the toilet without feeling the need to check whether it has actually been cleaned properly.
We had to bring these issues to the staff’s attention, and we eventually changed rooms. Naturally, we hoped this would be the beginning of a better experience, but unfortunately, the problems continued.
In the new room, we once again found black hairs in the bed and in the bathroom. It is difficult to understand how a room can be prepared for new guests without such things being noticed and removed. This is not about expecting luxury or perfection; it is about basic hygiene.
We had also made it clear that we did not want the bathroom window to be left open because we wanted to prevent the heat from entering the room. It should not be difficult to respect such a simple request.
Repeated Complaints Without a Proper Solution
When the problems continued, we contacted the staff again. The hotel promised that a more thorough cleaning would be carried out and that a quality manager would come and inspect the room.
Maintenance work was also carried out in the bathroom, where an area around the shower was repainted. We appreciated that attempts were at least made to address some of the problems, but this did not change our overall impression that the room failed to meet an acceptable standard.
The worst part was that, even after all these complaints, we continued to find more black hairs in the room. We had even taken photographs as evidence, so there could be no doubt about what we were referring to.
By this point, we were becoming increasingly frustrated and disappointed. We had already informed the staff about the problems several times, changed rooms and been promised a more thorough cleaning. Yet we were faced with the same problems all over again.
It is simply unacceptable that guests should have to spend their holiday repeatedly checking the cleanliness of their room and documenting issues that the hotel should have dealt with from the beginning.
We eventually began to feel as though we were responsible for carrying out the quality control of the room we had paid to stay in.
Appointments That Were Not Kept
Another particularly frustrating part of our experience was the communication and lack of follow-up from the hotel.
We were offered a meeting with the manager responsible for customer service at the hotel. We expected this conversation to give us the opportunity to explain the entire situation and receive a serious response to our concerns.
We were given an appointment to meet at 9:00 a.m. We arranged our time around this appointment and spent part of our holiday waiting to be available. When the meeting did not take place as expected, the time was moved to 1:00 p.m.
Once again, we waited for the opportunity to speak to the person responsible. However, the situation was still not handled in a way that made us feel our case was being prioritised. We were told that the manager could not attend because of problems with an elevator.
We understand that unexpected situations can arise at a hotel. What we find difficult to accept is that, once again, we were the ones who had to pay the price in terms of our time and holiday experience, without any proper and timely follow-up being arranged.
When a hotel knows that guests have experienced repeated problems and have already spent time making complaints, we believe it should make an extra effort to keep appointments or, at the very least, communicate clearly and offer a realistic alternative.
Unfortunately, we did not feel that this was handled satisfactorily.
VIP Access Was Not an Appropriate Form of Compensation
When we finally had the opportunity to speak with Paul, we were offered access to the hotel’s VIP area.
However, we were not interested in the VIP lounge. It was not what we had asked for, nor did we consider it a reasonable solution to the problems we had experienced.
We had paid for a stay at Hotel Riosol and expected a proper, clean room and professional handling of any shortcomings we reported. We wanted the hotel to take responsibility for the overall situation and acknowledge how the problems had affected our holiday.
Offering VIP access does not change the fact that we found hairs in the bed and bathroom, that the cleaning was repeatedly inadequate, or that the promised follow-up was not handled satisfactorily.
Consequently, it did not feel like genuine compensation for what we had been through. Instead, it felt as though we were being offered something different from what we had actually requested.
We did not need a VIP lounge. We needed the hotel to take our complaints seriously, acknowledge the impact on our stay and propose a concrete and reasonable solution.
There is a significant difference between offering an additional service and taking responsibility for an unsatisfactory guest experience.
Our Holiday Was Affected More Than It Should Have Been
It is important to emphasise that we did not book this holiday to spend our time arguing about cleaning and customer service.
Instead, we had to spend time contacting reception, explaining the problems again, taking photographs, waiting for cleaning and trying to arrange a conversation with customer service.
That is time we will never get back.
A holiday is not just about the hotel’s facilities. It is also about feeling comfortable and being treated properly so that you can relax and enjoy your stay. When you repeatedly have to worry about whether your room has been cleaned properly and whether the hotel will honour its promises, it affects the entire experience.
Of course, we could have chosen to ignore the problems and simply tried to enjoy the rest of our holiday. However, that does not change the fact that we had paid for a stay where we reasonably expected a much higher standard.
What makes the situation particularly disappointing is that these were not isolated problems that occurred just once. We informed the hotel, were promised improvements and then encountered further issues. It was the repeated nature of the problems and the lack of confidence that anything was actually being resolved that made the entire experience so frustrating.
We Did Not Feel Taken Seriously
What remains with us is the feeling that we were not taken seriously enough as guests.
We tried to give the hotel every opportunity to put things right during our stay. We contacted the relevant staff members, explained the situation several times and attempted to find a solution directly with the hotel.
We also sent a detailed complaint to the hotel management, reception, Oscar and the hotel’s contact email address. We did this because we genuinely wanted a serious response and believed the hotel should be aware of the experience its guests were having.
When you reach the point where you feel compelled to contact several different people just to receive a proper response, we believe this indicates that the normal complaints process has not worked satisfactorily.
We were not asking for special treatment. We simply wanted someone to take ownership of the situation, familiarise themselves with the entire experience and provide us with a proper response.
It is frustrating when you feel that you have to fight just to be heard as a customer. This is particularly disappointing when you are on holiday, where the whole purpose is to switch off from the worries of everyday life.
There Were Positive Aspects, but They Could Not Make Up for the Problems
To be fair, we generally liked the hotel’s common areas and swimming pools, and we also encountered staff members who contributed positively to our stay.
We are not claiming that everything about Hotel Riosol was bad or that none of the employees did anything well. That would not be an accurate representation of our experience.
However, good pool areas and a few positive experiences cannot make up for repeated cleaning problems, a lack of follow-up and an unsatisfactory response to complaints that should have been taken seriously from the beginning.
A hotel should be judged on the overall guest experience. For us, it was particularly the way the problems were handled that turned what could have been a minor inconvenience into a genuinely disappointing holiday.
We Expected More from Hotel Riosol and Servatur
We chose to book directly through Servatur and therefore expected a professional experience from beginning to end.
We did not expect everything to be perfect. Nor did we expect a hotel never to make mistakes. However, we did expect a reasonable standard of cleanliness, clear communication and customer service that takes responsibility when something goes wrong.
In our case, we experienced repeated problems, promises of improvements that did not deliver the expected results, appointments that were not carried out as expected, and compensation that did not address what we had actually asked for.
It is difficult to understand why a hotel would not place greater priority on resolving these kinds of issues properly while guests are still staying there. A prompt, thorough and respectful response might have saved a significant part of our holiday experience.
Instead, the situation developed into a series of frustrations that took up far too much of our time during our stay.
Our Conclusion
Overall, our experience at Hotel Riosol was far below our expectations.
The cleaning problems were disappointing in themselves, but it was the repeated handling of our complaints, the lack of follow-up and the feeling of not being taken seriously that made our stay so unsatisfactory.
We believe the hotel should have taken much greater responsibility for ensuring that our room was properly cleaned, that the promised actions were actually followed through and that we received a genuine response to our experience.
We wanted reasonable compensation and acknowledgement that the situation had negatively affected our holiday. We did not simply want to be offered access to a VIP lounge that we had no interest in using.
In our opinion, offering an additional service is not sufficient if the hotel does not also address the problem that caused the dissatisfaction in the first place.
We travelled to Gran Canaria to relax and enjoy our holiday. Instead, we ended up spending far too much time trying to get a hotel to handle some very basic issues in a proper and professional manner.
We would have liked to recommend Hotel Riosol, but based on our overall experience, we unfortunately cannot do so without significant reservations. We hope the hotel’s management takes this kind of feedback seriously and improves both its cleaning inspections and its handling of guest complaints, so that other guests do not have to go through a similar experience.
Our greatest disappointment is not that problems occurred. It is that we gave the hotel several opportunities to put things right, yet we never felt that a satisfactory solution was reached.
This was not the holiday we had paid for, and it certainly was not the level of service we had expected."
