Music Terror in Hammamet Yasmine Hotels - Tunisia

The exta ordinary hotel complex in Hammamet Yasmine looks indeed very nice...	... but somebody has to stop this terrible NOISE ....	... terrible NOISE is generated from within this hotel ...

This could have been one of our most perfect holiday trips. We've seen quite a lot of this world to date, but a situation as we've encountered in the Hammamet Yasmine Resort has never happened to us before! In Hammamet Yasmine some 39 new hotels are being built on a domain of about 300 hectare with about 14.000 beds, of which 80% in the 5 and 4 star ratings. New Appartements and Villas are being constructed for some more 2000 guests. At the Marina Yacht Harbor there is still some construction going on, but all this building activity is no disturbance for the tourists. A beautiful, very clean and large boulevard of about 4 kilometer alongside the beach, kind of which a lot of European sea resorts would be envious. Present infrastructure: 2 small supermarkets with different pricing for tourists and locals. For the rest: a lot of stores, all with the sign "a louer" (to rent). We had booked from Belgium via the Internet at www.lastminute.de two weeks Tunisia in Hotel Melia El Mouradi Hammamet, Half pension via the travel agency FTI in Munich. Night Flight with Tunis Air from Duesseldorf to Monastir, leaving Saturday evening June 8, 2002. The day before we left, the Travel Agency phoned, faxed and emailed us informing about a later departure of 45 minutes. Great service from FTI ! In Monastir we were handled by a FTI hostess, and got our bus transfer to our hotel. First we were dropped in a wrong room, but this was changed immediately and at about 02.30 a.m. we were able to check into our room, a junior suite at the front side of the hotel with view on the beach and sea. The Hotel: only 2 years old, clean, beautiful rooms, very good meals, large choice of different meals, nice and friendly staff, nice and clean white sandy beach (everywhere ceramic vases as waste deposit available, and emptied daily), open air swimming pool, indoor pool with yacuzz, fittness center, functioning Internet cyber cafe in the hotel lobby, and of course: beautiful warm sunny weather. The hotel beach is only 50 meters from the hotel, just across the wide boulevard, which has nearly no traffic on it. At the swimming pool of the hotel stretchers are available with free, about 3 cm thick mattresses, however, the stretches are quickly "sold out in the morning". According to our travel package we had to pay at the beach an additional 2 TND (Tunisian Dinar) per day per person (about EUR 1,50). However, some other tour operators do offer these mattresses in their hotel package. At the hotel pool you were able (if you were lucky and present before 07.00 a.m.) to get a stretcher with an adjustable backrest. At the beach however, we had only flat stretchers. At 17,00 p.m. sharp, the tourists were "removed" from the beach by the beachboy with the words: "tourist finished, end of working time". Then he started to collect stretchers and mattresses, although just around this time the temperature is very nice, and as Tunisia is not situated in the tropical hemisphere, (and dark starts much earlier), one would like to stay some time longer at the beach. So after some days, we preferred to go to the beach next to our hotel, where there were adjustable stretches and where nobody watched the clock. After some days, the management of the hotel El Mouradi had got more complaints about this, and from that time on, the tourist could decide himself when he was "finished" and wanted to leave the beach. Some water sport possibilities are available, however, water skiing was not available at this part of the beach, although it was indicated. But I discovered a new hobby: para sailing, if the wind was right. This sport is super!! I even made some sky view pictures with my digital camera. Of course, we made also some sightseeing tours: Tunis-Carthago-Sidi Bou Said and to Dougga and Zaghouan and have been visiting the Medina of Hammamet City with the hotel owned shuttlebus. Tunisia has a very beautiful countryside, a lot of interesting places to visit, and fair pricing. So, if all this was so super... there no complaints at all? O yes, there were! Our suite was situated on the 3 floor above the hotel lobby at Hotel Melia El Mouradi Hammamet, at the boulevard side, with double balcony and with sea view, with to the right (across the street) another hotel, Yasmine Beach, and at the left site in the same block there is the Melia El Menzah hotel, belonging to the same Hotelchain as our hotel El Mouradi Hammamet. At Sunday night, our first evening at the hotel, the guests at the pool-terrace were able to follow "live" the animation programm which was run at the pool of the hotel Melia El Menzah nextdoors, because their outdoor speakers were turned on at a very high level. Because both hotels are built in a U-Form, the sound was thrown back and forth between the walls of the hotels. A normal conversation was not possible on the hotel terrace. Even the hotel staff working on the terrace and the bars had a head-ache. So we moved inside into one of the hotel bar. But here the animation programm of our own hotel in a second bar was also very loud. But we had another option: move onto our room. Finally silence? No boy! The Hotel Yasmine Beach (to the right, across the street) has in front of its building a beer garden. Their big outdoor speakers, put onto a balcony on the first floor, start at 7.00 a.m. and run till late in the night (up to 01.30 a.m. and sometimes even later!) throwing the sound towards our hotel towards the promenade and across the beach with loud music. And in spite of double glass doors and even double doors (so four times sound insulation), it heard as if the TV in our own room was turned on at his loudest position. No night rest possible! Monday night at 00.30 a.m. i phoned our reception desk and asked if there would be any possibility that they would ask the hotel nextdoors to turn the sound of their outdoor speakers into a reasonable level.. Hey, that worked and finally we were able to sleep. Tuesday night; the same game, but this time the call to our frontdesk was not successful anymore. Because I know that our staff itself is not to be blamed for this, I contacted via the Internet my company in Belgium, and asked them to send a fax hotel fax 02-249601 hotel el mouradi hammamet yasmine hammamet attn: general manager Maknine Tijani oder Duty Manager J. Badredinne Dear Sir or Madam, We would like to inform you that several of your hotel guests have valid complains about the nocturnal noise nuisance which is caused by the "BRAUHAUS" at the "Hotel Yasmine Beach" next to your "Hotel El Mouradi Hammamet". The excellent double terrace doors in the Junior Suites on your hotel front provide some noise-protection. However it's regretful that the noise levels were so high during some of the last nights that your guests are unable to have a quiet and relaxing holiday. This is NOT what a relaxing holiday should be! We politely demand that the management of "Hotel El Mouradi Hammamet" look into the situation and do everything necessary so that the noise nuisance next door will cease immediately during the periods of 10 PM until 9 AM. If this is not the case, we'd like to inform the management of "Hotel El Mouradi Hammamet" that we reserve the right to inform the following travel agencies and tour operators about these incidents. We will use all legal possibilities available on the Internet today to urge the aforementioned parties to exclude your hotel from their travel packages. Some of the companies we plan to inform include: Panorama Holiday Group, Direct Holidays, ITS Tjaereborg-Jahn Reisen, Sprintours, Iberojet, Teker, Neckermann, Teorama Tour, Thomas Cook, Esco, BFR, Kuoni, LTUR, Your Travel, Turavia, Mundi Color Iberia, Terramar, Sunsnacks, FTI, Itermar, Tunisiatours, Exim&Kartago Tours, Club 1840, Oasis Tours und VLT. We hope that the management of your hotel understands our situation and will do everything possible and as soon as possible in order to provide a most enjoyable holiday setting for your guests. Yours sincerely, etc... Cc: - Office National du Tourisme Tunisien (ONTT), Galerie Ravenstein 60, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgique - fax: +32 2 5113600 / 02 6472018 / 02 6483078 - Sr. D. Angel Palomino, VP Management, Sol Melia Hotel Group, Gremio Toneleros 24, 07009 Palma of Mallorca, Spain - fax: +34 971 22 45 14 This fax helped, and the rest of the week it remained silent at night, until Saturday evening. Ok, for the Saturday night, we thought we had to be tolerant, and decided to go to bed later. But at Sunday night the same horror started over again. Monday night at around 00.30 I got up and dressed, went down to our hoteldesk and asked for the phone number of the local police station, as I was not willing to take this noise any longer. This evoked that our hotel put its own music on a bearable level and I went to bed again. About half an hour later, the music outside was still going on at an unacceptable level, I dressed again and went over to the manager of the beer garden of the Yasmine Beach hotel. I asked politely to switch off the outdoor speakers, which was done immediately. In the following conversation I made clear to the manager, that if they would continu in this manner, this lovely Holiday Resort would soon end up like the Ballermann on Mallorca. His comment: "I will talk to the Italian management of the Yasmine Beach hotel and see what they will decide in this matter..." But the rest of this week there was no improvement. The music remained as loud as before. Our Conclusion: NEVER AGAIN to the YASMINE HAMMAMET Holiday Resort.

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