Novotel Thalassa Le Touquet 4 stars

This Hotel and their staff are an absolute disgrace. We did write to the Hotel with the hope that they may have shown some remorse and at least offered a heartfelt apology but alas this wasn't to be the case. This stay was a treat to ourselves for our 20th wedding anniversary. We arrived at reception at around 10.00 am after a very early start and long drive. We knew that our room wouldn't be ready until the standard check in time but wanted to ask whether we could leave our car in the car park prior to check in. We were told that there was no booking for us and no rooms available and that we should contact Expedia directly. The Reception staff were not apologetic and acted as if this wasn't the Hotel's problem at all with complete indifference to the distressing and upsetting situation. I showed them the confirmation email from the Hotel, the booking information and the receipts from my bank account. However they just shrugged and stated that I had not paid the hotel, they hadn't received any money and that I should take the issue up with Expedia. My husband arrived at reception and challenged them on this indicating that they were in contract with Expedia and therefore had to take responsibility for this matter. We had paid just short of £350.00. They eventually disappeared for a period of time and then told us they did have a room but it would not be ready until 7.00pm. This left us very doubtful whether or not this room would materialise because they’d told us initially the hotel was fully booked. The day was spoilt because we just had to hang around the town and the hotel for a lot longer than we had originally planned. We had arranged to meet friends for drinks and dinner which had to be postponed because we couldn't get into our room until 7.00 pm and by the time we showered etc we would have missed the reservation. To be honest I spent the day feeling quite anxious as to whether a room would even be available when we returned at 7.00 pm. By this point we had lost all faith in the hotel and the staff who didn't seem to care one way or another. Roll forward to 7.00pm, we finally checked into our sea view room upon which the air con was insufficient and not working properly at best. The hotel called an engineer who used a heat gun gage to measure the air con’s efficiency and informed us if we wished to cool the room down we should draw the blinds thus blocking out the light and our sea view which we paid a lot of extra money for. Words cannot express the distress and upset caused by this experience. The Hotel staff just didn't care at all. At no point were we given an apology or an offer to extend our stay to at least compensate for the lack of time we had booked and paid for the room. The cost for this trip with hotel, euro tunnel and fuel (excluding spending money) was £600. Just to add when I went to reception about the air conditioning and explained what had gone on to a male receptionist and the fact that now we had finally got in our room (albeit 3 hours too late) the frustration that the air con wasn’t working, he just smirked at me and said it was our problem with Expedia and not their problem. It was clearly portrayed to us throughout the dispute over the booking and room that anything the Hotel did relating to this matter was “doing us a favour” as they clearly showed they felt they had no interest in us or our booking with them or the subsequent distress resulting from that. At no point did we even get an apology. I did write to the Hotel and Expedia inviting them to respond. The Hotel did, but again it was a a lacklustre response taking no responsibility whatsoever for what had gone on. They did offer an upgraded room for when we next stayed with them!!!! I can safely confirm that I would never step foot into that Hotel again. It's a shame Le Touquet is a beautiful place. The people in the town, bars and restaurants were lovely. It's just the whole experience was ruined by the rude, indifferent, attitude of the staff. I've never quite experienced anything like it before and hope to never again! Avoid at all costs. If you look through the other reviews there seems to be a common threat here. Shame on them.

Everything was fine except the lift adjacent to our accessible room was still out of service since our previous stay in September.

The service was great, both in the hotel and the thalasso center. The difficulties encountered were tackled with professionalism, showing a clear client-oriented culture.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the hotel and spa. It is our 3rd visit and we will definitely be back!

Short half term trip Great use of the pool and the room configuration works well for our family Used restaurant for dinner and enjoyed the food There was however an unpleasant drain smell in the corridor