Tej Maharba Reviews

Booked with Thomas Cook 6 weeks before we went and paid over £360 each for half board. We were ripped off! Got off the transfer bus and walked into an impressive entrance with red carpet leading to main doors, lovely marble pillars, but other than the entrance, this hotel is a 2*. Bedroom small, dirty carpets, sheets, pillows, carpet on wall which was meant to be the headboard, and as for the towels!! They stunk and depite us leaving the wet ones on the floor every morning for the maid to replace, she just hung them back up again, despite all the tipping we gave all week! Hotel pool lovely and gardens tidy but if you fancy going to the beach, beware of the traffic, the honking taxis wanting to give you a lift or the harrassing restaurant/shopkeepers on the street! You need to cross a busy road to get to the beach. Once safely over the road, the path to the beach front is really disgusting and stinks of urine as the builders (who are building a brand new hotel to block the sea view from Tej Maharba to the sea) just do their business on the path down to the beach. Either you're stepping over their puddles of urine, or you're avoiding tripping on their food waste, packaging, bottles, cans etc that they just throw on the ground. (The beach by the way is signposted with grafitti spraypaint on a crumbling wall as 'Tej Marhaba Beach this way'). It's not just the builders that throw their rubbish anywhere they can, it seems Tunisians have never heard of bin bags to contain their rubbish - on the Thomas Cook trips we booked around the sites of Tunisia it's the same everywhere - piles of rubbish just dumped alongside the road with chickens, horses, cats and dogs playing, sniffing and eating in the rotten waste! Mealtimes - breakfast x 7 days: stale bread rolls/croissants, eggs, hot dog sausages or salad was basically the choice if the pancake man wasn't on duty). Evening meals x 7 days: stale bread, pasta, chips, meat of some sort every other day, fish twice a week. We often ate outside the hote but this added up at £20+ for the 2 of us each night for 2 main meals and 2 alcoholic drinks. I did not find it to be cheap at all for meals out or for drinks (although it is a Muslim country I know). If this is your first time out of Europe and all you want is the sun, then you'll love the Sky Sports, chips and £2.50 lager they serve in the Rose and Crown pub in the indoor shopping centre (which smells of diesel) adjacent to the hotel. It just wasn't for me!!

We had read all the reviews before we went to the Tej Marhaba and were very apprehensive, but we needn't have been. The entrance is very spectacular. Our room was on the 6th floor overlooking the swimming pool and it was really lovely, clean, large, everything you could want, maid cleaned it every day, clean linen every day, only fault I would pick was that in the toilet it smelt "piddly" although looked clean. We went full board, at each meal there is so much choice, always salad bar, several meat choices, fish every day, plenty of pasta and rice and cous cous choices, sweet choice although many of them to choose from was the same choice every day! I am a vegetarian and never went hungry. Pool area beautiful, the chap always there pronto with your sunbed mattress for wherever you chose to have your sunbed, a small tip of 1 dinar per day (50p) was all it cost for two of us. The waiters who served the drinks around the pool were wonderful, again a 1 dinar tip each time for excellent service.The waiters in the restaurant all excellent. The hotel entertainment was average, it was varied and the hotel did try hard to please all nationalities. The outdoor entertainment was advertised on a board near the pool for water aerobics, water polo, etc etc, but the only thing that ever happened each day was the water polo - so don't know why that was. The Bistro Bar was very nice and had live singer twice a week. The Rose and Crown was awful, service terrible, can't understand how some people raved about it. The indoor pool was beautiful. We are not beach people, but went down to see what it was like, and as another review it was pretty dismal, you took your own life in your hands crossing the road, the path to the beach was disgusting, which I believe was the fault of the builders, but the actual beach area for the hotel was very clean. We did the organised trip to the Medina and although a bit hair raising was an eye opener. Beware of the free trip advertised in the hotel to Port El Kantoui, the guy who has the leather shop in the hotel runs it and basically traps you in his relatives carpet factory and trys to force a sale, it didn't happen to us but to a young couple, they did not buy and therefore were just dumped in the resort!! I did not enjoy the continual hassle from the locals to buy their goods and the ploys they try are annoying too, but it is not Spain etc, it is Tunisia and that is their culture. Overall the hotel is 4 star Tunisian standard.

tej maharba well what can i say, a week in a 2* hotel, the food left a lot to be desired you had to guess what was what.the two toasters in the morning were he best, only two slices in each and you had to get them out with metal forks that were put on the table,as they did not pop up,i watched in horror one night as a chef took a fork out of raw meat and started serving cooked meat with it. the hotel is very old and dated the staff will only run round after you if you tip them all the time. they do not like you going to the bar for drinks as they want to bring them to you {for a tip} one night i ordered a baileys it cst £5.every where you go you get hassled, if you go to the beach you are pestered all the time, camel trips, horse rides,boat trips,banana rides sellers,stayed only a couple of hours then went back to the pool at the hotel to then get pestered by the pool guy, always wanting a tip {try not to give you"ll get a mouth full of crap} over all hotel crap, sousse crap, will we go back no way.

On arrival at the hotel, my first impression was 'wow this is impressive' - the decor was very regal in marble with big pillars and water features. I couldn't wait to see my room (which wasn't actually ready when we got there so we had to hang about for an hour with other newcomers). I was disappointed with the room which had a huge damp patch on the ceiling and a blood stain on the bed cover. At the meeting with our Thomas Cook rep the next day, we were told that by now we would have realised that the hotel wasn't actually up to the 4 stars given - though perhaps by Tunisian standards, which aren't the same as British. This being said, our only other gripe would be that of the food available at breakfast and dinner on the half board option, as though there was plenty of choice for all nationalities as mentioned on other reviews, as a plain eating vegetarian (me) and a plain eating meat eater (my partner), we struggled to find anything to eat within the first two days, so opted to pay and eat out elsewhere instead. The service from all members of staff was second to none with all having some measure of english language as it is the Tunisians third language. The waiters were attentive and the pool man set you up with a sunbed when required - we went in August which was a busy time but there was always a sunbed when we wanted one. The same applies for the hotel's staff on the private beach. The staff there set up sunbeds for you and there are 'runners' who will fetch food and drink for you from the hotel. The hotel is a huge complex with lots of clothes shops and a lovely pancake stall on the bottom floor. There are a number of places to eat and drink within the hotel - notably the 'English' pub The Rose and Crown - fantastic staff, sky sports on tv and open most hours for food. Most nights we ventured out to the Legends bar around the corner as the entertainment in the hotel was mainly limited to a resident band singing old songs and the bar closed around midnight.

Having visited this resort and hotel earlier this year (April) with Airtours and having had a fantastic all round experience from departure to arrival....we would not recommend travelling with Thomas Cook. We booked Thomas Cook for our July holiday due to flight times being suitable for our family...what a mistake..

Regardless of the unfortunate experience we have had with Thomas Cook we can advise that on both occassions we have thoroughly enjoyed our time at the Tej Maharba. The hotel, service and people truely, once again, make this a holiday to remember.

The people and service are second to non. We were priveledged to enjoy an excellent service from all areas. All of the staff were very attentive to our every need.. even icecream for our daughter at 9pm in the evening without a moan or groan.

For a 7 day holiday this is an excellent choice with an outdoor pool, indoor pool, beautiful well kept gardens, good hotel restaurant, fantastic italian restaurant, poolside bar, night club and shopping centre . The hotel also organises excursions with experienced, profesional staff.