Very bad experience with them;(
I bought a family trip to La Santa on Lanzarote during high season in July 2015. The hotel has an extensive sports program, an extensive animation program for children, excellent sporting facilities and use of all kinds of sporting equipment is included in the price. This makes the hotel rather expensive, but still we thought it was an excellent choice as there was something to do for everyone in the family; our father, who was training to do an ironman, our son and I, who love surfing (equipment and tutorial was included in the price of the hotel) and our youngest daughter, who just want to swim and play with other children.
When we arrived at Lanzarote we were contacted in the airport by the Neckermann staff who told us that they had overbooked the La Santa hotel and that we could´t go there even though it was the place we had booked and paid for. There was absolutely nothing to do about it. WE were only given the option of staying on the opposite coast of the island (where the kind of surf that we do is not possible). We were told, that Neckermann had booked an alternative hotel for us, and that this hotel was children friendly, was situated right at the beach and had an animation programme, too. We were very disappointed but had no choice but to go there. Once we arrived, things got even worse as it turned out that the hotel was NOT by the beach (about 1 km away). It was very quiet and meant for couples and not families; there was no animation programme at all, hardly any other children staying there and no sporting facilities. It was 1 hours drive to the nearest surf (we do paddle surfing) and of course equipment and instruction was not included (and this is quite expensive in the Canary Islands). No need to say that this was NOT AT ALL the holiday we booked and payed for. We did drive to the opposite end of the island twice to go surfing, but we had to pay for equipment rent and surf instruction. My husband did not get the chance to train for his ironman at all, as the hotel had no pool for lap swimming and no bikes like La Santa has.
The most ridiculous part is, that when we came back home and asked Necermann for some sort of compensation, they offered us a compensation of 297 € plus the payment of a small rental car (to use for shopping etc, as the alternative hotel was situated far from everything). This is less than 10% of what we paid for the holiday we did not get. 297€ only just covers our expenses for surf board rental + instruction for 2 days (which we had already paid for once at the hotel they´d overbooked).
We have now booked a new trip to La Santa, as we had promised our children we´d go there and it still hasn´t happened. But this time we are NOT going with Neckermann and I advise everyone else NOT to go with them either!
September 3, 2015
Unprompted review