Holidays from hell

They scoured the deals on Teletext before choosing a week in Tenerife.

Mr Hall, 31, who plays clubs such as Creation and Paradox in Brighton, said: "The holiday sounded a good deal."

The couple splashed out almost £300 each for a week with the apartment being allocated on arrival. They headed off but in hindsight say they should have known something was not right when they arrived.

Mr Hall said: "As soon as we got off the plane we asked for more information about where we were going. The rep said they would be back in five minutes but never came."

The couple were allocated Sand Club Apartments which they were told were near a beach. The name also gave them a sense they would just a stone's throw from a sandy paradise.

On arrival, there was not a grain of sand in sight. And paradise was lost.

Mr Hall said: "It was a bit like the set from Eldorado but with less people. It was quite spooky. There wasn't any sand.

"We were actually at the end of a runway and could watch the planes come into land with their wheels down."

The apartments were remote and when the couple wanted to reach a resort, it cost them £10 each way in a taxi.

Their quiet break in Septmeber 2000 turned into an ear-splitting seven days.

Mr Hall said: "For two nights the planes were landing every few minutes. I'm a DJ and wanted to go somewhere quiet for a break. They told us the beach was just a short walk. When we got there it was just builders' rubble and breeze blocks."

The couple waited several hours for a meeting with the rep but she failed to turn up.

Despite finally meeting her, the couple soon realised their complaints were going to be ignored so decided to enjoy the comedy aspect of the break. They bought a video camera and filmed builders' beach and the plane spotter's dream view of the runway and planes coming in to land.

Mr Hall said: "We had to laugh."

The couple tried to get compensation but were offered vouchers for ten per cent off another break.

They decided to steer clear of so-called deals and have since stuck to taking time over bookings.

Mr Hall said: "I don't think the holiday in Tenerife was a deal or a cancellation. I think they couldn't fill the apartments and made it look like a deal. But £300 was not that cheap. I wouldn't do it again."

The couple sent their video footage to the ITV programme Holidays From Hell and it will be shown tomorrow.

John McClelland and Julie Every thought they would have a smashing time on their first holiday together in Majorca.

The couple, from Barnham, near Chichester, were staying at the Picafort Park Hotel, and everything seemed fine except for some strange happenings.

The air conditioning stopped working, the radio turned itself on and off, there were unexplained bangs and they started to notice cracks in the walls round their room, which they could not recall seeing before.

A few days into their holiday, Mr McClelland was about to return to the room, to drop off his camera, when there was a loud bang.

He said: "With that, right in front of our eyes, the hotel literally collapsed in a big pile of rubble."

Miss Every said: "There were people screaming and running around, it was chaos. It was just like a load of twisted metal. It was like a bomb had gone off."

Miss Every said: "We could see John's beach towel on a pile of rubble, you could see a television, you could see a mattress which had this massive piece of concrete on."

The couple abandoned the holiday and flew home. Although 15 months have passed, they still find it difficult to forget the horror.

Mr McClelland said: "It's just something you will never, ever forget."

Another happy holiday turned to tears when a family arrived at their Majorcan destination to discover their three-star hotel was more like a student hostel.

The holiday compound was littered with used condoms and their sleeping arrangements were nothing more than camp beds.

Kathy and Mark Boyce, from Hove, took their children Emily, ten, and Joe, seven, on the two-week all-inclusive break to the Hotel Mallorca.

Mrs Boyce, 38, bought the last-minute £1,296 holiday after seeing it advertised on Teletext. She booked on the Saturday and they flew off on the Tuesday.

She said: "I phoned the company and they made it sound great, the hotel, the swimming pool the nightly entertainment. I told them I was taking children and they said it was perfect."

Mrs Boyce, who works for Victim Support, chose a company which appeared to be registered with ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents, paying by credit card for more protection.

The family jetted off last July. But as soon as they opened the door of their room, they realised their three-star accommodation was well below their expectations.

Mrs Boyce said: "It was nasty, it was awful. There were wires hanging off the walls and it smelt. There were four beds in a row, two of them put-up beds. They were so close together and the room so small we couldn't get round them."

The sheets were dirty and the mattresses stained.

The all-inclusive food package was also hard to stomach. Mrs Boyce, said: "One morning we were served spinach and boiled chips for breakfast."

The entertainment never arrived so the family had to tour bars with the children because their was too small to sit in. The hotel bar shut at 11pm and residents would be pushed outside to sit near a main road.

The Boyce family and a group of fellow guests were so disgruntled they demanded another hotel. After four days they were moved.

But the stress increased when the replacement hotel was under siege from growing numbers from Hotel Mallorca. The new hotel did not want to offer an inclusive package as it was not being paid to do so.

Back home, Mrs Boyce tried to claim compensation but soon discovered the company had gone into liquidation.

And the company which had taken the money from her credit card was not the company she thought she had booked through and was not an ABTA company.

The three holiday companies involved in selling breaks to the hotel refused to comment. The Argus was unable to establish whether conditions have improved.

All three stories will be featured on Holidays From Hell tomorrow at 8pm.