It seems that British tourists have finally got their hands on All-inclusive hotels. At least on the Balearic resort island of Mallorca. Trials began there against eight tourists accused of fraud and membership in a criminal organization. If they are found guilty, each faces up to eight years in prison.
The allegations relate to false compensation claims made by tourists against the island resort’s hotels between 2014 and 2017, Spanish media reported. Let’s add that a very similar situation is observed in Turkey, tourist lawyers, and in fact – tourist RAM, attack Turkish hotels en masse, staging “terrible poisonings”.
According to the prosecution, the criminal structure created used the law of the UK, luring British holidaymakers with “free” holidays, for which they were offered compensation of up to 40,000 euros. It is stated that the initiator of the scheme is the company Elite Project Marketing. All the travelers needed for successful claims was a receipt for their diarrhea medication and a few photos of them making dramatic facial expressions in bed.
It was clarified that after the holiday, the tourists returned home, turned to lawyers, and through certain firms in Great Britain filed poisoning claims against Spanish hotels. Claims of the British, as a rule, focused on all-inclusive hotels: they filed complaints about food poisoning more often than others, because the cost of the trip and, accordingly, the compensation should have been significant. “Successful lawsuits benefited all parties, and it was difficult for hotels to challenge them in court,” the sources said. As practice has shown, in the period from 2014 to 2017, the false statements “worked”: thanks to the fraudulent scheme, tourists and their representatives withdrew a total of more than one million euros from hotels. Immediately after winning cases, the British, who allegedly became victims of food poisoning, recovered sharply, demonstrating their well-being on social networks.
It should be noted that the patience of the Spanish hoteliers ran out and they went on the offensive. The accusations against the British side were brought on behalf of the Mallorca Hoteliers’ Federation, Hoteles Mac, and AMLA Explotaciones. For example, Hoteles Mac claimed to have paid out more than €1 million after receiving more than 800 claims, while AMLA claimed €5.5 million in damages. The Federation of Hoteliers estimated the total losses at more than 1.2 million euros. The head of UK Holiday Claims was then tried to be involved in a fraud case, but he never stood trial.
Six years after the first arrests, more British tourists looking for freebies, along with lawyers, appear in fraud lawsuits. As for the Turkish resort hotels, where a similar situation with the claims of the British is noted until they have taken on the fraudsters en masse, the retaliatory lawsuits against vacationers from Great Britain are, rather, of an exceptional nature.