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Tread carefully if considering flying next March –unless you couldn’t give a fig about Brexit

ACONSUMER TRAVEL EXPERT

couple of topics of interest this week. First, two weeks after my most recent column on the issue, the Government has published another round of fallback guidelines in the event of a no-deal Brexit. This one covered transport connections and warned that, without a deal, bus and coach services to European Union countries could be suspended after March 29, and that with no agreement in place, “UK and EU licensed airlines would lose the automatic right to operate air services between the UK and the EU without seeking advance permission”. In theory, that would mean the grounding of hundreds of planes.

The Government did say that it is seeking an agreement for the EU and UK to accept each other’s aviation standards which are required for air services to operate, but the EU has not yet done so and, in the event of a hard Brexit, services will automatically be forced to stop. Even in this rather bleak-sounding scenario, the Government said it “would envisage” allowing EU airlines to keep flying and “we would expect EU countries to reciprocate in turn”.

But I suggest that there is now just enough doubt to provoke some caution among consumers. If you need to book a flight to or from the EU which departs or arrives after March 29, bear in mind that you will have more security if you make arrangements through a tour operator – it will have a duty of care to look after you, and to refund all money if you are prevented from travelling by a hard Brexit.

Independent travellers will be less well protected. They should get a refund of their airfare in the event of a cancellation, but are not entitled to refunds of any money paid in advance for hotels or villas abroad, for example. Until something is officially sorted, I personally would avoid booking any travel which involves departing during the couple of weeks or so after March 29 because of the general risk of delays and disruption, both in the air and at borders. For more details on

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this development, check out our online news story (telegraph.co.uk/ tt-brexitflights). hard for holidaymakers to realise the potential savings – apparently some hotels were insisting on payments in euros or US dollars.

In reality, I found that – except in one very upmarket hotel – prices were being quoted and charged in the local currency. What had happened however, as one hotel manager admitted to me, was that they had put up their prices twice so far this year – though not enough, he claimed, to reflect the falling value of the lira. This is because many hotels rely on imported goods, which have obviously become much more expensive.

Nevertheless, despite these increases, day-to-day costs overall in Turkey are incredibly good value at the moment. You can easily eat out for under a tenner a head, the local wines are cheap and excellent, entry fees to

PULLING THE RUGTwo women do a spot of carpet shopping in Istanbul, left