The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
How the law decides on a ‘package holiday’
QA day before I was due to travel to Crete last April, I was forced to cancel my booking for flights and accommodation made through Pure Crete. The company had already offered to rebook the holiday later or in 2021 because of Covid-19 restrictions, but I felt that I could not commit to alternative travel plans at that time.
I did not ask for my money back as I was confident that my travel insurer – InsureandGo – would cover the loss. My travel policy clearly states that there was cover under the cancellation section for the imposition of Government advice against all but essential travel to Greece. I have finally heard back from InsureandGo, which says that the offer by Pure Crete to rebook at a future date is equivalent to a refund and I cannot make a claim. Is this correct?
AInsureandGo can refuse your claim – even though its policy wording is vague in this area. Under General Exclusions, it excludes any claim resulting from the tour operator, airline or any other company not being able to carry out any part of their obligation to you. All insurers expect you to do your best to mitigate your loss by seeking refunds before making a claim. The Competition and Markets Authority has confirmed that when package holidays are cancelled or cannot go ahead because of the pandemic – for example, because of changing Foreign Office travel advice – customers who have paid in advance should be entitled to a full refund.
The law supports this. UK airlines must refund flights under UK Regulation 261/2004 and tour operators must refund package holidays under the Package Travel and Linked Travel
Arrangements Regulations, 2018. I understand that you didn’t believe that the Package Travel Regulations applied because Pure Crete only arranged some of the trip – the flights and a villa rental.
But the definition of what constitutes a “package holiday” is a broad one. It covers any trip that lasts at least 24 hours or includes an overnight stay. It must also be sold for an inclusive price and comprise two of the following four elements: transport, accommodation, car hire or other tourist services such as event tickets, an excursion or a guide. So your holiday was covered under the Package Travel Regulations.
I suggested you go back to Pure Crete, which has a good reputation, and make a formal application for a refund of the £1,596 you paid for the flights and villa rental. I understand there was no quibble, and you have now been repaid.
You could never describe the Government’s enforced quarantine policy – in force for a fortnight now, for lucky Britons arriving in the UK from a select 33 “red list” countries – as the bleakest development of the past year. In a time when everyday life has faded to grey, and with 120,000 dead in this country alone, bleakness is in plentiful supply.
But there is a bleakness to the plan all the same. Not just the fears about civil liberties it invites, nor the questions of a) whether it should have been introduced sooner, and b) if applying it to passengers from some countries but not others renders it redundant. No, there is a pure bleakness to the place in which this “down time” is occurring. The airport hotel. Bleakness, thy name is “4.30am checkout and breakfast from a vending machine”.
Not that anyone is doing any checking out – unless they have done 10 days under lock and swipe card. Checking out is for holidaymakers; for people with plans. Whereas this is… well, put it this way. Have you read the “Inferno” bit of Dante’s Divine Comedy? No? A summary. Chap drops into Hell. Strolls about a bit. Gets to the Ninth Circle, and realises, in terror, that he is in a threestar “property” which sells itself as an “airport hotel”. Even though it’s three miles from Heathrow, on an industrial estate. He pays £190 for the night.
All right, I’m exaggerating. But, like Dante, you should be wondering what you have done with your life, and whether you have strayed from the sensible path, if, this far into a pandemic, you are in a 20 sq ft “superior suite”, ringing reception for a toilet roll you are not allowed to collect. At this juncture, a trip to the Fifth Circle (Wrath) or the Seventh (Violence) will sound comparatively appealing. But no leaving
Bleakness, thy name is ‘4.30am check-out and a vending machine breakfast’
the room, please. This is strictly self-isolation (which could be a new TV series, though it might not work in the Saturday evening slot).
If Covid could just be contained within the least recently refurbished hotel a park-and-ride bus journey from Gatwick, it would soon lose its pep and its tireless desire to reproduce.