COVID holiday cancellations: worst tour operators for refunds named

If Covid causes havoc with your holiday plans, don’t expect to get your money back easily if you’ve booked with one of these holiday companies.

Once again, summer holidays are far from normal this year.

The Government has adopted a traffic light approach that we can charitably call confused, based on the fact it keeps adding in new tiers.

However, just as confusing as the rules around where you’re allowed to travel to ‒ and whether you’ll have to quarantine when you do so ‒ can be the rules around getting your money back should your trip have to be cancelled.

This was a huge topic last year when travel was all but abandoned across the world, but it’s lingered as a problem into 2021 too.

And now a new study by Which? has cast light on the travel firms that you can relax about booking with, as well as those who you may have to fight in order to get a refund from.

Will I get a refund?

Which? assessed the various holiday firms based on whether they would provide refunds in each of the following six scenarios:

• If the package holiday is cancelled by the operator (refunds would need to be provided within 14 days).

• If there was another Government travel ban that prevented the holidaymaker from making their trip.

• If the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) advised against travel to that country, or if it was added to the Government’s red list.

• If quarantine was required on arrival at the destination.

• If quarantine at home was required on return (in this case, Which? also checked whether rebooking with no amendment fee was offered).

• If the customer was told to isolate by the Test and Trace service. Again, Which? checked whether rebooking with no amendment fee would be offered.

The worst firms for refunds

The positive news here is that a significant number of firms were awarded ‘green’ status by Which?, meaning that you can relax about booking with them.

These range from larger names like Jet2, Tui and Trailfinders to smaller specialists like Pura Aventura.

Which? placed around a dozen travel firms on its own red list for refunds, though it’s important to recognise that there were two different factors behind that categorisation.

In some cases, it was because they would not provide a refund in some of the scenarios set out by Which?, but in others it was down to the firm repeatedly refusing to answer the questions from Which?, exposing them to criticism over a lack of transparency.

Let’s start with the travel firms that failed to beat the scenario tests:

• Lastminute.com;
• Love Holidays;
• Mountain Kingdoms;
• On the Beach;

And these were the firms that refused to engage with Which? and provide details on how it would handle each of those scenarios:

• Best At Travel;
• Brightsun Travel;
• Broadway Travel;
• Holiday Gems Limited;
• Skylord Travel;
• Teletext Holidays;
• Voyage Prive UK.

Repeat offenders

Now, the eagle-eyed among you will note that some of these holiday firms have been in trouble over their questionable approach to refunds since the onset of the pandemic.

Teletext Holidays for example was threatened with court action by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) because of its failure to comply with the rules, before eventually relenting in May and agreeing to repay holidaymakers a whopping £7 million in outstanding refund payments.

It was a similar story with Lastminute.com, which dragged its heels until it was threatened with a day in court and agreed to cough up £1 million in refunds. 

On The Beach was also reported to the CMA based on its approach to refunds by The Sun newspaper, while LoveHolidays agreed to hand back a massive £18 million for holidays cancelled due to Covid at the end of last year, once again following action by the CMA.

It’s time for a long memory

There’s a pretty clear pattern here. Certain travel firms are more than happy to ignore their responsibilities and drag their heels over handing money back to holidaymakers, until the very last moment when they recognise that the CMA taking them to court could mean they lose even more cash.

One of the opportunities for us all coming out of the pandemic is to reassess the businesses we use.

We’ve all seen first-hand the firms that have gone the extra mile to adapt to the way the world has changed, and still try to do right by their customers, even if it digs into the profit margins.

Equally, we’ve also all seen the businesses that have tried it on and had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards behaving properly.

You have to ask yourself, are these the firms you really want to hand over your money to, whether it’s for a holiday or anything else? It’s important for us as consumers to have long memories, and reward the firms that treat us properly.