Travel Agent Responsibilities during Ash Issue

lagentium

I've just returned to the UK after 5 days stranded in Dubai and feel that our travel agent didn't do enough to help us while we were in this situation. Can anyone advise what their responsibilites should have been?

We were staying in Mauritius and were flying back with Emirates (via Dubai). On our last day we were told that the Dubai-UK leg of the flight was cancelled and our option was to stay in current hotel in Mauritius (at discounted rate - although still very expensive as we were on our honeymoon) or travel to Dubai as planned and stay in hotel there. Either way accomodation/food costs would not be covered by them.

Should we have been offered free food and accomodation?

Once in Dubai we were told to wait for Emirates to contact us and to enjoy the sunshine! Obviously we were contacting Emirates on a regular basis to try and get some answers but feel after paying a travel agent a large amount of money to book the holiday they should have been doing more to help us with this and help us get home.

Do they have any legal obligations to help us or is wait for the airlines to contact you sufficient?

Incapuppy

lagentium wrote: »

Should we have been offered free food and accomodation?

No. You were travelling with a non-EU airline and their duty of care re: food and accomodation applied to the part of the journey originating from the EU.

delwynshd

Your travel agent wouldnt of been able to help you anymore than you could of helped yourself

The agent might of been able to arrange some cheap hotel accomodation for you but thats all, they couldnt of flew you home with another airline or paid for anything for you

Your agent isnt responsible

silvercar

Once in Dubai we were told to wait for Emirates to contact us and to enjoy the sunshine! Obviously we were contacting Emirates on a regular basis to try and get some answers but feel after paying a travel agent a large amount of money to book the holiday they should have been doing more to help us with this and help us get home.

They could have contacted Emirates for you and kept you informed of progress.

silvercar

delwynsholidaydeals wrote: »

Your travel agent wouldnt of been able to help you anymore than you could of helped yourself

The agent might of been able to arrange some cheap hotel accomodation for you but thats all, they couldnt of flew you home with another airline or paid for anything for you

Your agent isnt responsible

Legally they have no obligation to do anything. Morally, after taking a commission payment they could have made some phonecalls on behalf of the customer.

To say "they couldnt of flew you home with another airline or paid for anything for you" is misleading. They could have done anything they wanted on a goodwill basis. They could have paid for something on a "keep the customer happy, they are our future" business decision. If they chose not to even make a few phonecalls, then they risk being jusged on that when it is time for a client to book their next holiday.

delwynshd

If you can find a travel agent who is willing to pay for a customers accomodation then let me know

How is my statement misleading, the flights were not allowed to enter the UK airspace so they would have to wait for emirates to contact them for the new flight home or again the customer to keep trying emirates

The agent wouldnt be able to book them new seats with another carrier unless the customer paid for them.

As a travel agent I did everything I could to help stranded passengers, I helped out with finding them cheap accomodation to carry on there stay until flights were back up and running but you cant expect a travel agent to pay for this

ferf1223

I kind of don't understand the whole travel agent/3rd party website didn't do enough thing...everyone was in the same situation - ultimately it's the airlines that need to sort out the passengers that are stranded and get them rebooked. I don't really get the idea of waiting for or expecting the travel agent or 3rd party to sort it out then contact the customer when surely the customer contacting the airline directly is the most efficient approach.

i.e.

a) customer -> airline or

b) customer->TA/3rd party->airline->TA/3rd party->customer

Sure, the TA could have made some calls along with all the other calls they were likely making to airlines that were swamped...but taking the intermediaries out of the equation would (surely) mean less calls having to be dealt with by the airlines, shorter queues on phone system, quicker response times to passengers, etc.

I'd personally prefer to be the master of my own destiny in this sort of situation rather than waiting around while someone else did some checking and got back to me.

I don't think that a TA paying for a stranded passenger to take an alternate flight on an alternate airline at the TA's cost is something that anyone would reasonably expect.