Ice Lolly & On The Beach

beano4444

Hi there, just wondering if anyone has booked any holidays using these websites? How much protection do you have if things were to go wrong? Some deals seem to good to be true!

Alan_Bowen

If you search you will see a lot of unhappy On the Beach customers, you need to understand they do not sell holidays, they sell parts, if one part goes bust, you may only have half a holiday left. Clearly they have more satisfied than unsatisfied customers otherwise they wouldn't be as successful as they are, but this and many other similar sites have more complaints than I would be happy with. Ice Lolly is much smaller, but tend to simply act as an agent and sell complete packages put together by other tour operators

Deleerious

As previous post says. You get sold 3 parts of a holiday:

1 - A low cost flight, Squeezyjet or Dandare
2 - A transfer to / from the airport by a 3rd party in the travelling country
3 - A hotel stay.

Simple as that.

If one element falls short you could be left hanging. These places are not like Thomson's who do everything, flights, hotels, transfers, have reps on the resort etc. This is why they are so cheap. Also keep in mind that the offers on the computer of 5 night all inclusive at £100.00 when you ring up this won't include transfers at the other end and will probably be on a flight from Belfast at 3.00am. The real cost will come out when you call.

Happy travelling.

Deleerious

bagand96

Just to add there is nothing fundamentally wrong with booking with sites like these. But you must understand what you are booking. It is not a package holiday; where evreything is on one invoice by one supplier (Thomson/Airtours/Thomas Cook etc).

These companies will book a flight, and then a hotel, and transfers if you want. However, in reality it is no different than you booking your flight directly with the airline, and then booking your hotel directly, or though a hotels website. All aspects are on a different invoice with a different supplier.

So for example if your airline goes bust, you will still have a hotel reservation that you may or may not be able to cancel. However decent Travel insurance should cover things like this.

Bottom line is, they are fine if you appreciate why it is cheaper. If you want the full 100% protection of the package holiday then these sites are not for you.