Refund for curtailed holiday

HPayne

Hello, 
We booked on a weeks' ski holiday to France with SkiWorld through agent Interactive Resorts for w/c 14th March. We set off as planned, arrived in resort and a few hours later, we were advised that the resort would be closing. The tour operator informed us that we needed to leave resort and they proceeded to arrange emergency transport to get us home.
We returned home on 16th March and have since received correspondence from them confirming that neither the agent nor operator would be offering refunds or vouchers and instead as the holiday was curtailed due to reasons outside of their control, we would have to claim through our insurance. 
At this point, the FCO had not announced any non essential travel restrictions for France and I understood that in the event where the operator terminated their contract, under the provisions of The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, Part 3 Regulations 13(3) and 14, the operator would be liable to refund the holiday in full within 14 days. 
We are now in a position where neither the travel operator, agent or insurer are willing to refund. 
Any advice would be much appreciated!

mattyprice4004

What have your insurance company said? 

spesh84

Hi,

We have had the same problem. Travelled to France (L2A) with SkiWorld through an agent called Sno.
Both SkiWorld and Sno have said since we returned they're not paying out and Travel Insurance have said they won't pay out because travel agent should.

Last week i had an email from SkiWorld saying they would be pay out 5/7ths of the accommodation element of my holiday. Equates to £253pp, meaning that the whole accommodation works out at ~£350pp. This works out at ~£50 per person per night, which includes (for us in our particular Chalet) hot breakfast (x7), afternoon tea and cake (x7), 3 course evening meal with unlimited wine during dinner (x6), Wi-Fi, hot tub, all for £50 per night, I can't even get a B&B for that in my home town let alone a Chalet in a Ski resort!

They have said the other £550 of our package was for flights (which were EasyJet and cost around £150pp, we know this because we were looking to add a couple of other passengers onto our flight, bearing in mind that is the price to the public, not a company who booked a year in advance, so they would have got it cheaper), transfer (which was a group coach transfer with multiple stops, which i can get for £55pp and can get a private transfer for £111pp) and something they have called Resort (staff) Service, don't know what this is but I didn't receive 5/7ths of this also, which they didn't offer me a refund of.

We have refused their offer, explaining that they need to be more realistic with their loading of the accommodation price and also add in the Resort (staff) Service. I have also explained thet we should receive 6/7ths back, the announcement was made on the Saturday evening and it is them who couldn't get us home on the Sunday, so not our fault and not a reason to take another nights accommodation off of us.

Please let me know how you are getting on and what you have been told and/or received.

Life__Goes__On

spesh84 said:

Hi,

We have had the same problem. Travelled to France (L2A) with SkiWorld through an agent called Sno.
Both SkiWorld and Sno have said since we returned they're not paying out and Travel Insurance have said they won't pay out because travel agent should.

Last week i had an email from SkiWorld saying they would be pay out 5/7ths of the accommodation element of my holiday. Equates to £253pp, meaning that the whole accommodation works out at ~£350pp. This works out at ~£50 per person per night, which includes (for us in our particular Chalet) hot breakfast (x7), afternoon tea and cake (x7), 3 course evening meal with unlimited wine during dinner (x6), Wi-Fi, hot tub, all for £50 per night, I can't even get a B&B for that in my home town let alone a Chalet in a Ski resort!

They have said the other £550 of our package was for flights (which were EasyJet and cost around £150pp, we know this because we were looking to add a couple of other passengers onto our flight, bearing in mind that is the price to the public, not a company who booked a year in advance, so they would have got it cheaper), transfer (which was a group coach transfer with multiple stops, which i can get for £55pp and can get a private transfer for £111pp) and something they have called Resort (staff) Service, don't know what this is but I didn't receive 5/7ths of this also, which they didn't offer me a refund of.

We have refused their offer, explaining that they need to be more realistic with their loading of the accommodation price and also add in the Resort (staff) Service. I have also explained thet we should receive 6/7ths back, the announcement was made on the Saturday evening and it is them who couldn't get us home on the Sunday, so not our fault and not a reason to take another nights accommodation off of us.

Please let me know how you are getting on and what you have been told and/or received.

What method of payment did you use?

spesh84

I paid the deposit for all 16 people on my Credit Card. The balances for each person were then paid by me on my debit card and they transferred their amount into my bank account. A few people did pay their own balance on their own cards, not sure if they paid with their CC or DC though.