Tui Group Booking question

mancgirl77

Hi, my 18 year old daughter and 4 other girls have a holiday booked with Tui to Zante, travelling mid July. They have each paid £200 deposit and the final balance of around £450 each is due next week. At present only my daughter has travel insurance. 

All the girls are planning paying the rest of the holiday off even though it is highly unlikely that they will be going and then getting a full refund if it is cancelled so they don’t lose any of their money.
My questions are would they be better just losing £200 each rather than have to fight for a refund which they may end up getting in vouchers anyway? Would vouchers be issued to each person or just the lead passenger?My daughter doesn’t want to rearrange to another date and would prefer a refund whereas some of the other girls might want to rebook/change to another date. 

If she cancelled now but the others didn’t how would that effect the other girls?
Another problem is the girls have all fallen out and my daughter is only now friends with a couple of them. No one is speaking to the lead passenger so if any refunds etc  did go to her my daughter might struggle to get anything back from her. Girls!!! 

Thank you in advance for any advice. 

routley

Firstly As this holiday was booked as a group only the lead passenger can cancel the holiday, this would mean that the holiday has to be cancelled for all 5 of them. Your daughter can’t just cancel her part of the holiday. 

Secondly you are better off paying in full and TUI refunding any cancelled holidays than cancelling yourself, travel insurance won’t cover it if you cancel. I did read somewhere that TUI have move the final payment date to 4 weeks before departure so it might pay to see if this is applicable to your daughters booking. 

Aylesbury_Duck

Who paid the collective deposit to the travel company?

If the lead passenger booked everything in her name and paid the deposit, then collected £200 from the other four girls, then I'm afraid you're all at the whim of that lead passenger.  If she doesn't make the balance payment, you'll all lose something (probably all the deposit).  If the girls all booked and paid separately, they can all decide what to do separately.

If they booked collectively through the lead passenger, its time for them to grow up and sort it out I'm afraid.  Your daughter pulling out would mean that the others have to pick up her share of the money. I assume they'd keep her deposit and ask her for the other £450, otherwise they'll have to stump up themselves.  

Edited to add: if the balance is paid and TUI cancel the holiday, the lead passenger would get the £3250 voucher or refund herself. 

mancgirl77

Thanks for your replies.
They each payed £50 cash in store when they booked as part of tui’s low deposit scheme and then £150 each by card over the phone to cover the rest of the deposit.
I’m just concerned that any refund whether it be cash or vouchers all go to the lead passenger and then she refuses to refund the other girls. Hopefully tui would refund it to each person separately. 

comeandgo

I would think Tui will refund to lead passenger.  If my husband and I go on holiday he is lead passenger so when any refunds come through, he gets them, TUI don't contact me and ask for my bank details.

stmc63

Hi
I'm new to the forum. We currently have a p and o cruise booked via tui for sept 2020. Final balance due in 4 weeks. I am reluctant to pay balance for the following reasons....government has advised no overseas travel indefinitely, chief medical officer advises over 70s not to go on cruises irrespective of health,husband will be 72 at point of cruise. Travel insurance company have stated we will not be covered for travel because aged over 70. Thousands of people will therefore be going on cruises aged over 70 assuming they have health cover. Should anyone in this category test positive for covid 19 whilst on cruise their health insurance will not cover costs,irrespective of what the health condition is.
TUI and p and o are not informing customers of this.

Pollycat

Hi stmc63

Welcome to MSE.

I would start a new thread for your question as it's not the same situation at all as the original poster and answers to your query on this thread may take attention away from mangirl77's issue.

Go into this board:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/travel-chaos-help-info

and you'll see a pink button marked 'New Thread'. click on that and you can start your own thread giving it the title that is most appropriate.

You can copy your text into the new thread.

Or there are lots of threads about whether to pay holiday balances that you might like to read.