Flight Refund

E11cos

Booked a package holiday with Love Holidays prior to Covid.  Was due to fly in August 2920 however foreign office advised against travel to country.  Received refund for hotel but not for flights. Love Holidays are refusing to refund flight costs as flight departed against foreign office advice.  We were not advised prior to departure of our hotel being closed due to covid and therefore would have had no accommodation upon arrival at our destination.  I only know this as telephoned the hotel directly.  Can you please help and confirm where we stand legally??  

Browntoa

Who cancelled the holiday , you or loveholiday ? 

Hasbeen

E11cos said:

Booked a package holiday with Love Holidays prior to Covid.  Was due to fly in August 2920 however foreign office advised against travel to country.  Received refund for hotel but not for flights. Love Holidays are refusing to refund flight costs as flight departed against foreign office advice.  We were not advised prior to departure of our hotel being closed due to covid and therefore would have had no accommodation upon arrival at our destination.  I only know this as telephoned the hotel directly.  Can you please help and confirm where we stand legally??  

August 2920?   Wow that's thinking ahead.  

But FO advice is only advice. If you cancelled or did not show for the flight that departed quite correctly. And not against FO advice.

Then perhaps may be very difficult to get refund if you cancelled. There would have been other hotels available?

Sorry!

sheramber

 Airlines were never advised not to fly.
Nationals of other countries needed to travel home.
 Some people needed to travel for work.
Essential travel was allowed.

Butts

If it's a package and one element is cancelled (The Hotel) then as the Organiser Love Holidays should refund you for the flights as well.
Did they offer you an alternative Hotel ?

[Deleted User]

Agree that as a package holiday you should be refunded for all elements.  It isn’t clear from your post though who cancelled what?  Maybe as Browntoa asks, you clarify and also the date it was cancelled in relation to your date of travel.  Did you for instance, contact the hotel direct?  Did they refund you or Love Holidays?   

eskbanker

The issue of who cancelled isn't always a decisive factor - if the package provider made a significant change to the package terms without offering an acceptable alternative or if there were unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances at the destination significantly affecting the trip, then in either case the traveller has the right to cancel, with the package organiser being obliged to refund in full.

However, in this case it doesn't sound like OP had any such dialogue with LoveHolidays ahead of the holiday, so is unlikely to be able to rely on those provisions retrospectively....

bagand96

It will come down to who instigated the cancellation. The customer or LoveHolidays. 

eskbanker

bagand96 said:

It will come down to who instigated the cancellation. The customer or LoveHolidays. 

The point I was making was that it's not necessarily as simple as that, and the outcome can be dependent on the nuances of the circumstances leading to the cancellation.  The quoted sections of the PTRs grant customers cancellation rights, with full refund obligations on the provider, in certain scenarios, and until more is known of exactly what happened in this case, it isn't viable to generalise....

Butts

Not necessarily, as @eskbanker says the customer can cancel and get a full refund if the circumstances he alludes to were a reality in the op's case.

E11cos

Butts said:

If it's a package and one element is cancelled (The Hotel) then as the Organiser Love Holidays should refund you for the flights as well.
Did they offer you an alternative Hotel ?

No they did not