Differing t&cs holiday villa letting company

jamie_k_2

Good morning all,
Just looking for a little advice. We booked a holiday last year when things started looking better after 1st lockdown to go away this summer, booking flights and villa in Spain booked separately.
A couple of unknowns right now are 1. we will not have had both vaccinations by then so if a vaccination 'passport' is required we may not be able to go. 
2. This new law has come in banning travel abroad without reasonable excuse which will be in when we are due to fly.

When things started looking not in our favour for the holiday I looked on the website for the villa for their cancellation terms and conditions and it states on their website cancellation any time until 30 days before date of travel incurs 10% penalty of total cost of booking. As the second payment is due to be taken from my card this month i was happy to sacrifice the 10% but when I made correspondence to this effect i was advised that the terms and conditions were different when we booked and we would lose 50% of the total value of the booking if we cancelled. I have checked and the t&cs are indeed different to what is now showing on their website. I am by no means a legal expert but do the t&cs that were previosuly in place still apply when their website states different? 

Is there any chance that we will still be able to go on this holiday baring in mind the 2 points i made above, as a break away would be really precious to us with the year we have had (and i am not even including anything COVID related when i say this!)

Many thanks for your help.

Caz3121

It should be the terms and conditions that were agreed to at the time of booking unless the company issues a waiver that applies to previous bookings. (many companies relaxed their terms to entice new bookings but this would not automatically apply to previous bookings that were booked under different terms)
Boris is due to make an announcement on foreign holidays tomorrow.
Do you have travel insurance in place?...worth checking the policy details to see whether you would be covered if you were unable to travel.
It is also worth checking to see what happens to your villa booking if you do not make the second payment when due.

Upsidedownandaround

As stated the terms and conitions are the ones you agreed to at the time.

Many in the travel industry are offering better terms e.g better refundable/cancellation terms and waiving change fees etc to newer customers to drum up business at times when there is more uncertainty around travel. This would appear to be the case with the villa company you have used.

mattyprice4004

Terms that apply are the ones you agreed to - I’m sure if they’d changed them to your detriment you wouldn’t be happy so it works both ways unfortunately. 

It’s not the villa company’s fault you can’t travel, so you’ll need to claim on your travel insurance.