Should my travel company be cancelling our package holiday now that Maldives is on the red list?

Butts

Gaz_Williams said:

Butts said:

I see Luxtripper are a Travel Agent rather than a Holiday Provider so presumably arrange all the elements of your trip separately with different providers - or is it all with one company ?

Most of the big providers like TUI have a promise where they will not take anyone to a "Red Country" which will trigger an automatic refund or ability to change free of charge depending on what you elect to do.

Does your ATOL Certificate describe it as a single package or multi package ? 

The ATOL certificate calls it a "Package (Single-contract)" so I'm assuming its a package holiday regardless of who they use as subcontractors. I guess that's also what I thought, the red list would mean an automatic cancellation but apparently not with Luxtripper. When our previous holiday was cancelled last month TUI offered either a full refund, a change in dates at the same price, or a voucher (+10% of the value) which I thought was very generous. 

If only you'd booked this one with TUI as well !!
Which Airline have they booked you on ?

Thrugelmir

Gaz_Williams said:

Does anyone know if Luxtripper should be cancelling my package as the route and destination is now on the red list?

Given the fluidity of the broader situation , no.  They'll be processing everything in a systematic manner with the nearest bookings dealt with first. Too time time consuming to deal with every enquiry on an ad-hoc basis. 

Gaz_Williams

If only you'd booked this one with TUI as well !!
Which Airline have they booked you on ?

Tell me about it!! I've had cancelled holidays from Thomas Cook, British Airways, TUI and not one issue, even the ATOL scheme worked well.

They've booked flights with Emirates...

Butts

Gaz_Williams said:

If only you'd booked this one with TUI as well !!
Which Airline have they booked you on ?

Tell me about it!! I've had cancelled holidays from Thomas Cook, British Airways, TUI and not one issue, even the ATOL scheme worked well.

They've booked flights with Emirates...

If they don't play ball you'd better hope there is a Foreign Office Warning for all but essential travel to The Maldives in situ as that will trigger a refund on a Package Holiday as your Holiday Insurance is invalidated.

Gaz_Williams

Butts said:

If they don't play ball you'd better hope there is a Foreign Office Warning for all but essential travel to The Maldives in situ as that will trigger a refund on a Package Holiday as your Holiday Insurance is invalidated.

I'm keeping an eye on all the websites

Current FCO website: The FCDO advise against all but essential travel to: the whole of the Maldives based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks

I'm also keeping an eye on the UNWTO/IATA Destination Tracker so see if things improve and it ends up off the Red list... fingers crossed...

eskbanker

As with any other package provider, they're bound by the Package Travel Regulations, but in any case https://www.luxtripper.co.uk/legal/page/booking-terms-conditions does explicitly (albeit a little vaguely) suggest that they'll abide by FCDO advice:

 4.3 You can cancel your booking without paying cancellation charges if the performance of your package, or the carriage of passengers to your destination, is significantly affected by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. In such circumstances, we will arrange for your booking to be terminated and for you to receive a full refund. We will observe advice provided by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office

5. We follow FCO advice where it affects your immediate travel arrangements.  Because the FCO advice can change periodically, we reserve the right to review the impact of any FCO advice on your chosen travel arrangements up to 7 days before departure.’

Butts

eskbanker said:

As with any other package provider, they're bound by the Package Travel Regulations, but in any case https://www.luxtripper.co.uk/legal/page/booking-terms-conditions does explicitly (albeit a little vaguely) suggest that they'll abide by FCDO advice:

 4.3 You can cancel your booking without paying cancellation charges if the performance of your package, or the carriage of passengers to your destination, is significantly affected by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. In such circumstances, we will arrange for your booking to be terminated and for you to receive a full refund. We will observe advice provided by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office

5. We follow FCO advice where it affects your immediate travel arrangements.  Because the FCO advice can change periodically, we reserve the right to review the impact of any FCO advice on your chosen travel arrangements up to 7 days before departure.’

Looks like they may take it to the wire then with the 7 Days in Section 5 above !!

Gaz_Williams

Butts said:

eskbanker said:

As with any other package provider, they're bound by the Package Travel Regulations, but in any case /legal/page/booking-terms-conditions does explicitly (albeit a little vaguely) suggest that they'll abide by FCDO advice:

 4.3 You can cancel your booking without paying cancellation charges if the performance of your package, or the carriage of passengers to your destination, is significantly affected by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances. In such circumstances, we will arrange for your booking to be terminated and for you to receive a full refund. We will observe advice provided by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office

5. We follow FCO advice where it affects your immediate travel arrangements.  Because the FCO advice can change periodically, we reserve the right to review the impact of any FCO advice on your chosen travel arrangements up to 7 days before departure.’

Looks like they may take it to the wire then with the 7 Days in Section 5 above !!

Thanks both - that's brilliant. So the way I view this is that if 7 days before the flight if the FCO advice is not to travel (i.e. red list country) that I should be able to request that they cancel the booking due to their T&C's. If it drops to the amber list and the flights are running we are off on holidays without hotel quarantine. Think that makes a lot more sense than trying to move for a more expensive time of the year and being stuck with Luxtripper.

eskbanker

Gaz_Williams said:
So the way I view this is that if 7 days before the flight if the FCO advice is not to travel (i.e. red list country) that I should be able to request that they cancel the booking due to their T&C's.

Yes, although the point I was making earlier on is that there's a difference between countries with adverse FCO advice and countries which are on the red list (which is managed by the Department of Transport) - there will undoubtedly be overlap but they're not directly equivalent, and it's the former that counts when it comes to cancellation rights, travel insurance, etc.

silvercar

I would wait and see. Maldives have been doing well on their vaccine programme, so their rates may fall rapidly in the next few weeks. 

It really is a question of waiting to see whether the sinopharm vaccine can beat the Indian variant.
I really hope so, as the Maldives rely on tourism and have suffered because of it due to Covid.