Holiday Cancelled

ANDY1964

Good Evening.

Unfortunately we had our holiday to Jamaica cancelled today because of the recent hurricane that hit Jamaica.
.
Asked the tour operator if we could book to go to Turkey in replace of the cancelled holiday holiday.

Was told that we could not do this by tour operator.

Is this correct?

IvanOpinion

Sorry to hear that your holiday was canceled.
There are several reasons why your TA could be correct:
- too close to departure date. What is the date of the holiday?
- tour operator does not sell holidays to Turkiye
- tour operator has to wait to get money back so they can do refunds/rebook
- etc.

twopenny

I don't think they can just transfer your money from one country, hotel and flights to another especially in this case.

If you think about it they have paid the suppliers so they do not have your money, the suppliers do. Those people including banks, computers and post will be in turmoil so that's not straighforward.

You should get your money (hopefully) returned if the records are still intact and when they can get back to work and everything is communicating. That could be some time.

Do you have insurance?

Does the tour operator have insurance?

Even if it was possible to have the money returned to the tour operator it would come to you and not be transfered to another holiday.

Those new flights and hotel would have to be within what they have a contract for and last minute flights are going to be expensive.

Westin

This needs to be viewed as a full cancellation with refund, and a new booking.

heatherw_01

They are correct.

You would need to rebook.

peteuk

Who did you book with?
Did they not further advise you on what to do - or did they just say its cancelled. 
Did you take out travel insurance?

ANDY1964

We booked with On The Beach.

There was little or no communication tbh.

I received a text at about 6pm the day before the scheduled flight from TUI advising that the flight had been cancelled.

But told to go to the airport the next day because there was a possibility of the flight going ahead the following day.

Travelled up.as planned but received a text saying the flight would not be going ahead the following day as hoped.

They did not give a reason why they had cancelled the flight all together.

I'm assuming it was because of the hurricane a few days earlier in Jamaica.

Was quite surprised tbh because the hurricane more or less missed Montego Bay with.some damage but I felt not enough to cancel the entire holiday and flight.

The communication at the airport was pretty shocking.

The TUI reps all day long had not been told what was actually happening.

As you can imaging it was long day without any info being giving at all to both the passengers nor TUI reps who were just as frustrated for the lack.of info that you would have thought would have been the case.

Westin

If you booked with OTB then definately a cancellation and rebooking rather than ‘swapping’ destinations.

Jamaica was expected to be heavily impacted by the storm.  Whilst I appreciate your upset and the short notice cancellation and in your view the poor communication, probably wise to keep everyone safe and cancel the flight.  If they had operated it I expect you would have others moaning and complaining that TUI were gambling with their lives and flying them into danger etc…. 

I actually had friends who were in Jamaica on vacation at the time.  They are safe but said that it was horrendous and had not experienced anything like it before.  They were told to stay in their rooms during the worst of it and had to do so for 10 hours.  Lots of post storm damage and clear up.

TELLIT01

Surely it was far better that the airline/tour operator act with caution and cancel holidays than have people potentially arrive to a devastated island?