Love holidays have cancelled my hotel but refuse to give me a refund for the pegasus flights

kikismum

Yesterday, I had an email from loveholidays to ask me to download the loveholiday app and on it I see there is a message thread informing me that the hotel i had booked in my package holiday has been closed.  There has been no official email just a thread that i probably would not have seen if i did not want the app.  They have suggested an alternative hotel in the vicinity but it is dreadful and we would never have booked this.  I had to wait until 9am this morning to call.  They have said i can choose an alternative hotel and the only one suitable was in a different resort still in Turkey.  they agreed to this and when i discussed the flights they said everything will be like for like.  They said that i did have to pay the extra for the hotel but they would upgrade me to a private taxi rather than shuttle.  Another email arrived at 11.40am which i was unable to see until 3pm informing me again to look at the my booking section on my app.  I did this and saw a message saying did i realise that there will be over  a 5 hour journey time from the airport. They had failed to advise me that the flight would remain!  All this still through the message thread and no email or phone back.  I informed then that i would like to cancel the holiday as they were not fulfilling their obligation for a like for lije holiday and that they had not properly advised me by email or letter.  They said they could only refund me the hotel and not the flight or transfer - although this was all booked as a package holiday.  The holiday is due on Wednesday 30th so as you can imagine i am a bit worried.  I would like to book another holiday (different company) so that we still have something next week and then fight for the full refund from love holiday
please advise

eskbanker

If they are unable to offer suitable alternative accommodation of the same quality and in the same resort, then this is a significant change to the arrangements and you are entitled to choose a full refund of everything you paid, under regulation 11 of the Package Travel Regulations.

Grumpy_chap

eskbanker said:

If they are unable to offer suitable alternative accommodation of the same quality and in the same resort, then this is a significant change to the arrangements and you are entitled to choose a full refund of everything you paid, under regulation 11 of the Package Travel Regulations.

Except, it sounds to me as though LH have offered an alternative hotel in the same area and which LH consider equivalent.  The OP seems to have determined that alternative as dreadful.  This seems to come down to the LH interpretation of the alternative hotel versus the OPs interpretation of the same alternative hotel and, on that latter basis, the OP has selected the hotel far away.

I wonder whether the OP could share what it is about the alternative hotel offered that they consider makes it terrible compared to the original hotel.

kikismum said:

Yesterday, I had an email from loveholidays to ask me to download the loveholiday app and on it I see there is a message thread informing me that the hotel i had booked in my package holiday has been closed.  There has been no official email just a thread that i probably would not have seen if i did not want the app.  They have suggested an alternative hotel in the vicinity but it is dreadful and we would never have booked this.  I had to wait until 9am this morning to call.  They have said i can choose an alternative hotel and the only one suitable was in a different resort still in Turkey.  they agreed to this and when i discussed the flights they said everything will be like for like.  They said that i did have to pay the extra for the hotel but they would upgrade me to a private taxi rather than shuttle.  Another email arrived at 11.40am which i was unable to see until 3pm informing me again to look at the my booking section on my app.  I did this and saw a message saying did i realise that there will be over  a 5 hour journey time from the airport. They had failed to advise me that the flight would remain!  All this still through the message thread and no email or phone back.  I informed then that i would like to cancel the holiday as they were not fulfilling their obligation for a like for lije holiday and that they had not properly advised me by email or letter.  They said they could only refund me the hotel and not the flight or transfer - although this was all booked as a package holiday.  The holiday is due on Wednesday 30th so as you can imagine i am a bit worried.  I would like to book another holiday (different company) so that we still have something next week and then fight for the full refund from love holiday
please advise

eskbanker

Grumpy_chap said:

eskbanker said:

If they are unable to offer suitable alternative accommodation of the same quality and in the same resort, then this is a significant change to the arrangements and you are entitled to choose a full refund of everything you paid, under regulation 11 of the Package Travel Regulations.

Except, it sounds to me as though LH have offered an alternative hotel in the same area and which LH consider equivalent.  The OP seems to have determined that alternative as dreadful.  This seems to come down to the LH interpretation of the alternative hotel versus the OPs interpretation of the same alternative hotel and, on that latter basis, the OP has selected the hotel far away.

I wonder whether the OP could share what it is about the alternative hotel offered that they consider makes it terrible compared to the original hotel.

Yes, you're right that the replacement accommodation needs to be objectively of the same standard, rather than a matter of preference, but my interpretation is that if Loveholidays were confident that it's the same star rating, etc, then they wouldn't have backed down so readily and allowed OP to choose something different.  However, as you say, more info from OP about the originally-booked and subsequently-offered hotels would help, e.g. naming them.

Grumpy_chap

I am not sure that LH "backed down".
The OP said "  i did have to pay the extra for the hotel "

eskbanker

Grumpy_chap said:

I am not sure that LH "backed down".
The OP said "  i did have to pay the extra for the hotel "

Package providers are entitled to seek additional costs even if moving to similar alternative accommodation in the same resort, but it seemed odd that they countenanced a change to an entirely different resort and appeared to be offering concessions on transfers.  Anyway, we're just speculating really, so let's see what OP comes back with!