Crystal cancelled my holiday with 2 weeks notice

123123

I’d booked a lovely ski holiday for new year. Last week Crystal rang to say they’d overbooked and the hotel wasn’t available. They did offer an alternative, but it didn’t have half the features of the original. The most important is the supervised kids club and play room because I’m travelling alone with my child. It was half board with an early kids meal option. Ski in location with a pool and spa. I called to complain and have spent hours on the phone to them and ages looking at their website for different options. It is peak week so there’s nothing. It is so stressful. They offered a few options. The only one of those that was suitable is now gone. What I’ve ended up with is a B&B hotel, swimming available free in the municipal 10 minutes away. No kids club. No childcare. I’m gutted. I’ve had a terrible year (bereavement, divorce and cancer) and was really looking forward to this break. I could cancel and get my money back but then we won’t get to ski at all and we were both excited about it. I will never, never book with Crystal ever again. Is there anything I can do?

eskbanker

Are you aware of any options beyond the ones they're offering?  Is the originally-booked hotel available if you were to book independently?

If there's something more suitable then they may be willing to negotiate something, but ultimately if there really isn't anything available then a refund would seem the only realistic outcome?

123123

I checked and the original hotel isn’t available directly. There is nothing at all that comes up on the Crystal website. They have offered £475 refund if I take the alternative holiday they’ve offered. 

Flugelhorn

I do hate it when this happens - why do they overbook? or is that they just want to let someone else stay there and therefore someone has to get booted out?

kaMelo

The same thing happened to one of my children a couple of weeks ago for a ski holiday they were organising for them and some friends. It's unfortunate of course but it's the hotel who double booked, not Crystal.
To be fair to Crystal they didn't hide from their responsibilities and did everything they were obliged to do, when no suitable alternative accommodation for those dates could be found the refund was credited to their credit card in two days which I thought was pretty fast.
They felt confident enough to rebook through Crystal the same hotel on a different date.  I realise this is no consolation but I'd be happy to use Crystal for the way they dealt with things when they went wrong.

zagfles

Flugelhorn said:

I do hate it when this happens - why do they overbook? or is that they just want to let someone else stay there and therefore someone has to get booted out?

Possibly. When hotels/tour operators etc say something is "overbooked" they usually try to imply it was a mistake or oversight, but I somehow doubt it usually is. A few possibilities are:

1) The price for the hotel/tour/holiday has gone up a lot since booking, so they advertise availability even though they are fully booked. If people then book at the higher price, they "bump" people who've paid a lower price. 

2) They expect a certain percentage of people to cancel, so they overbook deliberately. If some do cancel, they get to keep some/most of the money the cancellers paid. If nobody, or less than they bargained for, cancel, they just bump some. Airlines used to do this a lot. 

3) A big group wants to make a booking, say 4 rooms. They only have 3 available. Do they turn the booking down, and risk having 3 empty rooms, or do they "bump" someone out who's just booked the one room. 

This sort of dodgy practice does seem to happen. A few years ago a friend of mine went to Krakow, and he booked a full day tour with a tour company that had excellent reviews. Couple of days before the tour he went to a bar and met a group of Americans. They discussed plans and he told them about the tour he was going on. The Americans had a look and decided they wanted to do the same tour, same day, so they emailed the tour company asking if they had availability for 4. Half an hour later they got a reply saying yes, all booked in. But then - two minutes later - my friend got a text saying his tour was cancelled! The exact same tour the Americans had just booked!

In the end, all 5 of them decided to go on another tour, all together. The original tour company phoned them asking where they were as the driver had been hanging around at the pickup point waiting, and the American just said, "you told my friend the tour was cancelled"    They hadn't paid anything upfront so the shyster tour company now had 4 empty seats plus wasted time hanging around for no-shows. A small victory against dodgy tour companies!

Obviously it might be completely different in the OP's case.