Your holiday questions tackled

Sue Ockwell, Association of Independent Tour Operators

Richard from Wiltshire says: "My wife and I have recently returned from a holiday in South Africa .Her luggage was broken into by the baggage handlers at Cape Town and valuables and credit cards stolen. Despite having full annual travel insurance we are struggling to get any compensation. BA accept that the valuables were taken while the suitcase was in their care but feel they are not responsible and the insurance company inform us that they are not responsible because the suitcase was not with us but in the care of BA . We would appreciate your opinion on this conundrum. We do realise that valuables should not be in the suitcase, if possible, but with only one item allowed as hand luggage the airline are actively encouraging us to put all we can in our suitcase."

Dear Richard,

I think you know the answer to this - you say, very honestly, "we do realise that valuables should not be in the suitcase".

Exactly. And credit cards don't exactly take up a lot of space in a wallet in hand luggage. And valuables (I'm assuming you're talking jewellery) can always be worn on the aeroplane.

You will not, I'm afraid, get any compensation for your loss, and will have to put it down to what a friend of mine called (when mugged on Copacabana Beach in Rio) "redistribution of wealth". The people who broke into your luggage at Cape Town will doubtless have been very poor compared with you, which may be of some small compensation to you.

I guess it's a lesson learnt the hard way for future travel trips... sorry!

Alan from Birmingham says: "When I try to book a last minute holiday bargain they always say they cannot guarantee a holiday which would be suitable for me because I am disabled. I have M.S. and they say last minute bargains are for able bodied people so I miss out on holiday bargains. Surely some of the accommodation is suitable for a disabled traveller, but they do not want to bother looking?"

Dear Alan,

I am sorry to hear of your problems in booking last-minute holidays. You don't mention which tour operator (or operators?) refuse to take your bookings, so it's difficult for me to talk specifics. As a general rule, though, I would advise anyone against making last-minute bookings in an attempt to save a few pounds.

Last-minute bookings are, basically, a way to get rid of stock that's still left on the shelf - you might call it distressed stock that simply won't sell without a bargain basement price label. Do you really want to risk spoiling your valuable and hard-earned annual holiday to save �50 or �100?

Often last-minute bookings are "allocated on arrival". That means no-one knows where they are staying - a one-star apartment or a three-star hotel - until they get there. You won't know if it's in a lively town or in a quiet location. You won't know what the local facilities are like, or even what age-group tends to favour the location. How are you going to feel if you're in an 18-30s holiday location and you are slightly older and don't really want to witness drunken antics night after night? Or if you wanted a lively location and find yourself in a quiet, off-the-beaten track place?

A lot of smaller, specialist tour operators will be happy to help you to find the right holiday to suit your likes and dislikes - take a look at the variety of holidays on offer with the Association of Independent Tour Operators, for example (www.aito.co.uk).

You have the reassurance of AITO's Quality Charter, of speaking to knowledgeable people who've visited the destinations they are selling and who can advise you on their suitability as far as you, as an individual, are concerned. The other advantage of booking early is that you get the widest choice of accommodation and can spend a bit of time researching different places to ensure you have the best holiday possible, rather than making a snap decision at the last minute that's quite possibly going to be the wrong decision.

John emailed us this: "I recently booked a newspaper's holiday offer. Six days (five nights) in Bergerac flying from East Midland Airport 8th June & returning 13th June. I declined travel insurance but when the invoice was received they had added �50 for 'compulsory' travel insurance.

I do not want travel insurance. If the plane crashes and I survive I am covered by the airline insurance, if my baggage goes astray I am covered by the airline, if I hire a car I am covered by the car insurance, accident at the hotel is covered by the holiday company/hotel insurance, the European Health card covers my health needs. All other risks (loss, theft, repatriation in an emergency etc.) I am prepared to risk at my own cost. Why should they insist I have travel insurance?

Dear John,

Travel insurance is not compulsory; that's a fact, and it should not be claimed otherwise.

But I have to say that, in my view, for the sake of the average cost of around �20 pp for a two-week trip in Europe, you are extremely unwise to travel uninsured. Consular officials worldwide say that their dearest wish is that everyone leaving the UK should take out an insurance policy - many of the problems encountered by people abroad could be resolved much more easily were they insured. And tour operators often have to pick up the pieces when their customers are found to be travelling uninsured, so it's easy to see why tour operators would prefer to be sure that their clients are covered by a decent policy.

You won't find that airlines will look after you properly if the 'plane crashes and you survive - their liability is limited to very modest payouts for various injuries that you might incur. Their liability is also very little in respect of lost luggage. It might sound easy enough to sue a hotel overseas, but it could take a great deal of money and persistence on your part to do so. The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) is helpful in some respects and worthwhile taking with you, but won't cover you outside the EU and won't cover everything. And perhaps you under-estimate the cost of an air ambulance to get you back to the UK in an emergency (for example if you need brain surgery after a car crash and the destination you are visiting is not renowned for its expertise in this field). It can be around �30,000. Doesn't that �20 insurance policy suddenly seem very good value? Annual policies, if you travel several times a year, represent even better value. I urge you to re-think!

Louise from London: "We're an odd couple going for six weeks to see family in Australia (with stopovers) and need travel insurance.

I am 46 with a clotting disorder and my partner is 73 but had a stroke 10 years ago. We're both wonderfully fit and well to the untrained eye, all conditions stable. We don't want any frills - we just want the reassurance that we can get any emergency treatment we might need and can both get home fast. If we know we have that, we can forget about it and get on with the holiday. Can you please advise?

Dear Louise,

You will be able to find travel insurance for you both - you just need to be honest with the insurers you approach for quotes and tell their medical screening people exactly what conditions you have, what drugs you are taking to keep your conditions stable and confirm to them that your doctors are happy for you to travel.

And don't forget to let them know if you have any relatives in the UK who have existing medical conditions that would require your return home if things took a turn for the worse. If you don't give insurers full information, your cover will be invalidated.

It may cost you a little more to insure than it would cost others without medical conditions, but the risk is of course greater for the insurer. Both Age Concern and Saga are known to be good for travel insurance for the older traveller, but it's worth approaching several insurance companies for quotes so that you can compare costs and levels of cover offered - they can vary widely.

Read the small print carefully and then set off and have a wonderful holiday, safe in the knowledge that your policy will do what you want it to should something happen while you're away.

Paul from Cornwall: "I booked through my local independent travel agent who sources his holidays through the web, it was with Thomas Cook Ltd to Sharm el Sheik, Egypt in Sept. I had to cancel due to my wife's illness, but when I informed the travel agent he refused, stating I owed a further �70 deposit. I told him I paid the asked for deposit at the time of �150, (3 x �50 which was the normal deposit Thomas Cook was asking for. I refuse to pay the extra; I have sent e-mails to Thomas Cook but have not received any useful help. I have sent a recorded letter to the local travel company stating my cancellation but no reply has been forthcoming."

Dear Paul,

This is probably down to the small print in Thomas Cook's booking conditions. Often, to attract early bookings, tour operators seek much lower deposits for holidays than is the norm - �50 pp in your case compared to an average of �100 pp or more. I have been unable to check these particular booking conditions for you, but you will probably find in them a paragraph which states that, if the booking is cancelled for any reason, then the normal higher level of deposit is payable. Presumably you agreed to these booking conditions at the time of booking - although, in common with many people, you may not have read them properly or considered the potential implications. So, if the booking conditions are along the lines that I think they may be, you do in theory have to pay the �70 in question.

If you have travel insurance, you will be covered for cancellation due to your wife's illness - end of problem. All you need is a cancellation invoice from Thomas Cook, your tour operator, which your travel agent should obtain for you. If your travel agent does not co-operate, and they belong to ABTA, you should report them to ABTA and seek ABTA's help.

First of all, however, I would ring your travel agent and ask to speak to the owner or manager. Ask if they've received your recorded delivery letter and what they propose to do. They may be working behind the scenes on your behalf and awaiting a response from Thomas Cook.

If you're not insured, again it's down to those booking conditions. You may have to write off the �150 you paid as a deposit - but I doubt very much if the travel agent can force you to pay an extra �70.

Les Upham asks: "Please can you advise the typical cost of services and goods for holiday makers visiting Hungary? Such information should help me to decide how much cash to take."

Dear Les Upham,

If you booked your trip with a specialist tour operator, then they are the best place to go for up-to-date advice on issues like this. Their staff will visit the destination regularly and will be able to tell you the average cost of a bar snack, coffee, lunch, dinner, etc., from their own experience.

If you have booked independently, then I'd recommend asking the tourist board for help. I did this today - I emailed the Hungarian Tourist Office in London - but unfortunately haven't yet had a reply. A good resource is (www.antor.com), the Association of National Tourist Office Representatives - it lists most of the major tourist offices and you can click through to the individual country websites for help and information.

Personally, depending on the length of your trip, I'd take �250 in cash and top up as required using a debit card. There will be plenty of hole-in-the-wall machines in Budapest, but you will need to have cash to hand if you go to more remote rural areas.

Mrs Namrata Singh asks: "I am planning a summer holiday in August. There are two families going and in total 10 adults. We usually book two weeks in Europe as a package holiday. This year we have decided to book the flights separately and the accommodation separately. I have found flight costs through a reputable airline. However the accommodation we are hoping for is a five bedroom villa in Trinidad and Tobago. Now I have found various companies listed on the internet. One being in the UK and the other in USA. How can I tell if these are reputable companies? What if I pay a deposit and these are not real companies? The UK one seems to be a couple running a business through their home. The USA company want a cheque not credit card payment. I am bit a wary of giving unknown people large amounts of money.

How can I check if either company, in USA or UK are reputable companies? Also how can I ensure I do not lose any monies should anything go wrong?

Dear Mrs Singh,

The only way to be sure that you are booking through a reputable company and don't lose any money if things go wrong is to do what you usually do - book a package holiday. Package holidays are highly regulated on behalf of the consumer and, provided you choose a company that's a member of AITO(www.aito.co.uk) or ABTA (www.abta.com) , you will know that the company in question complies with the right rules and regulations and that your money is safe.

What you are proposing to do (book flights and accommodation separately) means you have two totally unlinked and separate contracts with different entities. So, if your airline flights are cancelled for whatever reason, you will have to find alternative flights yourself - and this may mean that you can't get to your (separate contract) accommodation in time for the start of your booking. In such case, say you arrive a four days late for your accommodation booking - well, you lose four days of your holiday and no-one will refund you these lost days. And, if your flight back departs two days after your accommodation booking ends, you'll have to find your party of 10 alternative accommodation - and you'll have to pay for it.

Equally, if bad tropical storms affect your accommodation and make it uninhabitable, no-one is going to be responsible for finding you new accommodation. It will be up to you to find new accommodation for your party of 10 and to pay for it.

Contrast this with the situation if you book a package holiday with a reputable British company that belongs either to AITO or ABTA. If anything goes wrong, the tour operator is responsible and the tour operator will fix it for you - at the tour operator's expense. Doesn't that sound a lot less hassle for you and your party of 10? And it doesn't cost you any more than booking independently. What a bargain package holidays are - no worries and, equally important, no extra expense.

Gethin, from South Wales has a similar question: "How can we be sure that one of the holiday sites brought up on a search engine ( eg Google) is genuine. Often we read of individuals who lose their money when no bookings with the selected hotel have taken place. Eg, I viewed hotels available through "(youtravel.com) " for a holiday in Spain, is this a genuine company and is our money safe?"

Dear Gethin,

From 1st April, a new law comes into play - Unfair Commercial Contracts. It will require all websites selling holidays to state clearly the financial protection that they offer consumers. If they don't say "fully bonded for your financial protection via XYZ....", then you should be suspicious. It is, as you recognise, all too easy for fraud to be carried out over the web.

The safest way to book hotels or holidays is via tour operators who are members of bodies such as ABTA or AITO; they all comply with EU regulations (in Britain, we are much more compliant with laws than our European cousins), and they comply with the organisations' rules and regulations, which means help is at hand if needed. And, importantly, they are real companies that exist!

I have taken a look at the youtravel.com website that you mention. It features the ABTA logo and says that it is part-owned by Barclays Bank, which sounds impressive but you should nevertheless beware; it is very unlikely that Barclays has any say in the running of the company. The company is basically a bed bank and very few such organisations inspect all the accommodation they sell or can vouch for its standards (unlike tour operators, which do both).

The booking conditions on the website state, under a paragraph headed "Limitation of Liability" that the company regards itself as liable for nothing whatsoever, which certainly sounds the alarm bells. Tour operators are liable for everything that they sell and for the non-performance of any supplier they use, but as a bed bank youtravel.com is totally washing its hands in respect of looking after its customers. You should ask yourself if this lack of customer care is why it is able to offer hotels at such rock-bottom prices... It seems to me that it's a question of "you gets what you pays for" and "let the buyer beware".

The opinions expressed are Sue's, not the programme's. The answers are not intended to be definitive and should be used for guidance only. Always seek professional advice for your own particular situation.

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