Holiday Compensation Claims – Advice From An Expert

Sometimes your holiday turns out to be less fun than you expected it to be. Perhaps you were unhappy with your hotel or the services provided by your tour operator. Under these circumstances you might expect the tour company to take a little money off your bill or perhaps to offer you something to appease you. This usually does not happen and there are a couple of reasons as to why. Firstly, the economic climate that the world is facing right has resulted in tour operators and property owners doing everything they can to cut their outgoings, and none obligatory financial gestures are seen by them as something which is a none essential outgoing. They are more concerned about simply surviving the recession than making sure that each and every one of their customers goes away happy. Secondly, an ever increasing amount of holiday-goers are making independent booking arrangements rather than booking through a travel agent. Due to the size of travel agents, and the amount of business that they can send to hoteliers and property owners, they can easily exert pressure on the people responsible, however, one-off customers, who have tried to save money by cutting travel agents out of the equation, have no such leverage. That does not mean that you have to simply accept the situation though – far from it. The law is on your side if you have been mislead or mistreated and if you know what steps to take then you can certainly get some payback to make up for your poor holiday experience. The key rules for successful holiday compensation claims are as follows…

- Don’t wait until you’ve gone home to complain. Speak up quickly so that the individual or company involved can take care of your complaint while you’re still on holiday.

- Make notes and keep photographic / video evidence. If appropriate, you might also want to get the phone numbers of email addresses of any witnesses.

- Keep it simple. Contact the person or agency with whom you have the problem and focus on the biggest issue and tell them why you think the contract or guarantees have been broken.

- Keep the message clear. Tell them exactly how you’ve come to the conclusion that your contract has been broken.

- Be calm. If you stay calm you will appear to be the reasonable one, particularly in a court or mediation setting.

If you feel that the person with whom you have to deal is being unreasonable and is not willing to deal with your problem, it is within your rights to take them to court and seek legal action. A judge will not only decide if you have the right to compensation but will also decide how much compensation. If you follow the steps above, the chances are excellent that you will prevail in the end and walk away from your disappointing holiday with some money to spend on the next one.

If you liked this, try : Holiday Claims

MISCELLANEOUS | linkvineDV | June 26, 2010 11:01 PM

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