I booked a £4,000 week in Morocco through Loveholidays to celebrate my 50th birthday and to treat the family after two recent bereavements. I paid extra for swim-up rooms in all-inclusive five-star White Beach resort in Taghazout. When we arrived, we were blown away, but our excitement was short-lived.
The receptionist informed us that the hotel was now adults only, and our two children – a 12- and 15-year-old – could not stay. Apparently, booking agents had been notified months before, but Loveholidays had failed to mention it. Our children who, between them, have autism and ADHD, were confused and distressed. The receptionist would not let us make an international call to Loveholidays, so we had to cross a dual carriageway to withdraw cash, then buy an international sim card from a shop half a mile away.
It took Loveholidays three hours to find alternative accommodation and we had to pay a taxi to take us to a four-star hotel half an hour away in Agadir. By then, six hours had passed since our arrival. We received an immediate refund of the £506.54 price difference. Loveholidays passed on my complaint to an intermediary booking agent, which informed us that it would pay £661 in “compensation as a symbol of our apology”.
However, Loveholidays deducted the £506 refund it had paid us and only handed over £178. It has since offered me a £50 voucher for a future booking, but after this, I doubt I will ever use them again.
AJ, Frodsham, Cheshire
“Be bold; be flexible!” urges the Loveholidays website. In the light of your experience, this reads like a warning rather than an invitation.
Your holiday was to be a vital balm for your family. Your partner had recently lost her mother whom she’d nursed for five years, your father had died unexpectedly two months later, and your sons were struggling to cope with the two bereavements.
Because of the blunder, you lost most of the first day of your week-long holiday, suffered the stress of finding somewhere to stay and, after glimpsing the five-star luxury you’d booked, you had to adjust to an unexceptional hotel 20 miles away. The White Beach has six pools and four restaurants; the hotel where you ended up had one of each.
I put all this to Loveholidays, but it remains adamant that £178, which includes the taxi, refreshment and phone costs, is a suitable sum to reflect the “inconvenience”.
It claims the £660 compensation from the intermediary was not in addition to the refund for the price difference you’d already received, although it admits the wording was confusing, and promises an “internal review of processes”.
In my view, the sum is derisory. However, other than give Loveholidays the publicity it deserves, there’s not much you can do. In 2020 the company resigned from membership of the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), which has a code of practice and mediation service. The company points complainants to the alternative dispute resolution service, Hunt ADR. However, you have to request an application form from Loveholidays and pay Hunt ADR a non-refundable fee of £108.
My advice to readers is to try to book with an Abta member and be aware that the price of a bargain may be skimpy customer service.
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