ways to protect your holiday booking

Like Liked

 

Events like the Tunisian riots and freak flooding across parts of Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka bring home how important it is to have holiday protection if things go wrong. And aside from climatic conditions, it could be an airline going bust or holiday company collapse that scuppers your trip. So what can you do to protect yourself and your cash?

1. Don’t cancel

Seems the obvious thing to do if you hear of disturbances or bad weather at your destination; but take the decision to cancel yourself, and you’ll be out of pocket. Wait for your airline or holiday company to ‘cancel’ your trip so you can get a refund or alternative holiday.

2. Look for ATOL bonding

Book a package holiday (including flights) and your cash is protected under the ‘ATOL’ scheme, run by the Civil Aviation Authority. This way you’ll be flown home if your airline or travel operator goes bust and get a refund if this happens before you leave. Check a company’s ATOL license here.

3. Book with an ABTA member

Booking through a tour operator or travel agent? Check they belong to ABTA - The Travel Association. Over 90 per cent of agents and operators are members, which means your money is protected if things go wrong and they’ll investigate any complaints on your behalf.

4. Take out travel insurance

Forced to cancel a trip because you get sick or have an accident? This is when your travel insurance kicks in. But only providing you cancel on the advice of your GP - rather than a self diagnosis; so get something in writing as proof for your insurer.

5. Pay by credit card

This can bump up your bill by around 3 per cent but gives you extra protection under the Consumer Credit Act. If what you’re buying costs £100 or more you can ask your credit card company to stump up if the supplier goes bust. This option proved a lifeline for passengers booked with Swansea based ‘Diamond Coaches’ which recently went into administration; as the company wasn’t ABTA registered.

6. Pay by debit card

There’s no legal protection with this; unlike paying by credit card; but if you use a ‘visa debit’ card you can claim for losses under its ‘chargeback’ scheme. There’s no minimum spend and you’ve up to 120 days to make a claim through your bank.

7. Scheduled airline failure cover

Pays out if the ‘scheduled’ airline you’re booked with goes bust; although in some cases you may already be covered if you’ve booked a package deal. Cover can be an ‘add on’ on travel insurance; although around 20 per cent of insurers include this as standard paying out up to £1,500 per person.

8. Independent traveller insurance

If you’ve organised flights and accommodation yourself you may have no comeback in the event of airline strikes. But ‘independent traveller’ insurance pays out in this case; and covers any additional costs you incur like booking another flight. Companies like M&S Money offer this as standard with annual policies. Compare travel insurance providers here.

9. Read the small print

Tempted to say you’ve read those ‘terms and conditions’ when you haven’t? Don’t - as this is where you’ll find stuff like the fact your airline can increase fares due to higher fuel bills; or that your flight times can be changed which is vital to know if you’ve got connecting flights.

10. Take your contacts

Take all contact numbers with you along with copies of booking forms. And make sure you’ve got ‘calling from abroad’ numbers to avoid the more costly ‘0870’ numbers that will cost a fortune from your mobile.

12 day Grand Rail Circle, Canada

12 day Grand Rail Circle, Canada

PACKAGE INCLUDES:

Return flights

12 Day Grand Rail Circle from Vancouver with 11 nights’ accommodation, 4 days onboard the Rocky Mountaineer in RedLeaf Service, various meals, touring, sightseeing, transport and transfers

Highlights

Vancouver,Kamloops, Banff, Lake Louise, Icefields Parkway, Jasper, Whistler, Rocky Mountaineer

FROM

£ 2729pp

Valid for travel: 9 May 12 - 30 May 12 Book by: 20 Sep 11

DEPARTURES ARE FROM LONDON

Demolishing a Vegas Hotel Before its Grand Opening

By Andrea V. Brambila, Inman News

August 25, 2011

Provided by:

Las Vegas CityCenter's Harmon Hotel tower (center), may be razed before it ever opens.

The days of the Harmon Hotel tower in Las Vegas may be numbered -- even before the hotel welcomes a single guest. Begun during the Las Vegas high-rise condo boom, the hotel tower -- first proposed as a 49-story mixed-use condo and hotel project -- is an empty, if flashy, shell that its owner, MGM Resorts International, seeks to demolish.
The building's downfall has been blamed on massive construction defects and the market downturn. MGM and the building's general contractor, Perini Building Co., are embroiled in litigation over the building's problems -- and the outcome may ultimately decide its fate.
Originally conceived as a 400-room nongaming tower with just over 200 residential condo units, the Harmon was part of the larger CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip.
 When MGM put the planned condo units on the market in early 2008, buyers -- mostly owner-occupants -- put down 20 percent deposits on nearly half of the units within a two-month period, said Robert Hamrick, who served from January 2006 to March 2011 as senior vice president and broker at CityCenter Realty Corp. He is currently chairman and CEO of Coldwell Banker Premier Realty in Las Vegas.

Harmon tower (center) and CityCenter during construction. Photo: flickr | Lars Plougmann

"It was a very emotional building. The physicality of it, (the) appearance, the architecture. It was going to be a very high-end luxury building, kind of appealing to the nouveau riche, perhaps. Upscale, classy and a somewhat young environment," Hamrick said.
But structural defects were discovered in the building, and in January 2009 MGM announced that the Harmon's finished size would be cut down to 28 stories, from the 49 stories originally slated. This eliminated the planned condo units entirely. Perini finished the Harmon's core and shell in December 2009.

The Aladdin Hotel on the Vegas strip imploded in April, 1998. Photo: AP

The building currently sits unfinished as MGM and Perini debate the extent of construction defects in the courts. Neither MGM or Perini responded to requests for comment by publication time.
According to a July engineering report, repair of the building may not be possible, and if it is, it could take up to three years to fix from start to finish.
The Perini company fired back in a statement that "MGM is seeking to implode the building to hide the fact that the Harmon is not a threat to public safety and to avoid having the repairs made that Perini and its third-party structural engineers have offered to do."

The New Frontier had seen better days when it imploded in July, 2007. Photo: AP

Perini also accused MGM of "buyer's remorse" due to the downturn of the real estate market. "MGM is now attempting to blow up the Harmon to avoid adding the Harmon as additional glut to its other vacant properties in CityCenter under the guise of 'public safety,'" the company charged.
The proposed plan is subject to approval from the county's building department. If approved, MGM would also seek to lift a court order that prevent alteration or destruction of the building while the litigation with Perini is unresolved. There have been at least a dozen buildings imploded in Las Vegas since 1993, five of them since 2006, according to an implosions page on travel website Vegas.com. The most recent was the New Frontier hotel, the second-oldest hotel on the strip at the time, on November 13, 2007. On May 9, 2006, the precursor to CityCenter, the Boardwalk hotel, was imploded to make way for the new development.