Is the accommodation part of a package holiday or have you booked flights separately?

Hi Glynis

We booked through flightandhotel, but found out the holiday was with Goldtrail for the flights with Onur Air and goingonholiday for the accomodation. They have told us we can cancel or accept the alternative they are offering. Having rung them it appears the onholiday group (who rung me) booked the accomodation they are seperate from goingonholiday I think.

I thought we had booked through just one firm but seems we have lots involved.

Having rung the Cettia direct it is full until the end of September, but the reviews on here dont bode well for the Armar

You obviously are not happy with the alternative they have put forward.

How long if you cancel before you are refunded your money?

Have you done a quick trawl on the web for another holiday at the dates that suit?

Just possible you can find something.

fwh

HI fwh

No not happy with the alternative, have stayed at the cettia earlier this year and loved it (So did the kids) which is why we wanted to go back.

Dont really know how long I would have to wait to get my money back, and there is plenty of avialability via Thomas Cooks website so could book something there and wait for my money to be refunded.

Just did not know how I stand

Don't waste time. Get on to them and ask the question. It is YOUR money.

If you can cancel without penalty then do so.

Then you can cancel and book something else.

Good luck

fwh.

Had a bit of a result. After complaining quite forcefully to the agent they came up with a list of 12 hotels for me to choose from and have gone for the Green Nature Resort and Spa which was another £600 but they have waived the cost

Well that's a result! Well done! I hope you stick around the forums as I'm sure you will be able to advise members in a similar situation. Good on the company for listening to you.

We shall be looking for a full review on your return!

luci

luci HT Mod wrote:

Well that's a result! Well done! I hope you stick around the forums as I'm sure you will be able to advise members in a similar situation. Good on the company for listening to you.

We shall be looking for a full review on your return!

luci :wave

Thanks Luci I will be sticking around and will be putting a review when we get back

Absolutely well down!! They were in the wrong and you did well in being assertive to get what you needed and deserved.
They will take the easiest option and hope that people will buy it. More power to you!

Sue

which was another £600 but they have waived the cost

That's an excellent response from them

Can anyone explain how the accommodation can be overbooked?

A TO has a contract for 20 rooms. They advertise the hotel 12 months in front.

When someone books - payment of the deposit and the receipt means they have entered into a legal contract - then you mark them off the list. When you have sold all 20 that is it.

If someone cancels then fine, you can take a booking because a vacancy has arisen.

Not rocket science I would have thought.

fwh

Thousands of places and TOs do it fwh. It's common practice with UK hotels as well.

We were shunted out of a hotel way back in 1984 having booked some six months previously. It's not a new practice.

Very good news on the outcome of this one though!

Can anyone explain how the accommodation can be overbooked?

Hotel Sunshine has 100 rooms. Let's say that the hotel needs to operate with 3,650,000 euros revenue pa to cover overheads and maintain the service at his hotel. Very simply this means then that each room needs to be sold at 100 euros per night for all 365 nights of the year.

If they contract out 100 rooms to tour operators, to ensure 100% occupancy they need to sell every room, every night of the year/season. In this perfect ideal world they would need to ensure that every guest who books actually arrives and stays for the correct duration, no amendments were made and full payment received. To avoid any odd vacant nights it also assumes every guest will arrive on a certain day of the week and stay for 7/14/21 nights. Demand to stay at the hotel would also have to be there throughout every night of the year/season.

All of this of course does not happen.

The owner of Hotel Sunshine also knows that guests will arrive on different days of the week and stay for different durations. He knows that some periods of the year are more popular than others and sell easier than other times. Some guests may not have paid upfront and will miss flights and not arrive at his hotel. Some will cancel because of illness. Some will have to leave early for what ever reason. All will rightly want to have flexibility to pick the dates of stay that best suit them.. etc etc. With these factors in the real world that we live in, the Hotel Sunshine would be unlikely to achieve 100% occupancy year round (and his 3,650,000 euros).

To get around these factors, from Hotel Sunshine's 100 rooms the hotelier may contract (or sell) say 160 rooms in the knowledge and his experience of previous occupancy in prior years, that not all those contracted rooms will be sold. Occasionally of course things go wrong and more rooms are sold than he has in his hotel - hence an overbooking.

All hotels do it and most will have a yield manager looking specifically the hotel's occupancies and will determine how many rooms they can "over contract or over sell" whilst also adjusting prices up or down depending on demand. By spreading his risk on filling his rooms and "selling" more rooms to obtain a higher end occupancy the hotelier can offen offer a lower room rate to the customer as his risk of running a full hotel is reduced by initially overselling/over contracting. In the example of the Hotel Sunshine, by contracting 160 rooms, to still obtain 3,650,000 euros revenue to cover overheads, each room can now be sold at 62.50 euros assuming 100% occupancy.

The above explanation takes a very simplistic view. Similar principles happen with scheduled airlines.

There are many other factors and I don't think any hotel can ever achieve 100% occupancy year round. Thankfully, most of the time the yield managment of the hotel rooms works and no over bookings occur. Sometimes (but rarely)...more bookings than expected are made and the "overbooking" occurs.

The explanation from Traveller is very accurate. I used to run a car hire operation and whilst we always "hoped" for 100% utilisation we very rarely got it.

Our budgets were written based on 70 to 75% and our rates reflected this - just as do those of the hotel. For anyone who has spent the winter abroad will know you can often get fantastic rates if you are going for 3, 4 or 5 months. If you hired a car for three months then the rate reflected that.

As with hire cars there is a standing cost before you actually do any business. I agree that many hotels do overbook and whilst if you are the one that gets bumped it is not very satisfactory I still fail to see how the TOs allow it to happen in so many cases.

If I book in October for a holiday at x hotel the following August - and have paid my deposit then I would expect the TO to inform the hotel that they have a booking for those particular dates. There is a rather cavalier attitude I think on behalf of the TOs when having contracted 10 rooms per week for a period of time they simply inform the hotel at the last minute. As they also have options on additional rooms they simply sell them on the assumption that the hotel will deliver when "told"
Often the first thing a hotel knows about your coming is a few days before when the TO decides to tell them.

The most complaints often seems to come from those who have booked many months in front and for that I can find no excuse. You are encouraged to book early to guarantee a place yet that often looks to be ignored.

fwh

tour operators can have a few different types of accomodation, some being being guarenteed which is where you normally get late deals for so the operator can fill there allocation ( a lot of the time these will be self catering units that are brand specific or a set number of rooms in a hotel ), alternativly you can get non allocated accomodation which the tour operator will be able to book as many people in as they want. the condition on these will be that the hotel will need to have the rooming lists a certain amount of time before the guests arrive. occasionally the hotel may be overbooked from other companies when the lists are sent in and this is where problems start. its not like a plane where they can see how many seats are available because hotels take bookings from many different companies aswell as private bookings. normally when this happens the hotel sends the guest to a sister hotel and then any compo is taken from the money the tour operator pays the hotel. in some cases the tour operator sends the guest to a different hotel...from working in hotels overseas normally when this happens its the tour operators fault but theyll deny it!

one other thing is that normally tour operators dont overbook like flight companies as it is very rare for someone to not turn up and its just as easy to sell the holiday as a latedeal...believe me even on a latedeal they make a lot of money.

another thing is that english guests are always the ones moved if a hotel is overbooked....ive always wondered why! is it that we dont complain as much or is it cos weve got less rights????

I believe it is because the Germans and Dutch pay more for their holidays.

Actually I don't think so, Mehmeh - I have seen the prices for Germans (as I live on the border) and for the Brits, and the Germans often pay less. BUT they have stronger links with Turkey (guest workers etc) and the German tour operator TUI owns nearly all of the companies in Germany - I think alltours and DERTour are the exceptions ................... so it probably comes down to buying power (clout if you like) and the extra fuel charges for flights to the UK to Turkey rather than from Germany to Turkey.

I accept all the various points of view on this topic, however what does seem to be missed is the fact that when I book a holiday I enter into a contract.

In return for me paying a fee - the holiday cost as shown on the invoice. The TO also enters into a contract to supply that service - the holiday - at the venue - hotel - shown on that invoice.

A claim that they cannot supply the holiday booked puts them in breach of contract.

All the small print in the world cannot absolve them. That particularly applies when the holiday is booked so far in advance.

It is not a case of the hotel not being able to accommodate me due to their overbooking. That is not my problem, it is that of the TO.

They sub contract with the hotel and they are responsible for the failure of their sub contractors. If the hotel had closed or been burnt down then they could rightly claim extenuating circumstances and that would be a defense in law.

We actually come back to "the hassle factor" where, having booked a holiday 12 months in advance and taken time off work it is not practical for us to stand up to them.

It does not however prevent anyone taking action, even if they have accepted the alternative, for breach of contract and damages.

fwh