Thats sounds like a sound bit of advice
Mark

Having done several of these, it is swings and roundabouts.
You talk to different departments at the TOs but the shops handle it if you deal through them.

Pitfalls:
Everyone has to have the same level of insurance! My family wanted to upgrade our insurance to Gold level but everyone in the party had to upgrade or no-one. One family had their own annual insurance and so had to be dealt with as a separate booking all the time.
Any changes or queries have to be made by the responsible party, so in our instance one family wanted to add a person and change their accomodation, but I had to authorise it as the main party. It was their turn the previous year!
When you get to the hotel - chaos often ensues as the entire party can be booked under one name so the rooms and other allocations are not necessarily correct.
Trips with the tour reps. All go under the main party name so we had the ridiculous situation where I was having to find the rep and make all the bookings for everyone, yes we all did different trips on different days!
On the other hand because you are all one booking, it does not follow that they allocate you to the same transport. They separated us and we ended up on different coaches, arriving at different times with different transport itinaries. Still you live and learn and now we know the points to raise and insist upon.

Pluses:
As a large party you can mix and match. We allocated kids across the party to ensure that we maximised the free kids places and then in resort every hotel let us remap the rooms and added beds to make sure the kids were with the right families. We could not fault any of the hotels over this even though it was not part of the "contract", they all went out of their way to accomodate us.

I've got a bit of a dilema, as my DD is talking about going to Disneyland Paris for their post GCSE shindig. I haven't checked it out yet as she only mentioned it yesterday, but I had visions of being in a travel agents somewhere, putting 8 individual bookings on to my credit card and then trying to get cheques from 8 families or alternatively all 8 girls and 8 parents turning up at a travel agent, putting it on one booking and then paying on 8 individual cards. (wouldn't we be popular ! the whole nightmare of it sent me to bed with a headache ).

I can see from what is being posted here it would be better for them all to be on the same booking form, incase of problems with the hotel etc as the whole point of it is to be together, but presumbaly that means someone being the 'lead booker' and taking reponsibility for it all.

Ay yes, forgot that bit:

Pitfalls 2:

If anyone or any group drops out YOU are responsible for their payments regardless of circumstance. It would them be up to you to claim it back from them somehow.
So if it was a low deposit holiday and a group had a disagreement and pulled out YOU become liable for at least the difference to the full deposit for each person, more if the cancellation agreement states so.

One year, I think we put the money in a savings account and then wrote a final cheque from it, but other times we just paid the lead name a week before it was due so they could pay it off.

There was another thread on here about a party of girls where at the last minute the main group "cut off" one of their friends and would not let her go with them. Her parents had a very hard job getting any money back as it was too late for a refund and she was not the lead name. The TA washed their hands of the matter leaving the necessity to chase the other girls' parents to cough up and right the moral wrong.

I never take TO insurance and if I were the organiser of a party I would have them all be responsible for their own insurance.

I think under the T & Cs that you are probably then still responsible for ensuring that every member of the group is covered by adequate insurance and also providing all the individual insurance details to the TO. I can remember having to impart the annual policy details for each member of that family.
Don't forget, should anything go wrong, as the organiser, you are held responsible unless you can legally pass the buck.

Phew ! I am hoping they change their minds and go to Alton Towers, as I can see me getting lumbered.

Good point about the Travel Insurance. I hadn't even thought about that one, although I would imagine these families have annual travel insurance policies, as they tend to go away two or three times a year, I guess the lead would still be responsible for getting details to the agent. The thing I was thinking about was the 2.5% hike up for paying on a CC, guess that would have to be evenly distributed throughout the group.

Good point about the mix and match on the rooms stevebell001. The Disneyland and Newport Bay hotels have two double beds per room, so they may be able to get away with two rooms for 8, although I don't know how it works with 4 adults sharing a room as for booking purposes they will be deemed adults.

You do have a point steve, although I've never been asked to give insurance details when I've declined theirs it does always say in the T&Cs that they need to have the details.

I don't think anything happening and a person not having insurance would come back on you as an organiser in any way. Travel insurance isn't a legal requirement but is often the terms of a package but the TO never has anything to do with you when things go wrong and it's an insurance matter anyway. Like if someone got sick and they didn't have insurance it wouldn't fall to you in a legal sense in any way.

Mmmmm. I think thats a good point S&C as I suppose a persons travel insurance is their own responsibility. Also as France is EU you can probably get emergency Med treatment by showing your passport and that little card thingy we get.

Another pitfall to travelling with a group booking is one our party of 28 encountered when we travelled to Egypt with Thomas Cook in December last year. Our holiday has originally been booked with First Choice and was a diving holiday for our school but obviously non diving family members came as well.

We found that Thomas Cook treated us all as one booking but then decided to allocate and split us at random into lots of 8. They then sent the entire book of tickets to one person at random from each list. They also insisted that everyone on the list had to check in together at the airport or nobody could go through..and worse was to follow when we got to the hotel as they had allocated rooms as per tickets!

Plenty of families were split up and I got tickets (and was booked in a double room) with some bloke who I had never met! Rob ended up on a different splitting with daughter and Son ended up somewhere else entirely!

They did not want to issue seperate books of tickets for separate families within the group of 28, even though First Choice had always been able to accomodate this in the past and despite the lead person advising them several times of how the tickets should be allocated within the booking.

I would say this is one of the pitfalls of group booking...but we were a large party.

Just going back a few comments, the credit card/collecting money issue is something that had occured to me. If the total cost was high enough it could bust the card limit so wouldn't work. Also, if everyone wanted to put it on a credit card because they needed to pay it off over time then it would get wildly complicated.

But at least you can think about what you're getting into if you want to travel with others.

Huge groups of people going on holidays together to me is distasteful. However, people are entitled to do what they want, but they should have some cognisence of others. We stayed on a holiday complex in Lanzarote last year and not only had we to endure a group of 48 louts on the plane out, but we had to endure their antics in Puerto del Carmen.

One member of the group was a wife beater, drug abuser, loud, offensive and a twit (not necessarily in that order). The nightly fights with his wife were legendary. One night she (understandably) locked him out. He broke down the door, gave her a dreadful hammering (black eyes, body bruising) and broke the arm of their 2 year old daughter. He was imprisoned that night and the leader of the holiday group wanted contributions towards damage done and the court fine from everybody on the complex including us. Needless to say I suggested to leave the guy in prison.

I don't know about you, but I go on holiday to get away from the daily routine. What is the mindset of people who must go on holidays in a large group? There must be some psychological explanation.

Incidentally, the return journey on the plane back home was much quieter. And this guy sat at the back of the plane while his wife and daughter were protected at the front. At least some members of the group behaved responsibly.

Huge groups of people going on holidays together to me is distasteful.

One member of the group was a wife beater, drug abuser, loud, offensive and a twit (not necessarily in that order).

Such comments are really not necessary. We're discussing the logistical nightmare (or not) of group bookings, not sharing experiences of previous groups that may have misbehaved or whether you do or don't like to share a holiday with a large group.

MarkJ HT Mod

You can ask the holiday company to link your booking reference numbers together. I remember years ago 3 familes booked to go all on different invoices, they put 2 flights on and 2 families were on the early morning flight and the other not till late at night even though we all booked with the same travel agent on the same day.

Leprosy wrote:

Huge groups of people going on holidays together to me is distasteful. However, people are entitled to do what they want, but they should have some cognisence of others. We stayed on a holiday complex in Lanzarote last year and not only had we to endure a group of 48 louts on the plane out, but we had to endure their antics in Puerto del Carmen.

Hardly comperable to a few young girls going away to Disneyland Paris who would also have a parent with them as chaperone.

Beleive me people dont have to be in large groups to act in a distasteful manner.

Thanks to those that have made helpful comments to me.

What is the mindset of people who must go on holidays in a large group? There must be some psychological explanation.

Right..let me address this on the assumption that the person who posted this has not set out to cause offence and was merely asking something which truly baffles them (it is sometimes hard to convey what you mean in print) so therefore, I will not go with my initial reaction of chucking a strop and try to answer this as best I can.

Of course, I am only speaking for myself here and in my own experience.

Rob and I belong to a scuba diving club and as part of that club, diving activities are organised on a regular basis..and within those, there are 2 foreign holidays abroad every year, usually May/June time and usually December time ( to beat the winter blues and still continue to dive when the weather is cold and cr@p here). The offer of a holiday is open to everyone at the club who wishes to go and also to their families whether they dive or not.

Sometimes there may be 10 of us, sometimes there may be 30 of us. We all go together because we share a love of scuba diving. The majority of the group are people that I have known for a number of years. It is also easier to negotiate a better diving package if there are more of you.
That said, we do not all stay within each other's pockets for the entire holiday. We all have our own privacy, we all wander off and do our own thing and we can spend as much or little time with other members of the group as we wish.

I enjoy these group diving holidays, they give us a great sense of team spirit as we "buddy up" and there is ample opportunity to learn a little more about each other in our spare time and outside the perameters of diving. Eg: some divers attend club meetings alone, go on uk diving trips alone etc and we know little about their families other than a name. On a holiday abroad, the whole family gets to come and therefore, your social circle can become extended as we get introduced to someone new.

I don't feel there is anything psychological about having a group holiday..nothing sinister at all, and perhaps the person that made that post could consider the bigger picture before jumping in with comments such as those.

Doepsmc, I don't think you will have a problem making separate bookings for Disney. Obviously the thing is to book enough people for each room, but if you were to book one half and another parent the rest it would be fine. We did Disney with the 'extended' in-laws, different holiday companies, different modes of travel but same hotel, with no problem at all. I don't know how you plan on getting there, but if it's eurostar or self drive you don't have to factor in flight changes etc and I've never heard of the Disney hotels being overbooked. At least with different bookings as has been said, the financial 'responsibility' isn't down to just one person.

Hope you have a great time!
Pam

Thanks Pam

If this comes off, I think that will be the best way to do it. ie people booking seperately and then linking the booking as was mentioned in an earlier post. As you say it is unlikely that the party will be shunted to different hotels anyway. The girls were mentioning flying as they think getting cheap flights will make it more viable for some of the families, but I would imagine most parents would prefer Eurostar, especially as we are all Londonish based.

I'm sure someone told me the the Newport Bay is the largest hotel in Northern Europe so one would hope they could accommodate a smallish group 'booking'. (Deep down I am still hoping they plump for Alton Towers or Centre Parcs though )

Doe

Travel insurance isn't a legal requirement but is often the terms of a package

Sorry but it is a legal requirement. You take out a contract when you book the holiday.

If it says in the T&Cs that everyone is required to have insurance then it is part of the contract and therefore a legally enforceable condition.

As lead name you are responsible for ensuring that everyone is aware of the T&Cs including having having adequate insurance cover.

If someone was denied boarding because they could not show proof or be injured then they could possibly sue you as the lead name for not advising/ensuring them that it was a requirement.

You would not be able to sue the TO as you would be in breach of contract.

With regard to the CC fee - whilst it irks that you have to pay it it does give you protection in the event of failure of the TO.

We might consider that Thos Cook and Thomson are safe but as many book with the small lesser known companies the risk is greater.

I would not wish to make a booking for a group and have to tell them they had lost their money.

fwh