hello, we have just returned from el gouna and feel our holiday has been ruined by thomson. the resort itself and hotel is not the problem,really nice on both counts. the cause is we booked an overnight trip to cairo through the thomson website,around 2 weeks before departure and this was to be the highlight of our holiday. thomson must book their excursions through holidayline, so i emailed them to find out which hotel they used on the overnight cairo trip as i was thinking of booking an additional trip whilst in cairo. when they replied this was their response:
my email
i have a holiday booked with thomson to el gouna on 22/01/10 and am planning to book the overnight to cairo with yourselves.couldyou please inform me as to what hotel is included as i would like to book an extra independant trip and it would give me a better indication of distance/timescale etc.look forward to your reply thankyou
holidayline response
Dear Mark,
Thank you for your recent email to the Thomson Holidayline.
I have spoken with resort with regards your query and they have advised that the overnight rarely operates unfortunately. The reason being that they need a minimum of six people which is very rarely reached. So if you book an extra trip we may have to cancel your tour.
Apologies for the disappointing answer
Kind Regards,
Liz Thomson Holidayline
on receiving this reply my partner rang holidayline to see what was going on,and was told i dont know why such an email has been sent, and really dont worry as i only deal with excursions and have never known this trip to be cancelled yet. my partner asked about the minimum of 6 people, and was told yet again dont worry most people book in resort, and also they have already taken 3 web bookings for the same trip. this was such a relief to hear and we were really excited to be going.
once in resort we went to the rep to confirm the pick up times ( 02:15 on the e ticket ) and he said he would find this out for us. the following day at 13:00 (13 hours before the trip ) we were told sorry its been cancelled due to lack of numbers and that we would only be refunded back home as this was where we booked. i have a list of trips offered by thomson in resort and the one we booked is not on it. makes you wonder why there is a lack of numbers.
the annoying thing to me is being told to not worry by holidayline, as if they had been more honest i would have had the oppertunity to take more money in case this happened. meaning i could have booked in resort with another operator if this had been the case. i feel cheated.
i have spoken to thomson since returning home and they say i will get the £366 we paid, but is this good enough for ruining our holiday
sorry for going on
With hindsight you would have probably have been better to have arranged the trip totally independently rather than in advance with your tour operator.
Frustrating, I know - but whether you can say they "ruined" your holiday because of the lack of trip/numbers or whatever reason they use for one excursion, may be difficult to argue.
If Cairo had been the major part of your holiday I'm sure they will most certainly say you could have booked a package that incorporated this part of your trip or chosen a different holiday than staying in El Gouna.
If you are lucky, you may get a voucher to use against another holiday as a gesture of goodwill on top of your refund but I think you will really have to push for that....
If you are planning another trip to Egypt, I would suggest basing yourself in Luxor where you can easily visit Cairo, Aswan and the Red Sea locations quite easily.
Frustrating, I know - but whether you can say they "ruined" your holiday because of the lack of trip/numbers or whatever reason they use for one excursion, may be difficult to argue.
If Cairo had been the major part of your holiday I'm sure they will most certainly say you could have booked a package that incorporated this part of your trip or chosen a different holiday than staying in El Gouna.
If you are lucky, you may get a voucher to use against another holiday as a gesture of goodwill on top of your refund but I think you will really have to push for that....
If you are planning another trip to Egypt, I would suggest basing yourself in Luxor where you can easily visit Cairo, Aswan and the Red Sea locations quite easily.
its easy to say with hindsight, but you expect to get what you paid for using one of the major british travel agents. also there is the question, am i insured going independantly. we have booked independant trips in egypt in the past, but this trip had everything on it we wanted to see, so it seemed to save a lot of hassle. having stayed in luxor on two other occasions, we decided on el gouna as it looked very nice and was ideally located for travel to cairo, in fact probably closer to el gouna.
i would imagine cairo to be a major part of anyones holiday, and frustratingly i know it did ruin my holiday.
i would imagine cairo to be a major part of anyones holiday, and frustratingly i know it did ruin my holiday.
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