sorry to say but until the FCO changes its stance on red sea resorts , they are within their rights to stick to their terms and conditions.

OT.. daughter and her family arrived back 1-20 yesterday from Sharm and said they had a fantastic holiday without any problems.

wiz

Travel Republic will have this covered in their T&C's they will probably already have made a commitment to the hotel on your behalf so I can't see why they would change.

There is no Foreign Office travel advisory against any if the Red Sea Resorts at the current time, so TR will not change their stance on this.

I still feel that they are being unreasonable as it is the situation that is dictating our cancellation not just us cancelling on a whim. We were supposed to be staying in Luxor for a week followed by the week at the coast. After reading the FO advice and knowing several people that have had flights changed (at their cost I will add!) we decided that as we couldn't do the holiday that we had planned it really was most sensible to cancel rather than try to book alternate flights. We plan to do our trip in a year or two when things have hopefully settled down.

I think that you have two options:

1). Cancel and pay the £75 cancellation charge which TR are entitled to levy because you will have ticked the box to say that you accepted their T&Cs when you booked.

2). Book flights that will enable you to travel direct to your Red Sea resort and make use of that hotel booking. If you do the latter and the FCO later change their advice you will probably find that you will then be able to cancel the whole holiday without charge but do carefully check the relevant T&Cs and also what your travel insurance will and won't cover.

At the moment cancelling the hotel booking will be regarded as a 'disinclination' to travel and won't be covered at all.

SM

Thompson fly direct to Marsa Alam so maybe you could fly direct with them and just change the dates of the hotel if it doesn't quite fit with what you have already booked. Not sure what Travel Republic would charge to make that alteration but its a possibility.

Travel Republic are only an agent.

If you wanted the kind of flexibility you now seem to require you should have booked a package holiday to Luxor with the likes of Thomson, Thomas Cook or Cosmos, then you would have been covered by the Package Holiday Regulations and when the FCO changed their advice on holidays to Luxor you would have been cancelled and given a full refund.

People use TR to save money over booking with the big companys like TUI, TC etc and if you have used TR over a number of years hopefully you will have cumulatively saved way and above the £75 you are now being asked to pay.

Under the current scenario i imagine TRs view is that this is a disinclination to travel.

Some of us don't simply use companies such as TR to save money, but to give us the flexibility we want with flights and hotels. Each of the TO's only have contracts with certain hotels in each country and these are the ones they sell to their customers, normally for a period of 7 or 14 nights, and not everyone actually wants this.

That's of course true Aslemma you can't get odd durations like 9 or 11 days with package tour company's but I'm not sure how the OP is going to get out of this predicament as I am sure Travel Republic will have the £75 cancellation fees sewn tightly into their terms and comditions. I think the only choices he or she has are the two that SMa listed, unless the FCO change the travel advisory on the Red Sea resorts before the date of travel.

TR cancellation details can be found here.

http://www.travelrepublic.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/agency-terms.aspx

Without being in any way judgmental, this information can be found quite easily on the TR website and failure to read through the T&Cs is the fault of the person making the booking not TR (or any other travel provider) and is something we read about on HT on a regular basis.

People often complain that they are being asked to pay fees when they want to cancel for whatever reason, but it is obvious that the tour agents/operators would quickly go out of business if they did not apply charges.

The question of how reasonable those charges may be is another matter but again the information is there for all to see in the Terms & Conditions and you agree to them when you make the booking. One question people might like to consider is what you would feel if you were in the shoes of TA/TO and people wanted to cancel bookings without charge? I doubt you would say OK.

fwh

I don't think the OP has difficulty understanding the T&Cs of travel republic , but finds them acting unreasonable because of the present situation in Egypt .
They have a 2 centre holiday booked and EJ have cancelled the Luxor flights but the FO advice is that Red Sea resorts are still ok , so TR are under no obligation to refund them the accommodation that have booked via them in Marsa Alam , they have looked at re booking flights to Hurghada but are worried about violence occurring there , I'm sure they just feel that booking a holiday to Egypt at this moment seems like a bad idea and I would agree with that too . What would be a fantastic holiday seeing the sights in Luxor followed by a week diving in the Red Sea is starting to look unadvisable , and I can see the clear reasoning behind wanting to cancel .

I think the solution as it stands is what SMa has posted , and if the OP wants to cancel completely they will forfeit £75 , and would probably not use TR again ? As they feel they are being unreasonable , or TR could decide that their T&Cs are completely fair and deduct / charge £75 and possibly lose a customer , or allow the customer to change to another resort ( I assume they will be wanting to go somewhere) for a nominal charge like , say £25 admin charge and keep the custom ??
Sometimes it's not always about the money / charges but how the customer feels they are being treated especially in a situation that is not of their making , or TR's either to be fair , but a sensible discussion and compromise would be most helpful I think .

PS. It's a shame you can't see Luxor , I've been 3 times and still find the sights fascinating .