*pins “Most STW Reply” award on Kryton’s Rapha jersey*

My white spare room wall now has the outline of a laptop screen in coffee spray, like those caveman hand paintings

We found a lovely place with more middle class people

*Boak*

We’re due to pay the full cost of our holiday cottage in Yorkshire by Saturday. We’ve booked the middle two weeks in July. 10 weeks from now.

If we cancel now we lose our deposit of £400-ish.

If we pay the balance and we’re not able to go becuase of the lockdown or other travel restrictoins still being in place in July we’ll lose the lot – nearly 3 grand.

Insurance won’t cover it ( we’ve checked) and neither do the booking conditions.

What would you do?*

* I already know what I’m going to do.

What would you do?*

Talk to them and try to move the final payment due date to closer to the time?

Talk to them and try to move the final payment due date to closer to the time?

We have and they’ve given us an extra five weeks…..but the booking conditions state that if we cancel with 5 weeks notice then it’ll cost us 75% of the cost of the booking. It’s tiered so that the closer to the holiday date you cancel, the more it costs.

We were booked for a week at Longleat Center Parcs a month ago, but the villages closed the weekend before our booking and we both had C19 symptoms to different degrees anyway. We decided to re-book for next March and nothing has made me regret that group decision since, albeit I’m gutted to not be going this year when I was all set to take my road bike and explore the good handful of cat3/4 climbs right on the campus doorstep.

We have and they’ve given us an extra five weeks…..but the booking conditions state that if we cancel with 5 weeks notice then it’ll cost us 75% of the cost of the booking. It’s tiered so that the closer to the holiday date you cancel, the more it costs.

Who’s it booked with?

If I was you I would cancel. I have a horrible feeling nothing will be sorted this summer.

What the long term consequence of that is God only knows….

I’d be waving goodbye to the £400.

Who’s it booked with?

cottages.com. They’ve been quite evasive and are only interested in talking to people who’ll be travelling in the next few weeks.

I’d be waving goodbye to the £400.

Is the correct answer.

Mister P +1
If by some miracle things do open up in the summer, there’ll be some cheap deals on accommodation available due to the recession we’ll be in.

We’ve got a 2 weeks away at the start of August in Scotland. Balance is due start of July. I’m not hopeful about this happening. It might but it’ll be an odd holiday if it does. Feeling very relieved we didn’t book the other accommodation we considered. A stunning cottage in Northumberland but it was £3k in full upfront. Ouch.

I’ve just booked a week at the same place for Easter 2021. For the sake a £130 deposit seems worth it as that looks like a more realistic date. There could be a big clamour for UK holidays in 2021.

As someone who rarely holidays abroad or books things well in advance, sod’s law dictates that this is the one year I’ve done both – 2 different trips too!

1) Supposed to be going to a festival in Milan in June
– Flights with Ryanair
– Hotel booked as cheap as poss (no cancellation refunds)
– Festival doesn’t seem to have acknowledged that they’re at the epicentre of a pandemic

2) Visiting family in the US in July/August
– Flights with Virgin Atlantic

I’ve not investigated cancelling any of it yet, although I’m resigned to none of it actually happening. Presumably none of the companies are going to be interested in cancellations until lockdown is confirmed for those dates…

I’m hoping that my travel insurance (provided through work) will cover most of it if the companies are awkward about refunding (or go under in VA case!), or failing that my credit card company might be able to help.

We’re due to pay the full cost of our holiday cottage in Yorkshire by Saturday…

If the dilemma were travelling abroad, I’d take the £400 hit and keep an eye out closer to the time – there’s a good probability if we were able to travel, that you’d get the same holiday at least £400 cheaper last-minute.

In the UK though, if we have any kind of internal travel or lockdown restrictions, there is surely some comeback. If you can’t legally go on holiday under government guidelines, they can’t take money for those services? I appreciate there are grey areas, and I wouldn’t be comfortable playing with that kind of money, but in theory you should be refunded?

Kryton’s Rapha jersey

*turns web cam to off*

Nobodyofthegoat – we’ve done the same – moved CP April 2020 to April 2021 but you should have received a £150 credit from CP, which was their offer?

I (used to!) travel for work and have had an AMEX card for years. Get cashback on everything I spend, but importantly, their customer service is first rate. If you spend money and for some reason outside your control you don’t get what you paid for, you make a call, they refund you first, ask questions second.
A few years ago I went on a job, booked a hotel through one of the third parties, and there was some cock up that meant despite paying the accommodation already to the third party, I was being presented with a bill for accommodation and restaurant at checkout. No time to argue, I just stuck it on the card, and made the call. Amex refunded both transactions straight away, then after they’d sorted everything out, just applied the charges I was liable for.
Your credit card company should help even if only part of the transaction ( the deposit for instance ) goes through them.

If you can’t legally go on holiday under government guidelines, they can’t take money for those services?

I can’t legally go just now but the current lockdown is only for three weeks after which it gets reviewed.

They can legally take my money now for July because, currently, there is no lockdown in July.
If I do give them the cash then it’s in accordance with booking conditions which specifically exclude refunds for cancellation due to outbreaks of illness.

They are still accepting new bookings for June.

We are currently £2000 in the hole on our June holiday in Canada (flights and car hire). They’re offering credit notes, which on the face of it is fine, we’re happy to reschedule to June 2021.

So long as they’re still in business by then….

We do have insurance on it though, but I’m constantly imagining how they’ll worm their way out of paying up if it came to that…

We were hoping for a week in a Gite en France in the Autumn as a fallback, but I think that’s looking increasingly unlikely too. My dad’s cousin recently inherited a cottage on Anglesey which they offered to let us use, so would consider that for Aug / Sep – but if the climate is anything like it is now, I’d be concerned about travelling from a city into a remote location and bringing all my germs with me, even if I have already had it!

My dad’s cousin recently inherited a cottage on Anglesey which they offered to let us use, so would consider that for Aug / Sep

Some doctors in Wales want second home use to be made illegal

Its questionable whether we’re going to get to use our place this year – this being the case I’m not paying any council tax.

We’ve got two weeks booked at a huge site in Peschiera del Garda in August.
So far i’ve paid £150 deposit, £150 for a Novotel on the way down and £100 for a night at a Eurocamp on the way home.

99% sure this isn’t going to happen, and i’m not sure we want to go anyway. Lombardy has been devastated by Coronavirus and i just can’t see anything opening there this summer.
I think i’m going to try and change it to August 2021.
The site in Garda might let me, same with Eurocamp but i’m not sure Novotel will be so co-operative.

In the bigger scheme of things (Colleagues in my industry have died from this now) our summer holiday is no big deal – we’ll do some nice stuff in the UK with the kids instead.

Each to their own, I guess. But a fortnight at a 4* hotel next to the beach, with a kids’ club, organised activities every day, no need to think about cooking, guaranteed good weather… Not something I’d want to do every year, but I’m not so snobbish as to not see its appeal as a stress-free family holiday.

At the risk of sounding snobbish, for a working family with kids it is indeed a great, easy, sunny relaxer. The key is to find a location where you aren’t surrounded by the trailer trash who want to fill themselves with beer all day and get obnoxious during the kids entertainment at night. We found a lovely place with more middle class people – it means paying a bit extra but it’s not crowded, superbly staffed, clean and everyone is polite and friendly.

Exactly this – we do lots of different things (canvas camping in the UK, narrowboat holidays, camping pods, short-breaks, Centerparcs etc along with long-haul as we have family in both Australia and California) but in the last ten years we’ve had about four all inclusive Med holidays (Balearics and Greek islands) and enjoyed them all – stress-free, fun and relatively cost effective, even when allowing for a few meals out of the resort and additional car hire etc. I don’t understand the snobbery about it – it isn’t like there is an absolute life choice to be made for one over the other but I am certain I could get a very nice all inc. five star boutique hotel in a lovely suite with sea views for the same cost as a two week break in Scotland once I have factored in all the other additional costs I would incur holidaying in the UK (ie, eating out every day for a family of four for 14 nights in the UK could easily cost £1,500 in itself).

Its questionable whether we’re going to get to use our place this year – this being the case I’m not paying any council tax.

And they’ll rightly take you to court to recover it. It doesn’t just pay for bin emptying you know, and those bin men still need to be paid even if your bin is empty.

A London borough but pretty typical –
Your Council Tax is your contribution to the many services the council provides such as schools, roads, libraries, support for vulnerable children and adults, and rubbish collections. Council Tax also pays for the police, the fire service and many other local services.

I suppose we should just wait until they resolved this problem, I dont think we are anywhere near going back to normal. I would prefer we have a vaccine before anything else the amount of people dying in the UK daily is mind blowing.

I cant understand why you would even think of a holiday now.

And they’ll rightly take you to court to recover it.

Not if they make it illegal to actually be there.
They cannot charge council tax on a property which is unoccupied because occupation is forbidden by law (class G).

I cant understand why you would even think of a holiday now.

Dreaming of and planning my next holiday is one of the things stopping me going stir crazy.

Late summer?

Not a chance.

But If you go, choose somewhere with empty ITU beds.

Pay your council tax.

Think of it as a sort of fire insurance.

Unlikely, I reckon. I’m still not convinced we’ll be allowed back into Wales before the end of the summer (and if we are it’ll be just as the weather turns)

This.

I’ve paid 1k for flights and 1k non refundable deposit on accomodation for a villa in Mallorca in mid August. I am due to pay the remaining 2.5k in mid July.

I have the Barclays travel pack I insurance and I’ve explained it all to them and they have said to still pay the 2.5k in July if the guidance isnt saying it’s all cancelled for any reason at that point – then if it is cancelled before august I can claim the full 4.5k back from them.

I’m sure it will take some time to get it all back but that’s what I will likely do. I’m hopeful it will go ahead, but reading about the plans in spain it seems that it may be too soon for us Brits to he allowed in

I reckon foreign holidays won’t happen this summer. It’s one thing to relax lockdown so people can go back to work in a controlled environment with regular colleagues, it’s another thing entirely to fly people in from all over the place and pack them together in hotels, resorts and on beaches etc.

Dreaming of and planning my next holiday is one of the things stopping me going stir crazy

exactly this, i’m allowed to dream surely?
A Czech colleague was explaining to me earlier this evening of tentative plans there to release some restrictions. Mind you they stamped down very quickly with lockdown and seems to be working well so well done them!

No chance of a holiday abroad this summer I’d say, and maybe not even this year. I reckon a UK holiday might be possible in the Autumn, but even that might not be a normal trip.

I reckon a UK holiday might be possible in the Autumn, but even that might not be a normal trip.

Well the new ‘normal’.

Taking a private jet to your ‘totally’ all inclusive island getaway would work 🙂

And you don’t have to put up with the rabble trailer trash either.

It’s one thing to relax lockdown so people can go back to work in a controlled environment with regular colleagues, it’s another thing entirely to fly people in from all over the place and pack them together in hotels, resorts and on beaches etc.

It’s this, I think there are ways you can achieve it but not at the scale the current holidays work, less people on planes and reconfiguring hotels to keep workers an guests isolated and allocating parts of beaches can all be done but nowhere in the quantity and prices we normally have.

The social drinking and jiggly jiggly fun bits of the holiday may not work out thou 🙁

Saalbach/Hinterglemm/Leogang just announced that they’re opening the lifts from 9th June although they’ve cancelled the usual Glemmride festival in July

TUI have just cancelled all their holidays up to the 11th of June, their previous cut-off was the 15th of May.

Do they know something the public don’t know, or are they just shifting in blocks, who knows.

The Gov. does sometimes brief big business before public announcing things. Personally I don’t see cattle class package holiday flights going in mid-June but you never know.

We have a tour through Killin/Lochaber/Knoydart and Ardnamurchan planned for September.

All hotels along the way were delighted to take our booking and we agreed in every instance but one not to pay any sort of deposit given that nobody knew what the situation would be in September.

I’m currently thinking that even if the hotels are allowed to open, we might not want to sit in a train to our starting point or return train from our end point. We could just tack on an extra couple of days riding instead of the two train journeys and find accommodation for those nights.

The other more cynical worry I had is what IF everyone starts booking staycations and the hotels see an opportunity to jack up prices? (I wouldn’t blame them really)… Maybe I should just assume it’s going to be a bikepacking trip after all and start investing in some luggage!

Hotels and restaurants open by September?

I’m not hopeful of our summer holiday going ahead in the SW, even though we can be self-contained in the caravan. Just be too busy.

Hotels and restaurants open by September

By, in or through?

I can see hospitality being open for about two weeks before its closed down again unless something significant changes in the next few months.

We have a week booked on Tiree at the start of July!
Not hopeful of it going ahead, thankfully it’s a friend’s cottage so there is a bit of come and go with final payment.
Ferry booked as well but CalMac will refund any travel before 15th of July currently.
Pretty much we can leave it to the day before we are due to go hopefully!

Was looking at Easyjet for flights to Munich for next Feb half term, not even sure that’s viable.