Not really a AIBU, more can anyone help me with where we might stand legally?
We booked a tailor made holiday through a company called Dial A Flight on 23.09.2023. It was to be a holiday of a lifetime that straddled the exact dates of February half term, my birthday and Valentines day. It cost a considerable sum of money. It took weeks to plan and book and involved choosing direct flights to Mauritius where we would stay for 4 nights before flying onto Johannesburg from where we would travel directly onto our safari lodge. There we would spend a further four nights before flying on a direct overnight flight home.
However, yesterday we received a phone call to say that the flight between Mauritius and Johannesburg had been cancelled which meant that we would now only spend 3 nights in Mauritius and would then have to spend one night in Johannesburg before flying onto safari.
This is bitterly disappointing. We would never have booked or paid out so much money to travel all the way to Mauritius for just three nights. Neither would we have ever booked to stay one night in Johannesburg. I certainly do not relish packing and unpacking three times over the course of a week for me and my children. The holiday company are suggesting we change dates but this does not work with school holidays. They say we cannot get a refund just for the Mauritius hotel. Neither could we fly directly straight to Johannesburg from UK without considerable extra costs. We feel that this holiday has now turned into something we would never dream of booking.
We paid Dial a Flight for a specific holiday that we have in writing as being as being four nights in a specific Mauritius followed by four nights at a in a specific safari lodge in South Africa, it is now turning into something completely different. To add to this Dial a Flight are expecting us to shoulder all extra costs and losses.
We would like a full refund to be able to reconsider and rebook at another date. Dial a Flight say this is not possible as they have found an alternative flight that will be less than seven hours delay on the original. However due to the knock on effect on the connecting transfers this new flight results in more than a 24 hour delay in getting to safari.
Our contract is with Dial a Flight. We booked the whole thing as a package. We were only informed of this yesterday, three weeks before travel is about to take place. Can anyone help advise us of our rights?