To let a holiday go to waste than give it away for free?

[ohputyourtinkleon]

4 of us going to Cyprus
1 person (partner ) can't go now
It cost £1400 per person
I put a post on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to come for £800 and name change
A few friends said they would love too but can't afford the £800
So anyway the place is going to waste
Partner said I should have just let someone come and do the name change but we paid so why should someone get it for free?

Aibu ?

But, offering up the trip for free will make ALL of these "problems" go away? How is giving the trip away going to give the person any input or control? Or is it okay as long as it's free? Will that make it easier for the person to get off work or should she take anyone along, as long as they can get leave? Should she have ANY choices?
@BucketBouquetthey can’t have any input or control; when even getting the leave from work might be impractical if not impossible. What if someone would have to take unpaid leave or turn down freelance work to go? SMDH FFS

Don't worry @ohputyourtinkleon --if you offer up the trip for free, no one will have any problems getting time off and won't care about input or control. Seriously, take a relative or a friend that you both will enjoy each other's company for two weeks. That way, you won't accidentally sell it to someone who might not appreciate it. Have an amazing time!

Money isn't everything. I'd definitely give someone I liked enough to holiday with a freebie.

If this was me I'd rather give it to my friend than let it go to waste. But I like my friends.

@ohputyourtinkleon I'd love a free holiday even a reduced price one with a mate, I'm a bit skint, absolutely not with someone as meanie mouthed as you. As for paying for it, not in a million years.
Have a good look at yourself OP. Wow.

How did you get to £800?

If it was a friend and I wanted them to come I'd let them come for free.

Im a bit odd though in that I like my friends unlike lots of MNers.

Honestly! Anyone who says otherwise is a horrible cow.

well £800 is a big expensive without saving up first

I took the meaning to be someone who could never afford that kind of holiday themselves. Someone who might ordinarily holiday in a tent in a field. Not someone who would be packing a foodbank parcel in their suitcase.

By hard up I mean unable to afford an holiday like that. I’m not hard up as in I can’t afford food, but no I’m not having holidays like that. This year our family holiday is 4 days camping. We are fine for money, but no we couldn’t afford a holiday like this thread is talking about. I could afford to enjoy myself on a holiday like this, and if a friend of mine offered it to me because rather than waste the holiday, which the op would rather do, she wanted someone to enjoy it for free, I’d be very grateful. Because yeah I’m hard up compared to someone who can afford this type of holiday.
i don’t even understand your post, sorry!

Take a relative you like for free? Or offer it for £500?

The person who let you down should be paying. Re the other person coming free on the fence here. However I think you feel resentment if a friend came free without some payment. Could you ask a sister, mum etc.

The money is spent anyway, if there’s no chance of recovering any of it then you’re being mean not to give the space away if there’s someone you’d enjoy spending the time with.

Same thing happened to me, booked a family holiday for me and Dp and DC for this summer but DP can no longer make it so I’ve given the space to my mum. I’d have happily taken DC by myself but we will have more fun with my mum there.

I expect (from the OP's suspicion that her friends are being CFs in claiming they can't afford it) that they probably CAN afford it, but are saying they can't as an easy excuse not to go on a holiday they didn't choose and don't particularly want to go on. So even if the OP was to offer it for free, I doubt they would go - the next reason would be time off work, or parenting responsibilities.

If the OP felt her friends were genuinely brassic (on the basis of their lifestyle), I expect she would have offered the holiday for free originally.

I would approach some different friends/family with the original £800 offer, and hope to find someone who wants a holiday, and can see that £800 is a very good deal.

I disagree. I think the easier excuse is 'sorry, I can't get the time off'. 'I can't afford it' is the only excuse that has the potential to get the holiday but cheaper/free.

I don't think op would be offering it up to friends that she knows are truly skint..

Why are they cheeky? They were asked and said they couldn’t afford it, it’s not unreasonable to say I’d have loved it but can’t afford it! It’s terrible just to completely waste the money paid because you’re put out someone would get it for free. Shows the sort of person you are!

You’re being ridiculously literal. “Hard up” doesn’t have to mean on the breadline panicking about the electricity bill. A lot of people aren’t in a position to afford a holiday, but, if offered a free one, would probably be able to scrape together the spending money. Surely anyone can see that. Maybe time to take your face out of your palm?

But, offering up the trip for free will make ALL of these "problems" go away? How is giving the trip away going to give the person any input or control? Or is it okay as long as it's free? Will that make it easier for the person to get off work or should she take anyone along, as long as they can get leave? Should she have ANY choices?

Of course the problems won’t go away. But surely it isn’t difficult to understand that someone might be more prepared to consider a compromise at a lower price? “It’s somewhere you haven’t chosen to go, with people you haven’t chosen to go with and at a time of our convenience, not yours - and it’s only £800!!” is not the great deal the OP thinks it is. At £400, someone might be prepared to deal with those issues.

Obviously if someone can’t get leave, they can’t get it and that’s that, regardless of the price. But that wasn’t my point. Anyone with basic comprehension skills could work out that I wasn’t suggesting annual leave appears out of thin air if a holiday gets cheaper. The point is, OP wants to sell this holiday rather than give it away, and she’s severely restricting her pool with that price.

It’s like a Venn diagram. The number of people who fit into the crossover of all criteria - people who want to go, who the OP would want to go with, who can get the time off and who can afford £800 - is going to be tiny. The one element the OP can influence is the price.

Putting the shoe on the other foot, @ohputyourtinkleon, you are hoping to recoup some of the holiday costs for a trip your OH now can't come on* from an individual who sits in the perfect venn diagram intersection of:

1. Single - because who would use up 50% of their annual leave on a holiday with 3 randomers if they had a significant other they'd (presumably) prefer to spend their hard earned time off with.
2. Flexible job - because lots of people have to book annual leave months & months in advance, particularly to get 2 weeks not just one.
3. Well off - because if you're living on your own (see 1), life is proportionally more expensive than when you share costs of living, so having £800 PLUS 2 weeks spending money is a BIG DEAL!
4. Outgoing - because who would choose to spend their holiday sharing accommodation with a couple they didn't know at all, in addition to a friend who only liked them enough to offer the holiday space to them on facebook (😳)
5. Unbothered about where they holiday - because the location, accommodation, dates, flight times, food offer and distance from beach/bars/activities/tourist attractions have already been dictated to them by the 4 people who originally booked the holiday to their own tastes.
6. Physically quite petite - because I can't in a million years imagine that someone (who's being quite as tight as you are) booked a 3 bedroom villa to only use 2 bedrooms unless the 3rd is very obviously a boxroom/kids room/doesn't have an en suite/has no view/is in some other way clearly the inferior room.

When you think about who is left in your life that meets AAAAALL of these criteria, does it not occur to you that they are exactly the kind of person with the work, financial & personality flexibility to go 'sod it, I'll book the 70% off last space on a single's holiday cycling round vietnam for my £800' (or similar)?

Rather than opting to go away with 3 people who spend the fortnight with faces like a slapped arse because the 4th isn't who they chose to book the original holiday with, and every single one of them feels disgruntled for some reason about your being there!

Good luck indeed finding that person, even for the price of a name change, 14 meals & bar money!!!

• and this is why holiday insurance is a thing. You will apparently have 14 days by the pool on your own to contemplate the value of not taking some out to recoup the £1400 for your partner's share of lost costs. It's not anyone else's job to fix that for you.

I hope at least the sun will shine for you 🌞

I wouldn't have offered it on Facebook because you risk ending up with someone you don't like enough to spend 2 weeks with.

It's nice to have the extra space and do what you want. It would be different if it were with your DP because you do things jointly anyway but adding a friend into the mix could be annoying, especially if they don't pay their way.

Can you imagine if they get to the good spot on the seating outside the villa, the comfy prime sofa seat, jump in the bathroom first so they make it for pre dinner drink and you miss it, or leave plates for you to clean up or don't do anything to say thanks for the free holiday. These are made up examples of how their behaviour could get annoying and spoil the holiday. Or say you want a day by the pool but they make you walk into town and you find yourself at a tacky tourist market when you could have been chilling out with your book.

It would have to be a very good friend and also one in some hardship that they couldn't contribute. Otherwise just enjoy your holiday without adding a random friend on.

I’d let it go to waste. I wouldn’t give a friend an $1400 vacation.

Then you’re a trash friend

Wow, with friends like you, who needs enemies?

£800 is a lot to go on a holiday eith a bunch of people you probanly wouldn't have chosen to go on, with a friend who values you so little she'd rather waste it.