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Original poster

If you had a eurocamp holiday in France booked for the summer

101 replies

zippyswife · 21/05/2020 13:55

Have you cancelled it?

We’re due to go in August. I’ve assumed it won’t be happening but don’t have to pay the balance until mid June.

The website says they’ll contact 2 weeks before the holiday date to advise whether it will be open or not. By which time we will have had to pay the deposit and decide either way.

I know it’s highly unlikely it would be open but just wondered what anyone else is doing.

OP posts:
Tr1skel1on · 21/05/2020 16:31

I was due to eurocamp in Spain start of June. Holiday cancelled and I have a refund voucher that I can put towards a new.holiday. if I want a refund I can't apply until 31 march 2021 !!¡

TheMostHappy · 21/05/2020 16:39

We booked air b&b for a week in mid July. I have no idea what to do.

thenewaveragebear1983 · 21/05/2020 17:13

We had a cottage booked for our first week and the cottage owner effectively said that it was unlikely that uk travellers would be in France, hospitality isn't due to open til 24th July (so eg bars and restaurants etc). We are going to cancel ours but will lose our deposit (hopefully can claim back on travel insurance)

mepan · 21/05/2020 17:52

We have the same dilemma. Booked flights last year. Campsite booked for first 2 weeks in July. Only paid £99 deposit so not sure where we stand if we cancel. Don't really want to pay the remaining £1500 to be committed to using eurocamp next year. It's such a difficult one as not knowing if we will be allowed to travel and what will be open when we get there. Also we are over 100km from the airport to the campsite and at present you are not allowed to travel that distance.

fadingfast · 21/05/2020 19:09

We had a holiday booked with Eurocamp to France for the second half of August. We have moved out to 2021 with no hassle at all. We'd only paid the £99 deposit and that has been transferred to our new booking. Be aware that if you want to cancel rather than transfer, you have to do it more than 12 weeks before you are due to leave (and then you will only lose your deposit) even though the balance of the cost is only payable 6 weeks before.

Rayn · 21/05/2020 19:24

All it takes is the infection rate to increase or a second wave and we will be back at square one.
So even though hospitality in France is saying it may open on a certain date - it isn't guaranteed. Too many ifs and buts at the moment.

thenewaveragebear1983 · 21/05/2020 19:33

@mepan unfortunately if I've read your post correctly, you will be not be able to cancel without them charging you now. Even though payment had changed til 6 weeks before, t&c for complete cancellation is still 12 weeks. This is what has caught us out because our payment was due 27th June we assumed we could just cancel until then.

mepan · 21/05/2020 19:47

@thenewaveragebear1983. Yeah we have just realised that. Initially thought we would only lose our deposit and had hoped to be in a position to know what the situation was before we had to pay our balance. Unfortunatley this has not worked out and looks like we either have to pay in full and hope we can either go on holiday, or the campsite and flights are both cancelled and we can get refunds or claim on our insurance. Just have a feeling we are going to be out of pocket one way or the other. Just feel it's unfair eurocamp can cancel up to 2 weeks before you go but we cant do that without losing a lot of money.

ellie2201 · 21/05/2020 19:56

I was worried about the terms and conditions too but I wrote to them and said we could no longer go (meant to be arriving on Eurocamp site mid July) and they are keeping the £99 but not charging us the rest. Unless I’ve misunderstood the email! I reread it several times as I was pleasantly surprised.
Don’t take my word for it though as maybe they made an exception for some reason?!

AnotherFuzzyJumper · 21/05/2020 20:08

We were booked to go to one in France first two weeks of August and cancelled and got a full refund (minus deposit, we had paid in full already) there were just too many unknowns (quarantining, having to self isolate when back etc) and we knew it wouldn't be the same holiday we had signed up for with added social distancing etc. We will now try and find a self catering cottage with pool in the UK.

thenewaveragebear1983 · 21/05/2020 20:08

@mepan I know it seems very unfair, we are loyal eurocampers and I'm kicking myself that we missed the deadline to cancel.

@ellie2201 when you wrote to them was that after the deadline? I hope maybe they will be lenient with us, however it's 7-10 days for a reply to an email at the moment!

We have decided we will just book for next year but that does mean paying the balance; however then a chunk of our holiday next year is paid I suppose and the money isn't wasted. We have lost £500 deposit on our cottage for our first week and are waiting to hear if our insurance will
Cover us if we cancel before uk gov bans travel. Even if it is 'allowed' we wouldn't go as we don't fancy the restrictions etc

We figured that even if ferries are running, if you have any symptoms of cv you might not be able to travel and the cost of accommodation and additional ferry and all the hassle to deal with while away would not be good.

ellie2201 · 21/05/2020 20:11

@thenewaveragebear1983 I wrote 10 days ago, got a reply a week later and we were due to go on the 13th July.

SorrelBlackbeak · 21/05/2020 20:52

@ellie2201 thanks - that's really helpful. I've emailed asking for clarification about cancellation.

We're booked into a site at lake Garda but driving through France with hotels in the alps and Paris... I know the eurocamp site is planning to open, but we can't get there if France is still closed which looks likely. Hopefully they'll be sensible!

thenewaveragebear1983 · 21/05/2020 21:02

@ellie2201 thank you, yes that is helpful. We'd be in a similar scenario to you were, so we will wait until we get a reply until we transfer our booking and hopefully they will reply before June 27th!

Tr1skel1on · 21/05/2020 21:36

I paid up front. Money refunded from cancelled Thomas Cook holiday last year so might be different for me.

I'm telling the kids it's going to be third time lucky. We haven't been on holiday for years... Sigh..

mepan · 23/05/2020 16:24

So France have matched the UK government with a 14 day quarantine on arrival. This makes eurocamp impossible I would say. Just don't know if our travel Insurance would cover this or if eurocamp will now cancel holidays? We have only paid £99 deposit and were due to pay the balance today. In a real quandry what to do now as according to terms and conditions we would be liable for 50% of total holiday cost. Due to go at the beginning of July and flights booked and paid for last year.

SecondRow · 23/05/2020 17:40

Hi mepan, do you have a link? French is fine Smile

I'm wondering if that will apply to entry across land borders as well. I was under the impression France's Schengen-area borders were likely to return to free movement after 15th June.

SecondRow · 23/05/2020 17:43

Sorry I meant to say, I would hope you'd have a case not to pay that 50% as you did not have the information you needed to cancel before now. But if you'd accept credit for next year you'd think they'd want to retain your custom.

Are the flights even still going ahead?

thenewaveragebear1983 · 23/05/2020 17:43

@mepan that's a game changer for us with regards to getting money back, hopefully now eurocamp will refund without incurring costs now. Was that in the briefing today? We didn't watch it

mepan · 23/05/2020 17:56

@ second row and @thenewaveragebear1983 did not see the briefing but it was on the BBC news. France have said they will reciprocate any quarantine measures put in place by any other countries. I guess this could all change in the next few weeks though. We have taken the plunge after checking our travel insurance document and have opted to pay the whole balance today. We didn't want to be stung for 50% and if the FCO no essential travel guidance is still in place 28 days before our holiday we can claim on insurance. Although hopefully before then Eurocamp will cancel. We have not heard anything about our flights yet. We are due to fly with Ryanair. I am so disapointed with Eurocamp. We have used them many times. They did actually respond to a Facebook messenger post today but did not answer the questions I had raised. Anyway fingers crossed it all works out one wayvor another

Verite1 · 23/05/2020 18:00

We are staying at Yelloh camp in August. Unfortunately I paid in full at the time (god knows why). So worst case scenario is we will lose it all ☹️

SecondRow · 23/05/2020 18:33

Thanks French and mepan. I had heard the UK was doing it but hadn't thought of retaliation as the other stuff I'd heard coming out of France was positive about holidays starting up.

Fingers crossed for you, mepan! Hopefully Eurocamp just have a backlog of queries to deal with but they'll be reasonable...

Hollyhead · 23/05/2020 19:19

Just cancelling ours now due to quarantine restrictions - even if French don't recipricate, we won't be able to quarantine long enough until the DC are due back at school.

Xmasbaby11 · 23/05/2020 20:21

We have booked France Eurocamp for the end of August. I'm resigned to the fact it won't happen. Either it will be impossible with quarantine etc or things will be so restricted that it's not worth going. We have paid £500 deposit and I think we'll just transfer it to next year.

The problem is where else can we go for a fortnight in August? I guess we will be competing with other British families for self catering in the UK!

I am gutted - first time abroad with dc 8 and 6, and dd1 has ASD so we had already started preparing her for the summer.