Worried about booking Thomas cook flight to Tobago & villa independently or hotel & package deal (with ABTA protection)?

[northender]

We are planning a week in February in Tobago. Flights will be with TC Airline whatever. Our ideal accommodation is a villa which is just perfect & meets all our preferences. We would book direct & book flight separately. For the same total cost we can get a hotel & flight package through an agent which would be ABTA protected.

We would all prefer the first option, but are worried about what happens if the airline goes bust. My understanding is, in the second scenario, we would be provided with alternatives, but I'm not sure about the first option. We do have travel insurance and would pay on card; would we just lose the flights but get our money back?

If you can get the same holiday as a package, I would do that, as it gets you the ATOL/ABTA protection and you will get a refund or replacement holiday.

If you book separately and TC go bust, you will be faced with finding replacement flights yourself, or else you could lose the money you've paid for your accomodation - your travel insurance won't pay out unless TC go bust while you have travelled - all it covers is getting you home.

If you pay by credit card, they will pay your consequential losses but you have to go through the hoops and it could literally take months to get your money back and the replacement flights could be very expensive.

We were booked to fly with Monarch a couple of days after they went bust and luckily I had the time and foresight to book replacement flights very early that Monday morning and I managed to get the same airports on the same days, so our accomodation and airport parking arrangements could stay the same.

However, within hours all the flights with other airlines on the Monarch routes in the following few weeks got very very expensive and then sold out. Ours were about twice as much, so £550 instead of £300 but later that day the other airlines were charging over £1k pp for return flights to holiday resorts in the Med . Then everything sold out.

Friend was booked to travel a couple of weeks after us and they had to have a completely different holiday (booked a package so this was sorted for them) as their choice was fly from a different airport in the UK over 200 miles away or go somewhere else and they chose the latter.

Great response, thanks Barbara. Lots to mull over.