Should we cancel?

[blimppy]

We booked a holiday back in January to go to Portugal at the end of June with EasyJet. The balance in due by the end of this month. Obviously, I am thinking it is unlikely to go ahead, but who knows?! It is not clear from the terms and conditions whether Easyjet would give a full refund if they had to cancel because of the Coronavirus, but they do say that a pandemic is one of the "exceptional" circumstances that they won't pay out for. However, I thought that they would have to if the FCO are advising against travel. Obviously we cannot know whether that advice will still be in place by late June! I think I am inclined (sadly!) to cancel rather than risk losing the bulk of the money, but I wondered what others in the same/similar position might be doing?

Cancel. Highly unlikely you’ll go and getting your money back will be a torturous thing and unless FCO still
Saying no travel you’ll be obliged to go even if everything loved town the other end

Same situation here. This week I've cancelled our holiday - we were booked to go to Greece in July with Tui. We have lost £400 but we weighed it up and decided we would prefer to lose the £400 than to wait in vain for Tui to refund us the full cost of the holiday (they are currently still taking bookings for July, have closed down their phone lines and social media so they are totally uncontactable, and are offering vouchers rather than refunds to people whose easter holidays have been cancelled). I don't think they will be in business this time next year, and that means they wouldn't have the money to refund us at all, regardless of insurance / the law etc. You can't get blood out of a stone.

Have they given you the option to move it? TUI have offered us the option to move it free of charge, so we are going to push our holiday back to next year. Hopefully Tui are large enough to get through this. I have heard that companies are also offering vouchers which obviously eases the burden upon them. With regard to cancellation it will be down to if the Foreign Office are still banning travel at the time. The TUI website explains it quiet well have a look on there

Cancel, if all is well by July you can still do a last minute trip somewhere I'm sure, even if in UK

Also consider your travel insurance we took out extra cover Travel Disruption Extension which would cover us if the holiday is cancelled by the travel provider.

A travel agent told me this morning she's not expecting to be booking any holidays this side of Christmas

If you can move the booking substantially - ideally to next year - i would try to do that, otherwise cancel.

Thanks for the responses, it's helpful to see how others are thinking. Looks like we will cancel, as rebooking for next year is too complicated because we can't commit to dates that far in advance.

I would cancel - in theory if firms / airlines cancel you get a refund, in practice it's not happening in a lot of cases atm and they are considering changing the law so companies don't have to refund. Insurance is using any get out clause they can and I keep getting more e-mails over what they are no longer covering. I wouldn't be rebooking at this stage as you don't know who will still be in business / when a vaccine will be out.

OP, I would check the T&C's of your booking.
We've paid a £200 deposit for travel at the end of July to TUI.
When I checked the T&C's last night (as we're due to pay £600 on Monday 6th), it says the deposit is actually £800, (£200 per person) and the £200 we've already paid is only part of the deposit.
It looks like we will have to pay the remainder of the deposit, whether we go or not!
If anyone knows whether this is the case or not, I'd be grateful!

Katie I think it's whatever is in the terms and conditions - we've used TUI in the past and I think I saw something on their website in the past to that effect. So suspect it would be the £800 unfortunately.

We looked at cancelling our in the same position and the page stated we would owe a further £600 if cancelled, making it £800 total as that is the full deposit. The £200 low deposit does not count as full unfortunately in our experience

Cancel!!!!!.