Best way to book a holiday that can be cancelled?

[SizzlingPrickle]

A bit of an odd one, I know! My friend and I are looking to book a holiday for the first/second week of July, probably something resorty/beachy.

However - my mum is not well with cancer and although she’s fine in herself now, a lot can happen in 6 months in cancer-world. I am really worried about having to cancel last minute and leaving my friend out of pocket as I don’t imagine it would be covered by any travel insurance I take out let alone hers!

Can anyone recommend travel agents or sites that allow you to cancel holidays? I’m happy to pay a cancellation fee just as long as we can get most of the money back if needed.

The other option is to take that week/10 days off work anyway and book a last minute break but I would rather not.

Just book a flexible fare on airplane and hotels that have 24 hr cancellation policy.

The flights are the sticking point really, I can’t see that any airlines do cancellations any more even on Flexi fares.. I guess I’d just have to take the hit if worst came to worst.

Well.either book a super cheap airline so you can write it off (I do this with Ryanair sometomes). Or flex fares can be changed so you can defer the holiday to a later point

You can actually change most Ryanair flights, even on the basic fare. It costs something like £40 per flight and you have to change to a new flight immediately (you can't get credit to spend later), so for a cheap flight it's not always worth it. But this did save us some money once when we had £150 tickets at a busy time of year and had to move them to another day.

Hi @SizzlingPrickle sorry to hear about your mum.

We have similar, except I'm the cancer patient, and whilst I've love to book holidays in advance etc, my treatment can cause issues.

No chance of getting travel insurance either.

So last year we decided to book trips with cheap airlines so if they had to be cancelled, we only lost an airfare.

Hotels etc booked using booking.com choosing ones with free cancellation (up to a certain date).

Sorry things are so up in the air for you and hope your mum keeps as well as possible.

I would book last minute in that case - I did this in July last year. Prices really weren't much different booking 6 months in advance vs the week before.

TUI flex allows you to cancel free of charge if it's more than 28 days away.
You might get travel insurance but might have to declare your mother's illness - try a broker.
Last minute booking.

Easyjet holidays give you your deposit back as credit if you cancel more than 60 days out, you have to use it within a year of cancellation.

Ask a travel agent

I use Booking.com and always select places with free cancellation.

was also going to say Tui Flex

Book your flights and hotels separately, not as a package. Lots of hotels on booking dot com have multiple rates, the cheapest being you pay immediately and can't change anything and the more expensive rates offering more flexibility and sometimes letting you cancel as late as 24 hours beforehand. You can filter on the ones that offer free cancellation. With the flights you can change the dates, it just costs you a fee change to them, plus any difference in price between what you already paid and the fare for the new dates. This would/could be the more expensive part, you might have to go with random mid-week flights to keep the change cost down, also as others have said you have to pick new dates immediately, so you need to be as confident as possible that you are going to be able to go ahead on the new dates.

Book the cheapest flights you can find (and don't add baggage on either - you can do that later and AFAIK there's no difference in price as long as you do it before you fly) and then a refundable hotel, then worst case you lose the cost of the cheap flights

Thanks all, I’ll do some browsing this weekend ☺️