Am I being shafted by Love Holidays??

[bexter74]

We booked a holiday to Mauritius, all inclusive hotel, 2 rooms & flights for next Feb.
opted to pay by instalments.
Did a bit of reflecting and following this summers holiday we realised the teenagers are fussy buggers, we don’t drink & we don’t want to restricted to hotel meal times anymore so we’d prefer to try self catering villa.
we phoned Love Holidays to cancel the hotel part and they have said we can’t do that, it’s a package. We pointed out the T& C’s state only that you can’t cancel flights, and as they don’t offer a self catering option we would like to cancel the hotel. They acknowledged their T & C’s don’t say that we can’t cancel the hotel but they keep saying they are a package holiday company, I questioned this as you can just book a hotel with them and that’s not a package…
Are we stuck with the hotel?? Do we have the right to keep the flight but cancel the hotel??
Thanks in advance for any advice

I think if you buy a package, you can’t cancel only a part of that package. You can possibly transfer to a different package (using same flight)?

Agree with @Chinup100

I’ve had this with TUI. In the end I had to cancel and rebook the whole thing ( at vast expense).
However I did speak to three different agents : one useless , one I couldn’t understand through the accent and one who was fantastic and spent 45 mins in the phone checking all the ways to rebook to minimise the charges. So not all agents are the same.

But I think they are right. You have bought a package so you can transfer to another hotel/ apartment or cancel the whole holiday.
As the holiday is so far off you shouldn’t lose much in the way of fees and admin.

Do they not have any other options eg bed and breakfast

l’m afraid they are right. You have booked a package. The fact that they also sell hotel only options is separate offering. You are trying to depackage (my word) a package.

Do they offer something similar to what you are now looking for? If so can you change to that? What do the T&Cs say?

How much would you lose if you cancelled, booked a flight directly with an airline and booked accommodation separately? If you do go for this option, ensure you have travel insurance which covers you from the time of booking.

If not too expensive just use the flights and book your own accomodation ? You need to be SO careful with LH etc. I think you really need to be more or less certain you are going on that exact trip as changes are not easy .
They lull you into a false sense of freedom with their 30 euro deposits etc . when the reality is you owe ALL the money from when you sign up .

Thanks for all the replies. We are tied into paying for the flight, that’s stated in the terms, so if we cancelled we’d still have to pay £2500. We looked at alternative hotels that have B&B but we’d have to pay hundreds more for one of those (not sure why when ours is All inclusive!)
our mistake, I was thinking it was sold in 2 parts. Lesson learnt!

It's a package deal so you will have to cancel the whole thing and start again unfortunately, at a cost.

You can book just flights or just hotel through love holidays but you didn’t. You booked a package. You would have been given certain prices for booking both together and you’ll just have to grin and bear it.

Generally in Mauritius the better eating out is in hotels and I think food can be quite expensive in supermarkets as a lot is imported. The hotel facilities should be great for teens too, they usually include watersports etc, Which hotel is it? If I were you I’d stick with what you have and save the villa for another holiday.

Why would you lose so much in flights? Theres usually a sliding scale of costs depending on how close to departure.

I think even if they are fussy you’d be better off as you are. Theres bound to he something they can eat and you can supplement as required. Soft drinks add up too.