Loveholidays/Ryanair - Package holiday or not. Can I get a refund???

[BonBon2000]

Hi. Can anybody help.

Booked what I thought was a package holiday to Gran Canaria for 8 people, All Inclusive, with LoveHolidays, to include flights with Ryanair for April 2026. This is part of a bigger group of 20 people celebrating a 60th birthday and costing just under £8000. Ryanair have moved the date forward a day. Went through LoveHolidays who advised to accept new flights and they would look at sorting hotel and shuttle transfers. Came back advising new cost was an extra £1500. As I cannot afford to pay that I asked for a full refund. Was advised to contact Ryanair as this part was nothing to do with LoveHolidays??? They said once I’d contacted Ryanair and started the refund process for flights to let them know and they will start the process for hotel and transfers. As requested by LoveHolidays I started the refund process with Ryanair and then advised LoveHolidays that I had done so so that they could work on the hotel and transfers. Ryanair have now refused a refund as the flights are “non-refundable”. The flights have cost me £3000 which in no way can I afford to lose!!!! Also heard back from LoveHolidays who have told me that, with all the charges being incurred for a refund, I actually owe them an extra £176!!
Can somebody please help/advise me on a way forward - I’m absolutely desperate!!! Both companies seem to be passing the blame back and forth!!

When there’s such a big change Ryanair usually let you accept the change, refund or change the date. What were you offered?
yes love holidays isn’t a package holiday, the flights and hotel are not related.

Love Holidays act as agents and are nothing more than this.

" We operate a booking platform (online and via telephone) which enables users of our platform to search, compare, combine and book various travel services including, but not limited to, flights, hotels and transfers (“each a Travel Service”). We do not own or operate any of the Travel Services. When you search for Travel Services and make a booking on our platform, our service is only to obtain and provide information about those Travel Services, arrange for you to enter into a contract with the individual provider of the Travel Service in question (the "Service Provider") and to agree payment terms between you and that Service Provider. The Service Provider will be the party responsible for supplying the Travel Service to you.

Please note that the Packages, which can be organised on our website, are not the same as traditional pre-packaged holidays where the Travel Services are usually pre-selected by a tour operator or travel company and are sold to you under a single contract. Through our booking platform, you will be able to select each Travel Service yourself and subsequently enter into a contract with each Service Provider. Together, your combined booking will form a Package if the criteria set out above is satisfied. You will know this is the case if you receive an ATOL Certificate stating that it is for a Multi-Contract Package."

The above in quote marks is direct from their website's terms and conditions which sadly many people do not read carefully enough.

Ryanair is well known for not refunding customers so good luck with getting anything out of them. We were ourselves refused any sort of refund for my dad's return flight as he died whilst on holiday, they did not want to know.

I would therefore go back to Love Holidays as your initial contact was with them and use the words significant change as specified in their terms and conditions as the flights have been moved forward by a day.

I agree with PP, RyanAir should have offered a refund for such a major change.
Be prepared for a fight , but they're in the wrong if they did not do so.

Loveholidays quit ABTA some years ago so no redress there.
Small possibility your travel insurance might cover this , check your policy.

If you paid by credit or debit card, it MIGHT be possible to get refunds from the card provider.

Honestly love holidays are the pits. If you paid on a credit card you might be able to get help otherwise it’ll be an expensive lesson in why you should book a package

OP, did you initially accept the flight change with Ryanair, and then later ask for the refund? Your post isn't quite clear on this. If you did, then Ryanair is within their rights to refuse to refund you, because you have made a new nonrefundable booking on the new date. The time to get a refund from Ryanair was when they moved the flight up by a day — I presume that there was an offer of a refund at the time.

Ryanair didoffer me those options which I took back to LoveHolidays who then said if the flights were good for me to accept them and they would then look to move the accommodation and shuttle transfers to bring the whole holiday into line again. So…….that’s what I did!!

We then get to the part of an increase in price of £1500 to move the accommodation. When I mentioned a refund I was told to go back to Ryanair and start a refund claim. Once done let LoveHolidays know and they would take the rest of the accommodation refund forward - oh yes, also quoting that the shuttle transfers are non-refundable and there will be fees for cancelling!!

Ryanair did offer me those options which I took back to LoveHolidays who then said if the flights were good for me to accept them and they would then look to move the accommodation and shuttle transfers to bring the whole holiday into line again. So…….that’s what I did!!
We then get to the part of an increase in price of £1500 to move the accommodation. When I mentioned a refund I was told to go back to Ryanair and start a refund claim. Once done let LoveHolidays know and they would take the rest of the accommodation refund forward - oh yes, also quoting that the shuttle transfers are non-refundable and there will be fees for cancelling!!

So you accepted the flight change with Ryanair, which led to new non refundable flights unfortunately.

Then when love holidays tried to change accommodation there was a price increase for this.

I'm not sure you can do much more apart from pay the difference 😔

Did you pay any of it on a credit card? I think it only needs to be £100. Consumer 75 protection. Might be worth speaking to the lender if you don't get any joy

Then I think you've blown it. Ryanair doesn't care about your holiday booking (despite their "partnership" with Love Holidays, which basically just means that LH no longer has to scrape Ryanair's site for flight details), so the thing to do was (!) to let LH come up with the holiday proposal and only then rebook the flights. April 2006 is a long way off and the flights aren't going to fill up overnight. You might have to chalk this one up to experience. 🙏

(An even worse scenario is that LH knows that you have rebooked the flights and is now just gouging you — i.e., perhaps there is no actual difference that they are passing on in the accommodation price, but they know that you can't back out on the flights and so have slapped on the extra because they can. I don't want to believe that this is the case, and I have no evidence that it is, but I would not keel over from surprise if I were to find out that it's what LH sometimes does.)

Can’t you keep the flights and book another hotel for the correct dates on Booking.com?

I was thinking this - can you book a cheap hotel for your first night. Suspect that will be a lot cheaper than £1500!

That’s what I’ve done. As ive still got the flights, I’ve kept the original accommodation booking with LoveHolidays and booked direct with the hotel for one night, which is much cheaper, as you’ve said.

thanks all for your help and insight. It’s been extremely helpful. It’s a harsh lesson to learn and I’ll know better for next time!!

@Kuyuben31 Yes exactly that. That’s why I’ve decided to go with the price increase - the lesser evil and a harsh lesson to learn!!!

@ScarletPower After looking through everything it appears that it doesn’t fall under Consumer 75.

Similar thing has just happened to me. Ryan A changed outbound flight time. I didn’t accept the change on the email as been so busy & wanted to think it over & then only a few days ago they then changed the inbound flight also. Apparently, because of this I am entitled to a full refund from Ryan A. but let’s see.

It’s so shit isn’t it? Feels like you’ve paid for trousers & you’ve been given hot pants! I won’t go with Ryan A again.

@Theextraordinaryisintheordinary Absolutely 100% agree. Hope you get your full refund and yep, one airline im going to stay well clear of from now.

It looks as if you have the best of a bad lot, but your only crime, for want of a better word is not reading all the small print. It appears that there is a huge lack of transparency here. It doesn’t appear they have done anything unlawful but they have sailed unfairly too close to the wind.

Apart from posting on MN, l think it’s worth raising the profile of this case by contacting the likes of Which?, Simon Calder at the Independent and other consumer protection and/or travel programmes.