Holiday cottage has been sold!

[Boynamedsue]

Hi, just looking for a bit of advice.

At the back of the end of last year my Mum booked a holiday cottage for a family trip to Northumberland to celebrate her Birthday (a big one!) in August this year.

She also booked and paid for a caravan site for my brother and his family to take their touring caravan to the same town. The caravan pitch is non refundable if we cancel.

The holiday cottage company have contacted us today to say that the cottage has been sold and therefore our booking cancelled. Obviously, August being school holidays and all, there is very little now available and certainly nothing in the town that we originally booked.

We are now in the position of having the campsite booked and paid for but nowhere for the rest of us to stay. The only suitable place I have been able to find is £1000 more than the original cottage we booked.

On the company website I found this clause...

If it proves necessary for us to make a change in your holiday booking for any reason, including the unexpected withdrawal of the property by the owner, by overbooking or any other reason, we will endeavour to make an alternative booking for you or, failing this, we will refund to you any monies paid by you. Nevertheless, we shall be under no further obligation or liability in this respect.

Which pretty much suggests we are screwed! Does anybody have any advice as to where we stand in this situation?

Thanks in advance (and well done for reading all of that if you've made it this far!)

Nothing you can do I'm afraid.

Thought as much! Thanks anyway.

It is not their responsibility to worry about your other arrangements I'm afraid

Do you want to say which town/area, which dates, and how many people, MNers might be able to turn something up?

Presumably the caravan park would be less expensive, so the holiday might have to be relocated around a different cottage booking? Does your Mum's household insurance cover this at all?

Collaborate, are you sure about that? I'm wondering whether that clause is valid under the Unfair Contract Terms Act as this is a fundamental breach of contract.

Augusta I doubt there is a claim. The contract was to provide the cottage. This is impossible as now sold and the new owners do not want to rent it. They have, I assume, provided a full refund. They are not obligated to cover additional costs, that is what holiday insurance is for.
It is the same as if a plane company cancels a route, they do not have to refund booked hotels.

But in the event of breach of contract you normally have to pay whatever it costs to remedy the breach, i.e. to put the innocent party in the position they would have been in if the breach hadn't happened. It's not sufficient to say that insurance will pay, because the insurance company would be entitled to recover whatever it pays out by taking over the buyer's rights under the contract. It's also not sufficient to rely on the fact that cottage owners have taken it off the market, because it's up to the agents to put in place separate contractual arrangements with the owners to prevent that from happening and/or their own insurance.

Augusta A full refund does that. You are arguing that there cost consequential to the breach. These are only recoverable if the rentor could have reasonably know about them. Unless the OP told the site that they were only booking because of the related campsite booking, this is not recoverable.