Should I get a refund after my holiday was cut short?

Q We were on holiday in Tenerife before England’s second lockdown began. We were legally allowed to stay there for the rest of our trip. But we were brought home early and lost four days because the travel firm said it was cancelling flights for the second week of lockdown onwards.

We were told it was a repatriation flight because of government advice and therefore they did not owe us any money back. We were told to claim on travel insurance, but this was rejected and we were referred back to the holiday company. Do we have any rights?

Andy I

A I don’t fault the company for bringing you home early. In late October the government opened up the Canary Islands to British holidaymakers by adding them to the list of “travel corridors” from which quarantine was not required. But within days this move was reversed with a vengeance, when the government banned all new holidays from England from 5 November to 2 December (later quietly changed to 1 December).

Many companies had planned a fruitful winter programme to the Canaries right through the winter – with planes going out and coming back with good loads. That cost-efficient model was wrecked by lockdown 2.0. Each firm had to come up with a no-win balance between disrupting customers and minimising losses. Rather than running empty outbound flights to bring back a handful of holidaymakers like you would have cost tens of thousands of pounds.

But since this decision was designed to save the firm money, it is disappointing that the firm appears to have misrepresented the situation. It was not a government-stipulated repatriation flight. It was a cost-saving exercise, and nothing to do with travel industry.

For the holidaymaker whose trip is cut short, the Package Travel Regulations require appropriate and proportionate compensation. Now, the way this is calculated is not necessarily to your advantage. If you were on a £700, two-week holiday that was reduced to 10 days, you might assume that’s a straight £200 you deserve – being four-14ths of the total cost.

But the travel firm can argue that the air element can be deducted, because you “enjoyed” the flight regardless of how short the trip was. On a route such as Manchester-Tenerife the travel firm could argue the flight was worth £210. So the sum in question becomes £490 for 14 days, valuing each lost day at £35. That’s a total of £140 – which I know won’t make up for the curtailed trip, but I hope you at least appreciate the reasons.

Based on the actual figures of what you paid, I suggest you calculate a reasonable figure and ask the holiday firm for that amount as your fair legal entitlement.

Q You wrote in an article that British holidaymakers in Europe will be limited to a stay of 90 days in any 180. You gave this example: “If you spend January, February and March in the Schengen Area you must leave the zone before 1 April and cannot return until 30 June.”

But I think you are wrong. The 90/180 days is rolling, so if you spend 90 days in Europe and come back for, say, two weeks, you’ve got those 14 days available because the 180-day period “rolls”. Do you agree?

Raymond A

A Newspapers that campaigned enthusiastically for Brexit have been running ludicrous stories accusing the European Union of creating “new rules” designed to limit the length of stay for British holidaymakers – particularly those with properties abroad. The authors presumably know this is tosh: the imposition of long-standing rules on the length of stay was inevitable after the UK voted to leave the EU and the government decided to leave the single market (despite Boris Johnson’s earlier pledge to the contrary).

From 1 January 2021, you may stay only 90 days (about three months) in any 180 (six months) in the Schengen area – comprising almost all the EU countries except Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland and Romania.

The clock starts ticking on New Year’s Day, when in effect every UK citizen is handed an allowance of 180 days to spend in the EU. That means that by 29 June you are permitted to stay in the Schengen area for a maximum of 90 of those days. If you choose to spend them all at once, that would take you to the end of March. Coming back for two weeks would not increase your allowance at all; you would need to remain outside Schengen until the end of June. Only then would the “rolling” notion begin. You could commence another three-month block, taking you to late September – when the limit kicks in again, with no more visiting Europe until Christmas.

I agree that it’s a complex concept, but all frequent travellers need to start recording the dates of their travel to Europe: the Schengen Information System will certainly be keeping count. But at least you will be able to go there with a “blue” passport.

Q After the transport secretary’s announcement of no quarantine for “high-value business travellers”, am I right to send that the government’s quarantine policy is on the point of collapse?

Bill D

A No. On Thursday the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, tweeted about a “New Business Traveller exemption”. Along with an emoji of a briefcase, he told his followers: “High-value business travellers will no longer need to self-isolate when returning to England from a country not in a travel corridor, allowing more travel to support the economy and jobs. Conditions apply.”

But when you study those conditions about this controversial easing of the quarantine, you discover that the announcement was not quite accurate. In fact, the new rules make it quite clear that high-value business travellers, like almost everyone else, will need to self-isolate when returning to England.

Travellers from the vast majority of nations are required to spend two weeks sitting at home on arrival, though from 15 December that will drop to five days if you test negative on the fifth day after leaving a “quarantine country”.

Those bringing “significant economic benefit” – defined as more likely than not to create or preserve at least 50 UK-based jobs in a British business or an order worth at least £100m in goods or services from a UK-based business with at least 50 employees.

Other rules add many more hurdles. If you could do the work remotely – quaintly, the government says “for example by telephone or email” rather than Zoom or Teams – there’s no exemption for you.

Nor is quarantine relief granted if the work can be done by anyone other than you who would not need to leave self-isolation.

In the highly unlikely event that you pass all these tests, big deal: you will be “permitted temporarily to leave quarantine in England”, but the temporary relaxation applies only when you are undertaking activities that qualify for the exemption. “You must self-isolate at all other times,” the government says. So you can go direct to a meeting or a factory, say, but then go home again and stew. The people who tweeted back “One rule for the unwashed and another for the elite!” might want to consider the rules. This relaxation is close to meaningless, and I infer from it that quarantine is likely to continue for a while.  

Email your questions to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder