Can you help me locate a chateau in Fontainebleau?

Q A couple of months ago you gave tips on where to go in Fontainebleau. It was an old town and a chateau similar to Versailles. I can’t remember the name of either. Can you help?

“The Real Thing”

A Fontainebleau is one of my tips for a good place to stay during the Paris Olympics in summer 2024 – with fast (40 minutes), frequent and low-cost trains to and from the French capital. The highlight is the Chateau de Fontainebleau, which seems to occupy half the town.

The French king Francis I loved the location, not least because of the hunting prospects in the surrounding forest, and in 1527 transformed a 12th-century medieval castle into an Italianate palace. As a royal residence, it pre-dates Versailles – and, being further from Paris, has smaller crowds.

After the French Revolution, the chateau became the Imperial Palace, much enjoyed by Napoleon Bonaparte; it houses the only Napoleonic throne room still in existence.

The town itself is nothing special, and you should not dawdle there. But while the forest may have less game than French royalty enjoyed, it is a blissful space to explore. The forest is said to be the world’s first nature reserve, and is highly rated by rock climbers. Rent a bicycle for half a day to explore properly.

The optimal place to stay is the venerable and luxurious L’Aigle Noir, originally a 16th-century private mansion. On my last visit, though, I made do with the perfectly comfortable Ibis Budget hotel, close to the railway station. To dine, you can’t go wrong with the convivial, tasty and good-value La Petite Ardoise bistrot, which focuses on local ingredients.

To complete the full chateaux experience, though, you should certainly follow Fontainebleau with Versailles, ending at Compiegne – a ravishing location northeast of Paris, and the palace that I enjoy the most.

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Q Last October we booked a family holiday for Easter 2023, costing £1,907. We were going to sort out travel insurance just before the trip. Two weeks before departure we sadly lost our mum. Obviously, the holiday was the last thing on our minds and we cancelled. We contacted the travel agent who is adamant that only the flights (£872) could be refunded. But given the exceptional circumstances of our sudden bereavement shouldn’t they also reimburse us for the hotel, the airport transfer and the Atol fee?

Name supplied

A I am sorry to learn of your loss; my condolences to you and your family. Regrettably, as you doubtless realise, one valuable provision of travel insurance is for cancellation in the case of bereavement. Without such cover, you are beholden to the compassion of the travel agent – and in turn the companies with which it has arranged your holiday.

Let’s start with the flights. I am surprised and impressed that they have been refunded. There’s a small chance that the travel agent had not handed the money over to the airline, and therefore a refund is straightforward. If, though, the airline had been paid then it is commendable that a cash refund has been issued without fuss.

I am puzzled that the accommodation is proving more of a problem, and you can ask your travel agent to explain why. Typically the property owner is paid only after the stay. If that is the case for your booking, a refund should theoretically be easier. But it may be that an intermediary – known as a “bed bank” – is proving unhelpful. If so, there is little you can do. The same applies to the airport transfers: a middleman may already have your cash with no intention of returning it.

Finally, you mention the Atol “protection contribution”, currently £2.50 per person. I see no scope for recovering this. There is no mechanism for reclaiming this sum unless the holiday company cancels the trip and is obliged to make a full refund. It can also be argued that you have already benefited from the cover that Atol provides: a form of insurance against your holiday provider going out of business.

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Q I am getting really stressed about a one-week holiday in Turkey in July to celebrate my son completing his exams. I paid £678 per person for a group of four through an online travel agent. I then needed to change the name of one child on the booking. I was quoted £115 for a name change, which I accepted as fair. But the following day I was told the first quote was a mistake and the charge was £438. Now the cost has gone up to £578 – almost the price of the holiday again. What can I do?

Name supplied

A Sorry to hear that you have been so messed around and stressed: you have learned the hard way about the questionable business practices of some online travel agents. Any change to a booking can be seen as an opportunity to make more money. Sometimes individual staff members ratchet up the cost as they see how far they can push things, with penalties running into many hundreds of pounds.

Fortunately, I can propose a much cheaper solution: organise a fresh passport for the “new person” in the name of the child who can’t join you. Then the name on the ticket will match the replacement passenger, which is the only thing airlines care about.

The first step is for the child (or a parent) to obtain a simple declaration known as an “unenrolled deed poll” via a solicitor. This states the child wishes to be known by a new name. You will need to send this document in with the old passport as well as a letter explaining why you have made the change; support this with the email from the travel agent showing the passenger names on the booking.

If you start right away you have a very good chance of the new passport arriving by the end of the first week in July, which I hope will be in time. It will cost £53.50 (and the same again if the child wants to revert to their real name immediately after the trip), plus the solicitor’s fee. But that will be a fraction of the cost quoted by your very customer-unfriendly online travel agent.

In the future, opt for a human travel agent and book a proper package through a tour operator (holiday company) such as Tui or Jet2holidays. Had you done so this year, you would have the right under the Package Travel Regulations to pay just a nominal fee (around £50) for a name change.

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Q I am currently in Tel Aviv having booked a return flight here from Manchester via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines through Flightcatchers. I am due to fly home on 24 July. Due to a schedule change, my connection is no longer valid as there is now only 50 minutes between arrival and departure, rather than the original 65 minutes. Flightcatchers wants to charge an administration fee of £23 for the rebooking. Although that is not a huge amount of money, I don’t see why I should have to pay when an airline has made a schedule change?

Eli S

A The fact that I have answered questions about online travel agents two days running reflects the amount of correspondence I receive about these intermediaries. I imagine you booked through Flightcatchers because the quote was significantly lower than buying direct through the carrier. In your position, I may well have done the same: for flight-only bookings outside Europe, I sometimes use online travel agents when the savings they offer are substantial.

As you have discovered, though, such a choice can come with a considerable downside. It is unfortunate to receive a schedule change a few weeks before your flight that renders your connection invalid: Istanbul’s new airport is big and efficient, but given the extra security checks that the UK insists upon for flights from Turkey, 50 minutes would prove tight, which is why a schedule change is necessary.

Had you booked direct with Turkish Airlines, you would not have had to pay for a change to a later flight from Istanbul to Manchester. The human travel agents I use would certainly not dream of making a charge for something that is ultimately part of their day-to-day job. Yet as I discovered while researching the charges made by online travel agents for refunds during the Covid pandemic, online travel agents appear legally to be able to levy a fee for transactions that most people would expect to be free of charge. As you booked through an online agent, Turkish Airlines will not intervene.

I shall leave it with you to decide whether you agree with Flightcatchers’ claim “to provide you with the best customer experience possible at affordable rates”.

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