Gill Charlton has been fighting for Telegraph readers and solving their travel problems for more than 30 years, winning refunds, righting wrongs and suggesting solutions.
Here is this week’s question:
Dear Gill,
Earlier this year, my wife and I booked a Mediterranean cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas, departing on May 25. The cruise was part of a one-week package that included flights and transfers, for which we paid a total of £4,995.
The day before we were due to fly out to Venice to join the ship in Ravenna, I received an email from Royal Caribbean saying our flight had been cancelled by British Airways. We would be flown out on May 26 instead.
I called Air2Sea, the Royal Caribbean travel team in the UK, to say we would miss the departure. Agents there spent three hours trying to find an alternative flight before admitting defeat (it was a bank holiday weekend) and suggested we apply for a refund of the holiday, which we did.
Now Royal Caribbean is refusing to refund the cost of the cruise itself. It says that because we refused to accept the “option to downline” (join the ship at a later port) we would get only taxes and gratuities back. It suggested we try claiming on our travel insurance. Can you help us get a full refund?
– Andrew Wynn
Dear Andrew,
Andrew told me that nobody at Air2Sea had mentioned anything about downlining and, anyway, the first port of call was in Santorini, two days later. Acting as a UK-based tour operator in this instance, Royal Caribbean is bound by the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 and liable for the proper performance of Andrew’s holiday contract.
While Royal Caribbean could have insisted he accept being “downlined” in order to salvage a portion of his holiday and avoid cancellation fees, its agents must facilitate this. They did not.
I contacted Royal Caribbean to remind them of their responsibilities under the regulations. These say that where the travel organiser “does not remedy the lack of conformity [in the arrangements listed in the holiday itinerary] within a reasonable period set by the traveller… the organiser must offer the traveller an appropriate price reduction”. In Andrew’s case this should be a total refund.
In response, Royal Caribbean said it accepted that its customer services team had made a mistake – a miscommunication between departments, I was told – and it has now agreed to refund the cost of the holiday.
It was fortunate that Andrew had booked the cruise as part of a package deal. If he had booked his own flights to join the ship, it would have been his responsibility to board on time. Travel insurance policies rarely provide more than token cover in these situations, because they are all too common during busy holiday periods. If you can, fly out a day earlier, because so much can go wrong at the last minute.
– Gill Charlton
Your travel problems solved
Gill takes on a different case each week – so please send your problems to her for consideration at asktheexperts@telegraph.co.uk. Please give your full name and, if your dispute is with a travel company, your address, telephone number and any booking reference. Gill can’t answer every question, but she will help where she can and all emails are acknowledged.