Travel Advice: What to do if you have a Summer Holiday booked for 2020

Millions of people will be feeling uncertain about their 2020 summer holidays right now. If you are one of them, I hope this blog post can give you some guidance and helpful advice about what to do next. I reached out to Rachel O’Rilley, Head of Communications at Kuoni and she has kindly shared tips and advice to include in this blog post. All advice featured echoes official guidance from the FCO (Foreign Commonwealth Office).

If you’re booked to travel in the next 4 weeks

Rachel says ‘As it stands right now, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) is advising against all foreign travel until further notice. So if you are due to travel over the next four weeks, it’s certainly safe to assume your trip won’t be happening. It should be possible for you to get a refund. Contact your travel provider directly or check their website for up-to-date information.

Kuoni customers booked to travel in the next four weeks (on a rolling basis) can change their dates of travel to next year or get a credit voucher. If those options don’t work for you, then we will do a full refund, which legally all travel companies should be doing. For anyone who does stay with us and moves their dates of travel, then we really appreciate that and thank people for staying with us’. 

If you’re booked to travel in Summer (June / July / August)

Rachel says ‘If you are travelling later (outside of the rolling four weeks for example) I’d suggest that right now you just sit tight. Nobody knows right now how long the restrictions are going to be in place.

At Kuoni we need to monitor the advice carefully and will amend our policy accordingly. If you are due to travel in July and just don’t fancy going any more, it’s unlikely right now that you’ll get your money back although you may be able to move your dates and amend the trip’

Rachel’s Top Tips about Summer 2020 Bookings

• Tour operators phone lines will be very busy during this time. Make their website your first port of call as you may be able to get some or all of your questions answered online without having to wait in a long telephone queue. 
• Remember that travel companies have had to make big changes to their own businesses too and will have had to close their high street shops. Instead, employees are staying safe and working from home. 
• It’s totally normal if you feel you want to talk to a real person on the phone, the correct contact telephone number may have changed to the one that is on your original booking. Check your tour operator website for an up-to-date phone line. 
• Many travel companies have also set up dedicated email addresses for enquiries regarding new dates and cancellations. Kuoni are advising customers who want to amend their booking dates to email. 
• If you aren’t having any luck getting in touch with your travel company, then it may be worth following them on twitter and facebook as they may offer advice on those channels and have someone answering messages

For the latest UK government travel advice, visit gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice

Thank you to Rachel O’Reilly and luxury worldwide travel company Kuoni for contributing to this blog post.

---

Whilst refunds may be available, rescheduling or taking a credit note from your tour operator will help to keep them in business and will support the wider travel industry #RebookDontCancel

We have flights booked to Spain in September, so taking Rachel’s advice, we are just going to sit tight and see what happens with the guidance.

What is your current situation right now? Do you have any summer travel booked? If you found this post helpful, please leave a comment in the box below. Jess x

Cover photo credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash