Open Holidays in Administration

[pollensa]

Open Holidays Ltd - ATOL 5542
Information for passengers


Open Holidays Ltd - ATOL 5542
If you have an inclusive air holiday booked with Open Holidays Ltd you should make a claim on the ATOL bond.

If you are already on an Open Holidays inclusive air package, arrangements will be made for you to complete your holiday and travel home as planned.

Accommodation Only Bookings
If you have booked accommodation only with Open Holidays these arrangements are NOT ATOL protected. You should contact the company's administrator.

World Hopper Ltd trading as Flight Club
This company is a travel agent and did not hold an ATOL. If you have made a flight booking you should either contact the flight operator shown on your holiday documents or ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) on 020 7637 2444.

 

[RingSpin]

Thanks for the info.
We've travelled with Open Holidays for a number of years with no problems right back to when it was Club Pollensa Holidays, and were at Pollensa in June in a Marfran apartment.

We were due to travel to the Algarve tomorrow morning - first time to Portugal.
The administrator phoned at 7pm tonight right in the middle of our packing to tell us that our villa wasn't available to us.
Fortunately it was only accommodation and car hire booked through Open so we can still go and have managed to arrange an alternative villa online - the wonders of the internet

Looks like we'll have a battle on our hands when we return to get some money back on the villa.

 

[cheniesbucks]

God that sounds awful! We've been to PP quite a few tmes with Open Holidays AND when it was Club Pollensa and they were always good. We used to sort our own flghts out though as what they had to offer was so expensive. Last year we received 4 brochures from them all in the same envelope with the promise of a massive discount if we gave the brochures away and got a friend to book with them! Guessed then that something was wrong. (It was around the time that we were trying to trace a lady who'd babysat for us when we were in a villa from Open Holidays acouple of yrs back.. her hubbie Martin was one of the reps out there at the time) Got a rather snotty email from Open Holidays saying that Martin and his wife had left the company "under a cloud" and we wondered what had happened there too.

Oh Dear, enjoy Portugal in your replacement villa and be ready to hve your boxing gloves on when you return. Good luck.

 

[Joanne]

Rang them up yesterday as have paid a deposit through Marfran for an apartment next August, was told that parts of the company have been bought by Sky Bargains, asked if they would still be handling Pine Walk Apartments and the reply was most probably and that people were on the phone hammering out contracts with service providers and the owners so hopefully all will be ok for us, we thought Open were having a bit of tough time when we were out in August.

 

[mallorcaboy]

Re Open Holidays

I spoke to someone on Saturday who works for Open Holidays. They said that only 20% of the people booked to arrive that day had been informed of the problem. The other 80% were going to arrive to find they had no accomodation unless they paid again!!

 

[PollensaVirgin]

Re: Re Open Holidays

My inlaws have booked with 'marfan' who use open holidays commencing 30th September. They still haven't heard officially that they no longer have an apartment to go to. Luckily I saw your announcement on here so have managed to arrange an alternative apartment for them. We have written to the administrators but are not holding out any hope that they will get their money back.

 

[pollensa]

Re: Re Open Holidays

Regards getting money refunded, I've since read on another forum that if you have paid at least £100 by Credit Card for something that you don't 'receive' you can claim it back from your Credit Card company (although as the travel company is acting as 'agent' it is not completely clear). So for anyone who has booked with Open (or Dedicated Holidays) try this and for anyone who is about to book with a company it's worth using your Credit Card for at least part of the payment.

There's a useful discussion here from the financial ombudsman
www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/31/creditcards-31.htm

& another explanation here:
www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/guides_to/credit_liability.shtml#section_75_consumer_credit_act

 

[lizglass1]

Re: Re Open Holidays

Hi,
We regularly go to Pollensa with Open Holidays. We are due to leave on Wed 20th Sept 2006 and also have booked and paid for 19th Sept 2007. We were offered 25% discount to pay the second one before 31st July, so paid up early.
I've spent the morning sorting the whole mess out.

For the first holiday, I've paid for the same accomodation again, same price, (but apparantly some are more expensive to rebook). As i paid for this one on a credit card, apparantly I can reclaim my first payment through the credit card.

Next years I paid with a maestro card ,and basically with that , Im stuffed. Money down drain. I will probably be able to rebook and pay again.

I have holiday insurance with the RBS but they don't want to hear about it.

They told me this morning that the office in Pollensa is still operating and all the arrangements will be the same as usual.

 

[smg]

Re: Re Open Holidays

ALWAYS pay by credit card - you then have a comeback against the card issuer

 

[Joanne]

Re: Re Open Holidays

Yes I am taking that sound advice from now on

 

[hawkyD]

I was led to believe by Open Holidays' staff and brochure that I was booking flights and accommodation with them and therefore would be covered by their ATOL. I did not realise the significance when they put me through to their sister company World Hoppers (a wholly owned subsidiary) to pay for my flights.
I contacted the CAA and they told me Open Holidays had a Small Business ATOL, which only allows them to arrange 500 holidays/flights each year! :eek
It seems that Open Holidays were trumpeting the protection offered by their ATOL in their brochure but split contracting most of the holidays they organise, putting them outside the protection of their ATOL.
Anybody else caught out in this way? I wonder how many people will successfully claim on Open Holidays' ATOL. I will be asking the CAA this question in a couple of months.

 

[bee66]

have just been on their website. It states that skybargains.co.uk trading as www.villasabroad.com has acquired the " assets " of open holidays and that all villas/apartments previously shown can be found at this site. However when I tried to get info re csv it said " no accomodation available" which is a shame as the open holidays villas were very nice

 

[pollensa]

As you say the business of Open Holidays has now been purchased by Skybargains and they are trading as 'Villas Abroad'. As I understand it they are offering the same accommodation as before although they are currently organising the contracts on the Villas as happens every year around this time.

See www.puertopollensa.com/TravelCompanies.html#villasabroad