How to protect yourself from booking a holiday from hell

Picture the scene; you are lying on the beach with the sunshine beating down on your body, with a cocktail in your hand and the smell of the ocean and sound of the waves lapping on the shore. We all deserve a holiday and in the current climate of financial status quo, we all deserve a reasonably priced holiday.

This is where the internet becomes a useful and powerful tool. Gone are the days when you would spend hours staring at your local travel agent looking to book your next trip. Now days we can book our adventurous, exciting holiday at our leisure from the comfort of our home or work place. But there are dangers and unless you are fully prepared you may find yourself being ‘burnt’ when it comes to booking that dream holiday in the sun, online.

JBi in the spot light

Earlier this year JBi digital agency was approached by the BBC One programme ‘Your Money Their Tricks’ who were running a programme aimed at informing us about how we can be conned out of money through various ‘tricks’. This particular episode was about the recent expose of the online travel agents.With the increasing personal use of the Internet for shopping and entertainment, more and more people are turning on their PC’s to see whether they can beat the ‘high street’ agent with their costs. You find a deal, an all inclusive bargain, and at the click of a button you have booked it and paid for it. It is only later when you discover that you had only paid for part of the holiday, despite the online site leading you to believe otherwise.

JBi were asked to build a website in less than 24hours and then for director David Gelb to star next to Sian Williams to prove just how easy it was for one to set up a travel agent website online and to highlight what consumers should look for when booking a holiday online.

So how do they do it?

“It is easy for companies to offer travel packages online – all they need is a website and some kind of budget for Google ad words which will help them get to the top of the Google search engine in no time. All of a sudden from nowhere a new website can be open for business and start selling these holidays” – David Gelb

They take your hard earned money and then leave you high and dry either at the airport with all your bags packed and no flight booked or you take your flight and when you arrive in the foreign country and get to your hotel and there is no booking and the hotel is full and cannot accommodate you. It’s a scam that unfortunately a lot of people have fallen victim to both here in the UK and in the rest of the world.

So what now? What do these poor people do? They cannot turn back they are all ready and looking forward to their holiday in the sun by the beach and so with no choice they have to find another hotel to accommodate them and pay more money out. But what about those poor people who just cannot afford another hotel? What happens to them? They unfortunately are left with no choice but to pay or go home with no holiday and 100’s of pounds out of pocket.

I realise that the online agencies are trying to find you a cheap last minute holiday abroad and they are trying to beat each other’s prices and entice you in with their cheap holiday packages but how do you find out which sites are for real and which are the fraudulent ones? The fact that the fraudulent ones are stealing from the poor like “Robin Hood”.

So how do we protect ourselves from being burnt by these so called holiday sites?

JBi have put together a holiday packing list of what to look for when booking online.

• Do your research! Google the company name. Do they have a good reputation?
• Take a good look at the website page. A legitimate company is unlikely to have a webpage littered with pop up adverts or irrelevant messaging.
• Read the small print and for some of these sites it might be really, really,really,really,really small.
• Think before ticking ‘Do you agree to the terms and conditions’ have you actually read them? You will find that the small print will provide you with the detail but it may be hidden amongst lengthy jargon.

To conclude “the devil is in the detail’ and it is worth keeping this in mind to avoid the holiday from hell.