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Agents demand to know what’s going on at villa specialist
Travel agents have taken to Facebook to voice concerns about ABTA member Villa Parade after the firm allegedly cancelled bookings for villas in Europe, leaving customers who had booked flights independently without accommodation.
Several agents said they’d been unable to contact the villa specialist for weeks and this afternoon its website was unavailable.
A message at the firm’s website address said the site would be down for approximately 30 minutes and suggested people called or emailed instead. The site was still down this evening and agents said their calls hadn’t been answered.
Steven McLean from Barrhead Travel wrote that the firm had cancelled his client’s booking for May 17 and he’d been unable to get a response to his calls and emails. He wrote on the Facebook site Travel Gossip: "We have flights booked independently, none of the numbers on the website are answering, nobody is emailling me back and we have been at them since 9am today."
Other members of the Facebook group said they’d had similar problems.
Debbie Sinfield at Saddleworth Travel Centre said she had seven booked to travel with Villa Parade on May 26 and she had been trying to contact the company since April 25.
The company is locked in a legal wrangle with holiday rentals firm Travelopo, based in Somerset, which emailed Villa Parade customers last month to say their bookings for villas in Northern Majorca were no longer valid.
Villa Parade has since been granted a High Court injunction against Travelopo, ordering the company to retract the statement that the bookings were "void".
A statement on Travelopo’s website says clients booked in one of more than 120 villas and apartments via Villa Parade need to confirm whether their bookings are valid. It said some of the accommodation may be rebooked through Travelopo, "depending on whether they remain on the market and are available".
It added: "An earlier statement by Travelopo that bookings with Villa Parade are "void" is incorrect. Please contact Villa Parade to confirm the status of your existing booking."
The list of affected properties can be found at www.travelopo.com/statement.
Yorkshire-based Villa Parade is a member of ABTA and ATOL and has 550 rentals in the Mediterranean and Orlando.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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