First Choice ruling sets dangerous precedent – TravelMole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

The recent case of First Choice being fined for failing to deliver on promises given in one of its brochures is a worrying development for the travel industry.

The Corns family of three paid a total of £902 for a two-week package in Bulgaria in May 2004. Two weeks before departure, and 12 months after they made the booking, First Choice rang the Corns to tell them renovation work was being carried out at the hotel and offered them a stay at the Elenite Holiday Village as an alternative. The family accepted and were given £30 each compensation for their trouble.

On their return, the family complained that the facilities did not match those offered originally in the brochure and complained to trading standards officers. Trading standards took the case up and First Choice was fined £1,000. The family were also paid an additional £270 in compensation by the tour operator.

Fair enough, you might think. But the devil is in the detail and when you examine that detail, the ruling does, as the tour operator said, seem extremely harsh.

The family were promised four restaurants, tennis courts and mountain biking facilities. As it was May, the beginning of the season, only two restaurants were open, although food from all four eateries was available in the two that were open. The tennis courts were off-site and, admittedly, the mountain bikes were not available.

A bit annoying, perhaps, but is it really a fining offence?

First Choice admitted it should have told the family that their new property did not offer all the facilities, although there is a warning in the brochure. It appears that if you fail to warn holidaymakers of any changes then you can be liable to prosecution (and you may even be liable if you do tell customers).

The problem with this ruling is that it makes no distinction between a tour operator making a small error through a breakdown in communication and wilfully misleading the customer.

The days of companies saying a hotel is located next to a beach when it is actually sitting on a building site three miles from the ocean have long gone. Most operators, particularly the big ones, have massively cleaned up their act.

But brochures often have hundreds of hotels in them, facilities can be changed on a whim and it is almost impossible for an operator to keep track of them all.

Ironically, First Choice has a pretty good checking system that prompts agents to tell clients if some facilities are not available at the time of booking. But even it admits that subsequent changes can be hard to track. You can bet your life that most hoteliers are not going to ring a tour operator and tell them they’ve shut a restaurant or the snooker table has broken.

Reps generally should notice these things but even they can’t see everything and, anyway, lots of companies are cutting back on reps to reduce their costs.

Trading standards have got the bit between their teeth on this because they are powerless to act against real villains – such as internet cowboys who are selling holidays without protection – and established tour operators make a soft target.

We can expect more court action after this landmark case and, although the Corns believe they had a genuine grievance, we will see some blatant opportunism from other holidaymakers.

As one tour operator told me: “We’ll have a children’s slide break in a hotel in resort and then, of course, people will come back from holiday and say they only went away because they wanted to use the slide.”

Surely in these cases there should be some common sense, particularly when the tour operators are prepared to pay some compensation, and courts should be dealing with more important matters.

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