You may have seen an article in the Irish Independent of August 25th entitled “Thousands face holiday disarray after hotel website goes bust”. This was in reference to the hotel booking website, Clever-Hotels.com which recently went bust leaving thousands of would-be holiday makers without accommodation they had fully paid for.
According to the article “Guests already staying in rooms booked through Clever-Hotels.com, and those about to check-in, are being asked to pay again”.
Many of these customers would have made their inquiries through a website such as Trivago which would have then passed them on to any number of websites dotted all over the world offering cheap hotel accommodation but with very little consumer protection.
This case highlights one of the risks of booking hotel accommodation through the likes of Trivago as opposed to booking a holiday package through a bonded travel agent.
When you book a package holiday (ie, a holiday consisting of consisting of at least flights and accommodation) with a bonded travel agent (such as ClickandGo.com) you are protected from the impact of such unfortunate events. By booking your flights and accommodation separately, no such protection is offered. You’ll find more information about the protection offered by bonded travel agents on the Citizens Information website.
The website advises “Where you are booking a package holiday over the internet, you should check whether Irish consumer legislation covering package holidays applies to it.”
In the case of ClickandGo, it does. For package holidays booked with us from the Republic of Ireland we are covered by the Commission for Aviation Regulation Licence No. TA 700 and for holidays booked from Belfast we are covered under the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority’s ATOL 9373.
So in short, if you’re booking your sun holiday or city break with ClickandGo, you can rest assured that you’re in safe hands, and if nothing else, at least you got to look at a picture of Daniel Craig in his shorts!
