‘We were all packed, then they canceled our holiday’

James and his wife, Georgina, both employees worked long days through lockdown. By the end of July, they were more than ready for their vacation.

“We were literally all packed, kids had their backpacks,” James says. “Half of the goods were in the car.”

They were just about to turn on the four-hour drive to Alder Country Park in Norfolk when the phone rang.

The holiday she booked for Christmas was no longer available.

“I was shell-shocked,” James says. “We said, how can it not be available? We booked it last year.”

Their oldest daughter sits in a wheelchair, so she plans well in advance to make sure she finds somewhere that can fit her needs. But they were told that a maintenance problem in the lodge they had booked meant it was canceled.

‘Sorry child’

In a normal year, Hoseasons, the company through which it was booked, said it would have tried to find them an alternative, but with demand for UK holidays this year sky high, everywhere was fully booked.

“I got off the phone and said ‘sorry kids, no vacation,'” James says.The younger ones burst into tears.

They are not alone. Dozens of holidaymakers have contacted BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours program to say their holiday has been canceled in the short term. A Facebook page set up by dissatisfied Hoseasons customers has more than 500 members.

Rod Leaman booked a February stay at the Welcome Family Holiday Park in Devon via Hoseasons in February.

Less than forty weeks before he had to leave, he received an email saying that his reservation had been canceled because the dates he had chosen were no longer available.

When Mr Leaman called the holiday park himself, he was told that when it reopened in July, the owners had decided not to take bookings for less than a week.

“I would have happily paid for the extra three nights, but that option was not given to me,” he says. The booking was for his daughter Claire so she could leave for a vacation with her partner and her fifteen-year-old daughter Rayah.

Some disappointed holidaymakers received no explanation at all. Jill Turner, a teacher from Poole in Dorset, received a text message from Hoseasons, apologizing for the cancellation of the caravan she had booked for four nights at noon.

It took Jill an hour to get through the phone through the company, she says. Even then, she says she gave no reason why she could not honor her reservation. After the BBC reviewed Jill’s case, Hoseasons acknowledged that the caravan had been booked twice.

Booking numbers

“I’m really disappointed about the whole situation, that a company that we thought we could trust … that they could send an ‘oh we’ sorry ‘when they weren’t,” Jill says.

“What was really annoying was that no one really cared.”

Hoseasons is part of the holiday rental company, the Awaze group. The group also owns Cottages.com, many of whose customers reported similar cancellations at the last minute.

Hoseasons told the BBC that double bookings had occurred in a small number of cases due to the large volume of bookings and rebookings that took place when the lockdown was granted.

Double bookings

On 31 July, the day James and his family were told their holiday had been canceled, Henrik Kjellberg, CEO of Awaze UK, published an apologetic letter to customers.

“While we expected demand to rise again when UK travel restrictions were lifted, we are not planning for a tenfold increase, which is what we have experienced on some of our platforms in recent weeks,” he wrote.

“To put it simply – our systems did not scale to the level we needed them to and this unfortunately led to some duplicate bookings.”

The company says that just like the technical glitch, there have been a handful of other reasons for cancellations. Hoseasons does not have the properties for books and says some were unavailable after owners decided to withdraw them, albeit to use them themselves, due to concerns about Covid-19.

The company says late cancellations have affected less than 1% of bookings in July and August and those affected will be refunded immediately.

But customers who contacted the BBC and joined the Facebook page said it had been difficult to get Hoseasons to arrange a refund.

The company says it will add more capacity by hiring more staff for its contact center.

James and Georgina, who paid the full £ 1500 bill for their holiday in January, were told they would receive some compensation, but have not yet received it back with their money. They are still angry and feel they owe a statement.

Countrywide, which owns the Alder Country Park, says the maintenance problem at the lodge, caused by a hot tub, was only identified on the day James and Georgina arrived. Nationwide apologize for the late cancellation.

James says he still feels it when he’s in limbo, but in hindsight it’s less about the money than the disappointment.

“It’s been difficult for everyone – during what happened in lockdown. It’s been difficult for Hoseasons, I get that. What I do not get is just to let it fall on us with five hours of knowledge. How can they not know? “

You and you will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 12.15 pm