New Member

Joined: January 31st, 2010, 10:29 am
Posts: 1
Gender: Male hello, we have just returned from el gouna and feel our holiday has been ruined by thomson. the resort itself and hotel is not the problem,really nice on both counts. the cause is we booked an overnight trip to cairo through the thomson website,around 2 weeks before departure and this was to be the highlight of our holiday. thomson must book their excursions through holidayline, so i emailed them to find out which hotel they used on the overnight cairo trip as i was thinking of booking an additional trip whilst in cairo. when they replied this was their response:

my email
i have a holiday booked with thomson to el gouna on 22/01/10 and am planning to book the overnight to cairo with yourselves.couldyou please inform me as to what hotel is included as i would like to book an extra independant trip and it would give me a better indication of distance/timescale etc.look forward to your reply thankyou

holidayline response
Dear Mark,

Thank you for your recent email to the Thomson Holidayline.

I have spoken with resort with regards your query and they have advised that the overnight rarely operates unfortunately. The reason being that they need a minimum of six people which is very rarely reached. So if you book an extra trip we may have to cancel your tour.

Apologies for the disappointing answer

Kind Regards,
Name removed Holidayline

on receiving this reply my partner rang holidayline to see what was going on,and was told i dont know why such an email has been sent, and really dont worry as i only deal with excursions and have never known this trip to be cancelled yet. my partner asked about the minimum of 6 people, and was told yet again dont worry most people book in resort, and also they have already taken 3 web bookings for the same trip. this was such a relief to hear and we were really excited to be going.

once in resort we went to the rep to confirm the pick up times ( 02:15 on the e ticket ) and he said he would find this out for us. the following day at 13:00 (13 hours before the trip ) we were told sorry its been cancelled due to lack of numbers and that we would only be refunded back home as this was where we booked. i have a list of trips offered by thomson in resort and the one we booked is not on it. makes you wonder why there is a lack of numbers.

the annoying thing to me is being told to not worry by holidayline, as if they had been more honest i would have had the oppertunity to take more money in case this happened. meaning i could have booked in resort with another operator if this had been the case. i feel cheated.

i have spoken to thomson since returning home and they say i will get the £366 we paid, but is this good enough for ruining our holiday

sorry for going on