A north-east couple found themselves living every tourist’s “worst nightmare” after the company organising their dream trip to Florida filed for bankruptcy.
Mike and Joyce Buchan, of Aberdeen, paid almost £1,800 in January to secure a room at the Regal Sun Resort, in Orlando, for their summer holiday.
They are now facing a battle to get their money back after the online company that organised the accommodation – 1800Hotels.com – hit financial problems. The firm said it had filed for bankruptcy under US law to protect its customers, but the Buchans have been left with no refund and no hotel room.
Mr Buchan, of South Anderson Drive, said: “We happened to browse the company’s site on Monday night, only to find a message saying they had filed for bankruptcy.
“Despite their assurances that they had filed for bankruptcy to protect their customers, we phoned our hotels, only to be advised that, despite having paid £1,800 in full, our bookings had been cancelled because the hotel had received no payments.
“We have already received our vouchers so could have travelled to Florida totally unaware of the situation and ended up with no room to stay in. I am now wondering how many people will be caught out with this.”
The company has filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code “to protect customer hotel bookings”.
The firm’s bosses apologised on their website last night to any customers who had experienced a cancellation and said were “working diligently” to protect their customers and employees.
“We will continue to pursue all legal alternatives to reduce any negative impact on our customers’ travel plans,” they said.
Earlier this month, the holiday plans of tens of thousands of people were thrown into chaos by the collapse of Goldtrail travel.
The company, which specialised in low-cost UK-based holidays to Greece and Turkey, has gone into administration, leaving about 16,000 people stuck abroad.
In September 2008, about 100,000 Britons were left stranded by the collapse of the XL Leisure Group. In December last year, about 5,000 were left stranded after Flyglobespan – Scotland’s biggest airline – went broke.
Knowing the market was fragile, Mr Buchan, who works with M&H Logistics in Aberdeen, made sure he was protected against such an event. “Some of the guys I work with got hit when Flyglobespan went down, so I booked with my credit card to make sure I was covered,” the 54-year-old said.
“Hopefully I should be able to get my money back through the credit card company. Luckily, we have managed to get a room at the same hotel, through British Airways, who we were flying with anyway, but nevertheless this is every traveller’s worst nightmare.”