Package holidays: two sets of rights at once

On this page 18

1. What makes it a package
2. The flight claim does not go away
3. What the organiser owes on top
4. A worked comparison
5. Who to write to, and in what order
6. If the airline is the organiser
7. Where the organiser escapes liability
8. Cancelled before departure
9. Insurance sits on top, not instead
10. Why this is worth the effort
11. Keep the paperwork the organiser sends you
12. Complain while you are there, not only afterwards
13. Worth remembering
14. A short checklist
15. Dynamic packages and online travel agents
16. Who the organiser actually is
17. If the organiser has gone out of business
18. In short

Booking a flight and a hotel together, from one company, at one price, changes your legal position considerably — and almost always for the better. You keep every right you would have had on a flight-only booking, and you acquire a second set against the company that sold you the holiday.

What makes it a package

Broadly, a combination of at least two different travel services for the same trip, sold together at an inclusive price or advertised as a package. A flight plus accommodation is the classic case; flight plus car hire usually qualifies too.

Booking a flight from one company and a hotel from another, separately, is not a package, even if you did it on the same afternoon. Some "linked travel arrangements" — where one booking leads you to another through a targeted link — sit in a middle category with thinner protections.

If you received a single confirmation with a single price covering flight and hotel, you have a package and the stronger position.

The flight claim does not go away

This is the point organisers are least enthusiastic about. The statutory flight compensation is owed by the operating airline whether you bought the flight alone or as part of a holiday. Nothing about packaging it alters the airline's obligation.

So a four-hour late arrival on a package flight to Spain is still €400 per passenger from the airline. Claim it from the airline directly, not from the tour operator, and do not let the operator's own goodwill gesture be presented as having dealt with it. It has not; the operator is not the party that owes it.

One qualification: you cannot recover the same loss twice. If the operator has already compensated you specifically for the delay in cash, an airline may argue about double recovery. In practice operators compensate for lost holiday time rather than for the flight delay as such, and the two sit alongside each other.

What the organiser owes on top

Package travel rules place obligations on the organiser that have no equivalent in flight-only booking:

• Suitable alternative arrangements at no extra cost where a significant part of the package cannot be provided as agreed.
• A price reduction for any period during which services were not provided as described — including holiday nights you lost because you arrived two days late.
• Compensation for damages arising from the lack of conformity, subject to limited exceptions.
• Repatriation where return transport fails, and continued accommodation while you wait, within limits.
• Insolvency protection, which is why a package is safer than its components.

The price reduction is the valuable one in practice. A fourteen-night holiday where disruption cost you the first two nights is, on a simple reading, two fourteenths of the package price plus the value of anything else not delivered — transfers, a missed excursion, a half-board arrangement you were not there for.

A worked comparison

Suppose a family of four on a £3,200 fourteen-night package arrives two days late because the outbound was cancelled and rebooked.

Claim	Against	Roughly
Flight compensation, 4 × €400	The airline	€1,600
Price reduction for 2 of 14 nights	The organiser	~£457
Meals and hotel while stranded	Airline (duty of care)	Receipted
Missed transfer and excursion	The organiser	Receipted

The flight compensation is the largest single element and it is the one most frequently not claimed, because the customer's relationship is with the tour operator and the operator does not volunteer that the airline owes a separate statutory sum.

Who to write to, and in what order

1. The operating airline, for the statutory compensation and for any care expenses it failed to provide. This is a normal flight claim; our template applies unchanged.
2. The organiser, for the price reduction and anything the package did not deliver. State the nights lost, the services missed, and the proportion claimed.

Keep them separate and say in each letter that you are also claiming from the other party on a different basis. That pre-empts the "we understand you have already been compensated" response.

If the airline is the organiser

Several airlines sell their own holiday products, which means one company wears both hats. Your two sets of rights remain two sets of rights, but the same organisation answers both, and it will be tempted to settle with a single figure.

Insist on the breakdown: how much is the statutory flight compensation, and how much is the package price reduction. A single "£600 goodwill" payment against a claim worth €1,600 plus a price reduction is not a settlement, it is a discount on what is owed. If they will not break it down, do not accept it as full and final.

Where the organiser escapes liability

Package rules contain their own exceptions, and they are not identical to the airline's. An organiser is generally not liable for damages where the lack of conformity was caused by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances — so a hurricane may defeat the damages element.

But note what survives even then: the duty to provide alternative arrangements, the price reduction for services genuinely not delivered, and the repatriation obligation. A price reduction is not compensation for fault; it reflects that you paid for fourteen nights and received twelve. That logic does not depend on anyone being to blame.

Cancelled before departure

If the organiser cancels the package, you are entitled to a full refund, and to compensation unless the cancellation was caused by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances or by insufficient bookings notified within the specified period. If you cancel because of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances at the destination, you can generally terminate without a termination fee and get your money back — a materially better position than flight-only booking, where you would simply lose the fare.

Insurance sits on top, not instead

Travel insurance delay benefits are a separate contract and do not reduce what the airline or the organiser owes. Insurers may apply their own deductions for amounts recovered elsewhere, so read the policy, and claim the statutory entitlements first because they are not discretionary. How the two interact.

Why this is worth the effort

Package customers are the most comprehensively protected travellers there are and among the least likely to collect what they are owed, because having one company to deal with feels like having one claim to make. It is two claims, against two parties, under two bodies of law — and the one nobody mentions is usually the bigger of the two.

Keep the paperwork the organiser sends you

Package claims turn on what was promised, which means the booking confirmation and the brochure description matter more than in a flight-only claim. "Half board" and "airport transfers included" are the specifics against which a price reduction is calculated, and they are exactly the details nobody keeps.

Save the confirmation, the itinerary and any description of the accommodation and inclusions at the time of booking. If the holiday is later changed, save the revised version too, because the comparison between the two is frequently the claim.

Complain while you are there, not only afterwards

Package rules expect you to notify the organiser of any lack of conformity without undue delay, and failing to do so can reduce what you recover. This is a genuine difference from flight compensation, where nothing is lost by claiming months later.

So if the disruption has cost you nights, transfers or board, tell the representative or the organiser's helpline at the time and get a reference number. It costs nothing, it preserves the claim, and it produces a contemporaneous record of what went wrong — which is worth more than your recollection three months later.

The flight compensation element is unaffected by this. Claim that whenever you get round to it, within the relevant limitation period.

Worth remembering

Two claims, two parties, two bodies of law. The airline owes the statutory compensation; the organiser owes for the holiday you did not receive. Nobody in the chain has any incentive to tell you about the first one, which is why it is the one most often left unclaimed.

A short checklist

• Tell the organiser at the time, and get a reference.
• Keep the original confirmation showing what was promised.
• Claim the statutory compensation from the operating airline, separately.
• Claim the price reduction from the organiser, with the nights and services itemised.
• Keep receipts for anything you paid because the package did not deliver.
• Do not accept a single combined figure as full and final without a breakdown.

Dynamic packages and online travel agents

Many online agents let you assemble a flight and hotel in a single transaction, which frequently creates a package even though it feels like two separate bookings. If you paid one price, in one checkout, to one company, you probably have package protection — and with it the price reduction and insolvency cover that flight-only booking does not carry.

Conversely, booking a flight, then following a link to a hotel and paying separately, may create only a linked travel arrangement, which carries thinner protection. The distinction is not always obvious from the customer's side, so if disruption has cost you holiday nights, ask the seller directly whether what you bought was a package. The answer determines whether a price reduction is owed at all.

Who the organiser actually is

On a package the organiser is the company that combined and sold the services, which is not necessarily the brand on the hotel or the aircraft. Write to the organiser named on your confirmation. Claims addressed to the airline for package remedies, or to the hotel for anything at all, generally go nowhere.

If the organiser has gone out of business

Insolvency protection is the one package right with no flight-only equivalent, and it covers refunds and repatriation where the organiser fails. Claims go through whatever protection scheme the organiser was required to belong to, which the confirmation should name.

The flight compensation claim is unaffected by the organiser's insolvency, because it lies against the airline. That is worth knowing: even where the holiday company has collapsed, the operating carrier still owes the statutory sum for a disrupted flight.

In short

Package customers hold more protection than any other traveller and collect less of it than anyone. Claim the statutory compensation from the airline and the price reduction from the organiser, tell the organiser at the time, keep the confirmation, and refuse any combined figure that has not been broken down.

The organiser will tell you about the first claim. Nobody will tell you about the second, which is usually the larger of the two and is owed by a company you were never in direct contact with.

Claim both, separately, and insist that any settlement identifies which of the two it is paying. That single requirement is usually worth more than any amount of argument about the figures themselves.

Treat the airline and the organiser as two separate conversations from the outset. They do not talk to each other, they are not liable for each other, and a passenger who runs both in parallel recovers considerably more than one who treats the holiday company as a single point of contact for everything that went wrong.

It is also worth saying that none of this makes packages a worse way to book. The opposite: the protections are genuinely stronger than anything available to someone who assembled the same trip themselves. The problem is purely that having a single company to phone makes it feel as though there is a single claim to make, when in fact there are two, and the larger one belongs to a party you may never have spoken to.

Run both claims in parallel and you will recover what the package was actually worth.

Questions people ask about this