Taking pictures of ‘holidays from hell’ puts individuals in good stead when considering a holiday claim
It is always a disappointment when a holiday goes wrong, especially if you have put a lot of effort into planning and saving for the occasion. However, you should always remember how to make a strong holiday claim if you are put in this situation.
A key point to made is that photographic evidence can be a vital part of making a successful holiday claim. If you are able to take a photograph of something which has made your holiday impossible to enjoy, then it is likely that your claim will be easy to process and that you will receive the full amount of money that you have asked for.
A holiday disaster is always a huge disappointment, no matter what the situation. Whether a holiday maker ends up at the wrong hotel, finds that their accommodation has been highly misrepresented in their home country or is injured on holiday, there should always be scope for a holiday claim of some type. The following article documents two separate case studies and people, both of whom made a holiday claim for what they both described as a ‘disastrous holiday experience’. The first case study explains how Laura made a holiday claim for her highly disappointing family visit to a hotel in Tunisia, which turned out to be an unfinished building site when her family arrived. The second case study documents how Aleem also made a successful holiday claim for a serious shoulder injury sustained whilst on holiday in Cos. A main point which should be taken from both of the articles is how the photographs taken of each experience played a significant part in securing a successful holiday claim.
Laura booked her family’s holiday to Tunisia in March 2009 for the following August. The online images on the booking agent’s website which Laura viewed of the hotel resort looked idyllic and brand new. This was not actually the case: when Laura and her family arrived at the hotel in Tunisia, they found that most of the hotel was an unfinished building site and that their own room had not yet had adequate toilet and bathroom facilities installed. After Laura had got over the initial shock of arriving at this mess, she rang the booking agent she had used. Laura reported that the booking agents were ‘useless’ on the telephone and that she and her family had no choice but to stay in the hotel until their booked flight home (in two weeks’ time), as they could not afford to pay for extra flights. The stay proved to be disastrous from beginning to end. The family were forced to use what Laura described as ‘disgusting’ toilet facilities, which Laura felt convinced gave her family a nasty stomach bug. The resort itself only had a very sparse pool area and a very small bar which was hardly ever manned. The internet booking site had claimed that the hotel was ‘a short walk from the beach’. Again, this statement fell short of the truth, as the Laura’s family were forced to take an uncomfortable bus journey if they wanted to reach the beach. To add insult to injury, the family then had to pay in order to get onto the beach itself for the day, as it was owned by another hotel complex.
Laura, although understandably extremely angry about the situation she found herself in on holiday, took the initiative to take photographs of the hotel resort she and her family were forced to stay in. She got a number of very clear shots of the unfinished reception, pool area and rooms. She also managed to get some telling photographs of the below par toilet facilities in their hotel room. Although Laura at this time was not completely sure of how to go about making a holiday claim, she knew that having photographic proof of the unpleasant two weeks may give her argument some extra weight.
On returning home, Laura telephoned the booking agents a second time. They were, for a second time, very unresponsive, unhelpful and dismissive of Laura’s problem. This was the final straw that made Laura seek legal advice. It was with her hotel photographs that she was able to document each inexcusable failing of her holiday. Solicitors were able to use these photographs directly in order to compose a strong case for Laura’s holiday claim. Without the photographs, Laura claims, she is not sure that making a successful claim would have been so easy.
It was also the photographs that Aleem took on holiday which proved his holiday claim to be a strong one. When on holiday in Cos, Aleem was staying in an apartment complex located very near the sea. The apartments were furnished, with full kitchen facilities, a living area and a bathroom. On Aleem’s second morning in the apartment, he sustained a serious shoulder injury when the considerably heavy shower head fell off away from the wall and onto Aleem’s shoulder. The plaster had obviously not been fitted properly around the supporting structure of the shower head. After Aleem had got his injury seen to by medical professionals, he went straight back to his apartment in order to take photographs of the area around where the shower head had fallen from and also of the shoulder injury itself. When Aleem returned to the UK, he found that his photographs proved that the shower head had not been fitted to the shower wall properly. Without this proof, his holiday claim would not have been successful.