Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Wednesday the 8th of February.

And every so often I like to bring you the questions that people are asking.

And that's along with my colleague Charlotte Hindle, who has a whole wad of questions about the thorny issue of travel vouchers versus actual cash.

So, Charlotte, hello, what are your top questions, please?

Yes, okay, so we've got lots and lots of people who are getting in contact

because they've either got old vouchers or they're being asked about vouchers,

so, you know, now and in the future.

So just first of all, I just wondered if you could just let us know what is the deal with

vouchers.

You know, is it just something that happened with COVID?

Is it something that happens now?

And then I've got a whole list of questions after that.

Okay, so vouchers have long been part of commerce pretty much everywhere.

They're alternatively known as credit notes or even IOUs, but the whole idea is that your money stays in the merchant's tin, whether that's an airline, a hotel, train operator or whatever.

You have something which you can spend, but only with them. So

works to their advantage rather than yours. So yes, and that I guess is what we're finding. So a lot of

people were offered vouchers, you know, due to COVID, they couldn't fly or something happened,

which was COVID-related. But the odd thing, I suppose, is that they weren't actually offered cash.

And so lots of people didn't want a voucher.

They wanted cash.

So what's the, what happens in that case?

Okay, it's very complicated.

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