Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

Once again, I'm joined by my excellent colleague Charlotte Hindle to tackle a subject that

she is seeing lots of questions about, and this is below part accommodation.

So what does that mean exactly?

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people who

obviously you put a lot of work into thinking about where you're going to stay when you go abroad

and you look at the online pictures or you look at the pictures and the brochures and you read all

about how many rooms your villa might have or what the decor is like or is it you're going to have a balcony or you know in your head you you build this up but then actually when you get to where you're staying things can be really quite different and and I'm just wondering what it is that you can do about that.

So maybe if we look at facilities, you know, you're promised X and then suddenly you arrive and you find that you don't have that at all.

Well, it all depends on what you don't have. Now, the best case scenario, as always, is if you booked a proper package holiday, then the package travel regulations, my favourite piece of legislation, maybe I should get out more, stipulate that effectively you've got to get what you were promised. And if that isn't't the case then the travel company has to do something about it

either finding you a replacement which is suitable

or perhaps giving you some money back

for failing to meet the requirements

what about when and this does happen again quite a lot the requirements?

What about when, and this does happen again quite a lot, you turn up and the place is as advertised, but then you find that you've got building work.

You've either got a load of building work that's actually in, you know, in the hotel

or wherever it is that you are, or you've got building work which is just across the road,

but the whole place is noisy and dusty,

and again, you know, it's not what you were expecting.

Well, it all depends again how you booked it.

If you booked a package holiday,

then you should have been told that there was going to be building work,

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