When it comes to making a compensation claim for an injury that you sustained on holiday in another country, we will need quite a lot of information, such as:

• What happened.
• Where it happened.
• Extent of the injuries.
• Level of recovery.

We also ask for documents such as:

• Booking documents.
• Documents given to you at the resort. For example:
  • Copy of the accident book
  • Medical reports
  • X-rays etc.

These documents will help guide us to the correct defendant and to the correct regulations to be used to establish negligence against a hotel – either via a tour operator or directly against the hotel.

If you book a holiday where flights, hotel and transfers are all booked at the same time, you would probably assume that you have booked a package holiday.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case.  Even if the booking documents show that the holiday is booked under ATOL (Air Travel Organiser’s Licence), it is possible that the holiday is not a package holiday.

If you book your holiday with one of the main tour operators, such as TUI, and the booking is made either via the tour operator’s website or in their store, your holiday will be classed as a package holiday as the holiday will have been sold to you as one package and cannot be split into different sections.

The ATOL certificate given to you by the tour operator will also state “your holiday has been booked as a package” which means that the Package Travel Regulations 2018 will apply in the event of any issue occurring while you are on holiday, such as:

• You lose something in the resort.
• You or a member of your family becomes ill or is injured and has to make a claim.

If any of these things happens to you and you have booked a package holiday, any claim will be made against the tour operator as it has ultimate responsibility for:

• the actions of hotel staff
• incidents that occur on site
• remedies taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again the in future

If you book a holiday on-line or via a tour operator where different elements of the holiday are booked separately, via separate providers, you will not have the same protection.

For example, if you book a holiday via an online operator and you receive an ATOL certificate that says something along the lines of, “your flight has been provided through cheapflights.co.uk, your hotel has been provided through hotels.com and your transfers have been provided by getmethere.com.” this will not be a package as each element of the holiday is under the control of a different company. If this is the case, whilst you won’t be covered by the same package holiday protection, you may still be able to claim compensation and we can help you.

Your claim would be brought directly against the hotel in the country you were visiting and that country’s limitation period (time for bringing a claim) and local standards would apply. It is therefore important that we have a copy of your booking documents, so we know how to proceed with any claim.

So, if you have an accident whilst on holiday, whether your holiday was covered by package holiday regulations or not, contact our personal injury experts now and we will invite you to a free of charge meeting in which we can advise on the merits of your claim. You can find out more about making a personal injury claim on our web pages.

Author: Debbie Martin, personal injury specialist.