With flights being cancelled across the UK, many holidaymakers are choosing to stay at home or rethink their travel plans. For timeshare owners, it’s rarely that simple.
Airport chaos continues to disrupt travel
May and June 2022 were a bleak period for UK travellers, with a reported 159 flights cancelled in just one weekend at Gatwick Airport alone.
EasyJet was among the worst affected, cancelling 80 scheduled flights on a single Sunday.
It was widely expected that services wouldn’t return to normal quickly, with a backlog of thousands of passengers stranded abroad and large volumes of baggage piling up at UK airports.
Anyone who has seen the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles will have an idea of what many people were dealing with. Only this time, it wasn’t one person trying to get home — it was thousands, including:
- A couple who hired a car in Berlin and drove 850 miles back to Staffordshire.
- Two teachers who spent 12 hours travelling on three buses to get home from Croatia.
As often happens, no one is keen to accept responsibility: the government blamed the airline industry, and the airline industry blamed the government.
With uncertainty continuing into the summer, many travellers began looking at alternative options.
Changing holiday plans because of flight cancellations
More people started reconsidering overseas travel because of the risk of last-minute flight cancellations — and the knock-on effect this can have on everything else that’s booked and planned.
A holiday involves far more than catching a flight. It often means organising time off work, arranging pet care, sorting car hire and making other commitments that are hard to unwind at short notice.
For some, a staycation can be an attractive alternative, whether that’s a British campsite, hotel break or a canal boat holiday.
If someone has booked a standard holiday, they can often cancel and receive a full refund, so changing plans may not be too painful.
Even if they’ve booked accommodation at a timeshare resort via a site such as Booking.com (many of which are now open to non-members), they may still be able to recover some of their money.
Why UK airport disruption hits timeshare owners harder
However, while many people can change course, the CEO of European Consumer Claims, Andrew Cooper, says timeshare owners are most likely to lose out.
"As we saw *during the pandemic*, timeshare resorts will charge annual fees in full whether the clients are able to use their holidays or not."
He adds that this "once ground-breaking holiday system is too inflexible for the challenges of the modern traveller."
Timeshare owners often need to plan years in advance to secure accommodation — which can clash with how people travel today. Many holidaymakers want the flexibility to decide week by week where to go and when, especially when flight cancellations and airport disruption can happen with little warning.
Mr Cooper points to several problems timeshare owners face. "Timeshare resorts tell prospective clients that they can exchange to different times and locations, but in reality, those systems don't work. There are expensive annual fees to be a member of an exchange system, and there are even more costs to actually make an exchange or bank a week. You can't bank a week at the last minute (for example if EasyJet cancels your flight when you reach the airport.)
And because resorts are more cash strapped than ever, they may be less willing to be flexible.
"Unlike regular hotels, they can't afford to refund the money that members must pay every year in order to use their accommodation. This has resulted in many members paying for holidays they couldn't take in both 2020 and 2021."
The risk is that the same pattern repeats in 2022 — with some members paying for three years of holidays they haven’t been able to use.
"The timeshare industry's stance is that this is an unusual set of events, and they are not to blame. But that is really the point. The world is an uncertain place, and when unforeseen events mean a holiday is cancelled, timeshare just isn't flexible enough to accommodate people's needs. The resort is guaranteed their money but the customer is not guaranteed what they paid for."
Do you own a timeshare and want to explore your options for leaving the membership? Contact our friendly team today at the Timeshare Advice Centre for a no-obligation assessment.
