Luxury Holidays Direct - Croydon

showbizsimon

I am writing a rare 1 star review to convey the bad experience I had with Luxury Holidays Direct (Sunset Holidays).

In December 2012: I called Luxury Holidays Direct, to use their services as “experts”, to book a bespoke holiday.

My remit to Luxury Holidays Direct was to source myself and my partner a luxury summer holiday to a sunny destination in a five star resort in January 2013 within my budget of up to £1500.

Luxury Holidays Direct, the expert, suggested Hue to me as a place which would be suitable for a luxury holiday with sunny weather in January. It was not.

It rained constantly and was clearly winter season. The hotel was deserted. There were less than 10 couples in the entire resort (which contains 78 rooms) and it resembled a ghost town. All staff were wrapped in body-warmers and it was winter coat weather. The manager Tony informed us that it was his first season in at the hotel and therefore he could not comment on the weather with any knowledge, but he was totally sympathetic without situation and did what he could to make us feel better. In these chats, Tony did intimate to us that a German couple had stayed in the hotel for 4 weeks and he could “count the sunny days on one hand”.

There was little going on in the town of Hue given the season and it was clear that no other travel operators were sending tourists here at this time of year. The local area was deserted which limited our sightseeing and entertainment options.

Knowing, at that point, first hand that the weather was unlikely to improve as in fact this was rainy winter season, I informed Luxury Holidays Direct of the situation by e-mail.

I then requested to Luxury Holidays Direct that I would like to return to Saigon in order to make good the holiday. Luxury Holidays Direct offered to change my itinerary for a small fortune, £670.

Given the time difference, each e-mail exchange reached me a day after and instead of providing details for the changed itinerary I had requested by email, Luxury Holidays Direct incorrectly quoted one day later, which would have resulted in an even longer stay at the rainy winter resort from which we were so eager to get away. This was frustrating and illustrated their incompetence.

I felt I had little choice but to take upon the amendments myself. So I changed the flights, transfers and organised a new 5 star hotel in Saigon. Changing the flights involved travelling to Vietnam Airlines office, wasting time and further spoiling our holiday. It was a big inconvenience to us to take this responsibility on board ourselves, especially given the fact we were already upset with the situation. However, it was something we felt we had to do in order to make good the holiday in a timely and, ultimately, correct way.

Luxury Holidays Direct’s lack of support and inflated itinerary-change quote needlessly spoiled our 5 star holiday experience with Luxury Holidays Direct further.

Ultimately, we returned to Saigon at the cost of £374 which included flights, transfers and 5 star hotel. Luxury Holidays Direct had quoted a counter-productive, 80% mark up price of £670 for this amendment.

In short, they had failed their client. However this failing would transpire to be a moral one over a legal one as the company could not be proved negligent when I took them to the small claims court back in September 2013. Rathermore, according to the judge, their failing was by omission. By Luxury Holiday Direct’s own admission their “expert” had done no research as to the weather Hue.

So people should bear in mind that they should do all their own research if using this company as their experts are not in fact experts and could send you to a part of the world that is in low-season.

Ironically, the "expert" who booked this holiday for me was actually from Vietnam himself which made this all the more frustrating.

Sudhi S.

I have been travelling various parts of the world with Sunset travel as our travel consultant since 1999. We always mention that if there are any problems while travelling always contact the Sunset team . Wonderful personalized service. I would recommend this site to all.

Christopher T.

Good service overall and premium hotels offered.

Kalyani S.