Airtours

Poor service had issues with what I had booked. Staff were unhelpful and rude, and didn’t care at all. I will never book again with air tours, stay away from these rogues! You’ve been warned

We booked with US Air Tours to go to Orlando last Christmas. I would never book anything through them again. The accommodation that was supposed to be executive was third rate and nothing like our friends accommodation who paid the same amount as we did. We have the photos to prove it. There were numerous issues with regard the pool, the broken and old furniture and the general poor state of the property.When we got back and complained they were rude and dismissive. My advice would be never to book with this Company.

Booked Ski Holiday through Airtours Direct (1 yr in advance) and was quoted decent price (including Ski Packages), unfortunately their system hadn't yet had ski packages uploaded for 2009 - they said they would enter them as soon as they were able to. I kept ringing to confirm that they had entered them - by 5th week of calling they told me I had been quoted incorrect price and cost would be £300 more as packages hadn't been booked at the time of quote???? Following a couple more upsetting calls I said I wished to cancel as I had been mis-sold product. Following further calls (all to my cost- as no calls returned) they then informed me we would be charged £125 EACH cancellation Fee!!! I Asked for this in writing and they said they could not do that !!!! I am still waiting for a return call from our last conversation with them 4 days ago (supposed to be a 48 response time). I advise you to book holidays with local travel agent - at least you can talk face to face with them.

On the 4th of March I paid a deposit to My Travel/Airtours online for a holiday I booked to go on later this year.

On the 26th of June they wrote to me with changes to my flight times, the first paperwork I had received from them either electronically or post delivered since making the booking. The return flight was changed to the following day making it impossible for my wife and I to continue with this booking due to work commitments.

I then wrote to them twice informing them of the above. They eventually telephoned to tell me that they are within their rights to change flight times. So basically they said: take it or leave it. We had to leave it and lost £260.

There was no indication on the web booking page that the flights were provisional.

As for customer care, we didn't get any.

We will not ever book another holiday with Airtours! I work hard all year and look forward to our annual vacation abroad. I am very, very disappointed and feel very cheated and very much out of pocket, as this holiday has ended up costing me more than if I had booked with a more reliable, slightly more expensive tour operator.

I booked a Kenyan holiday. The brochure detailed a beautiful hotel, 4 full days of Safari and the rest of the holiday at a lovely hotel.

The Safari left out on a Tuesday and the one weekly flight landed on a Tuesday, so figuring that we would miss the trip the week we arrive so obviously would be on the following week's trip, the agent couldn't tell us for certain but it was obvious to them, as well as us we booked.

We now find out that this is not the case. It is not physically possible to take part in the first half of day one and if the flight is delayed at all, we lose the whole day. In short, they are not going to deliver 25% of a safari, which was the only reason for the trip and be astonished that we would find this unreasonable. Add to this that they expect to take a family of 4 who've been travelling for 24 hours, stick them on a Jeep and rush them straight through a safari without even the opportunity of a shower, let alone any sleep. Sounds like real fun, with a teenager and an 11 year old with us. For the sake of one day or sensible scheduling, this could have been a great trip. The way they have organised it is a nightmare.

Airtours knew when they printed the brochure that what they advertised could not be delivered and once again, Airtours brings the whole travel industry into disrepute with their sharp, if not fraudulent practices.

Do not trust this firm.

We travelled to Romania with Airtours last week and I can honestly say that me and my husband had a fantastic time yet again with Airtours, the last time we used Airtours was when we went to Lanzarote. The only problem we had this time round was that we had to travel 230 miles to fly from Manchester, this could not be helped but it would be so much more convenient for people who live nearer to Manchester. The flight was on time and when we arrived at Bucharest Airport, the tour reps greeted everybody and told us which buses to board. As soon as our two coaches left the airport, the tour rep was carefully explaining about our resort, which was a 3 hour drive away. She went on about all the fun nights out and excursions. When we arrive half way towards our resort, we stopped off at a roadside cafe for a leg stretch, plus refreshments. Once we boarded the coach again, the tour rep was handing out forms to fill in, plus instruction packages. When we filled in our forms, she explained carefully to us about the package instructions which contained, our ski school pass tickets, clip on wristbands for free booze and meals and our list of fun nights out and excursions. We were both lucky that nothing went wrong for us and was therefore, saddened to read that most other reviewers who had used Airtours too have had bad experiences. We would recommend Airtours to anybody, whether they are looking for either a sun or skiing holiday.

We have just been very badly let down by Airtours. Just a few days before we were due to fly, we were informed that our Saturday flight to Bulgaria had been cancelled. This was to be our four children's first skiing experience and they are understandably very upset.

Airtours have offered us a refund plus £40 per person i.e. £240 but how could this compensate our children for what they have just lost?

Our travel agent says part of her difficulty in trying to get us something else is that it takes a very long time to even get through to Airtours and when she does it is never the person she spoke to last time.

What can we do?

I have written an email of complaint weeks ago to Airtours and have yet to receive a reply. We went to Cancun in Mexico at the end of January, the place is lovely, the hotel was lovely. It was on our return journey home, that we had loads of problems. My husband had seafood for dinner at the restaurant the night before we left, the next day he was quite ill. We were picked up at the hotel at 12.30pm, then driven round a number of other hotels to pick up other guests. Two hours later we passed our hotel again, wouldn't it have been much more practical, to have picked us up last? We were told to queue separately at the airport, as one queue was to check in and the other was to pay a fee to get out of the country. Although we didn't have children with us we thought it extremely unfair for parents to be asked to pay full price for each child. Even though I was at the front of the queue for check in, I still wasn't allowed to check in until my husband had got his receipt for payment and handed it to me, so what was the point of two queues? We were told at checkout that one of our suitcases was 4 kilos overweight and told to pay 55 dollars to cover this, even though it was no heavier than on our journey there. This seemed a bit unfair, as they seemed to be stopping every other person and were obviously on a good little earner from it. We were sat separately on the plane as we arrived late. My Travel took so long to get us to the airport and my husband was ill all the way home, so you can imagine the discomfort on a nine hour flight. When we arrived home, he went to the doctor and was told he had salmonella food poisoning, it was lucky I hadn't eaten the same meal or we would have both had it. When speaking to a couple on the plane, they told us they were stopped at check in too and told to pay extra for a overweight suitcase. They told us they refused as the other case was underweight and this would make up the difference, so they were allowed through without payment. If we had known, we would have done the same as our other case was a lot lighter. I have emailed them complaining but have yet to receive a reply.

Had a rotten experience with Airtours/Mytravel in January on a ski trip. I wrote to them to complain and got a "not interested" response and no compensation. My letter is below:

Dear sir/madam

I booked my Airtours holiday to Maeva Les Melezes apartments in Alpe d'Huez through Igluski.com departing on 31 December. I have just returned from this holiday. Airtours did as much as they could possibly do to squeeze the enjoyment out of the trip. My biggest complaint is with the practice of filling coaches to resorts with passengers from several flights, hours apart.

I booked on the 5:30am flight from Gatwick to Grenoble. After I made the booking, you changed the flight time to 5.00am. I booked the early flight as it gave me the opportunity for an afternoon of skiing, as I knew from previous visits that Alpe D'Huez was only about 2 hours from Grenoble, and your website quotes the transfer time as 2 hours and 30 minutes. My journey to the resort is as follows:

1:30am Wake up

2am Get cab to airport (cheaper trains would have been an option if I'd taken the 9:20 flight).

3am Arrive at airport to check-in.

5am Fly to Grenoble.

7:20am arrive at Grenoble airport. Wait for passengers off the other flights, including the 9:20 flight (that was delayed and arrived at 9:35).

11:15am Leave Grenoble airport, just under 4 hours after arriving.

13:30pm Arrive at apartment to find the reception shut at midday and wouldn't re-open until 5pm.

13:30pm to 5pm Wait in unheated reception area as there was nobody there to tell us if there was somewhere safe we could leave our ski gear or somewhere warm to wait.

5:15pm, get into our apartment room.

From door to door this was over 13 hours. Crucially, we missed the clear opportunity to ski in the afternoon of the first day. I am seriously concerned with your policy of getting passengers to wait for other flights to arrive over 2 hours after their own flight lands. Passengers on a bus to one resort who arrived on my plane were waiting for just four passengers off the 9:20 flight.

Needless to say, this problem was repeated at the other end. I was picked up from my apartment at 4:15 along with people on flights much later in the morning. These people had to suffer the horrors of Grenoble airport for several hours. This airport would cope well if it wasn't full of your passengers sitting around waiting for flights several hours later. As it was, people trying to get to check-in desks found it almost impossible to move through the crowds of Airtours passengers filling the floor space with nowhere to go.

When you look at this from the point of view of a customer, none of it makes any sense. If you are trying to give customers a choice of flights then I can assure you, customers would be far happier with less choice and less waiting around at the other end. It also doesn't make any sense when I looked at the list of resorts you serve from Grenoble. Some of these would have been far better served from Geneva, Chambery or even Lyon. The only two resorts I could see on the list for which Grenoble flights made any sense were Alpe d'Huez and Les Deux Alpes.

Skiing/boarding are very expensive holiday activities and customers want to make the very most of the opportunity. I had reasonably expected to get 6.5 days of skiing out of this trip. That's why I chose this resort. I was utterly stunned that you couldn't get me to the resort after a 5am flight in time to get half a day of skiing done on the Saturday. I've skied with other companies before and never experienced this approach. I've enjoyed summer package holidays with Airtours before and not experienced this problem. So I can't understand why you think this is an acceptable way to manage ski trips.

A smaller annoyance is that I had to call the rep on Friday evening to find out what time the return pick up time was. He assured me he was going to come to my apartment next to let me know the time of the transfer. He must have known much earlier in the week what time it was, but probably didn't want his customers on later flights to spend the week complaining to him about the early transfer. I shouldn't have to spend my own money calling the rep so late in the holiday to find out information that could be in the welcome pack.

So what would I like you to do?

1) For your own sake I think you should take a long look at the policy of putting several flights into individual buses. Every passenger on my bus was given a major source of frustration at either the outward or the return transfer. This cannot be good for customer retention or the image of Airtours in general.

2) You should compensate my party of four. Typically, self catering ski holidays cost me around £600 all in. I was quite reasonably expecting 6.5 days of skiing out of this and only got 6 days. Since the whole point of this trip was to go skiing I value my time according to the amount of skiing available. Half a day of skiing is therefore quite an expensive block of time for us all to lose. Based on the above figures, I calculate this to be £46.15 per person. We also spent all of a Saturday afternoon guarding our bags in a cold apartment lobby. I value my weekends highly and would never choose to sit in an unheated room for so long. I can't easily put a figure on this, but suspect it would more than cover any flight supplements that later flights might incur. I incurred the further expense of having to get a taxi to the airport that I wouldn't have needed if I'd known the 9:20 flight would have got me to the resort at the same time. The taxi was £55 and the train fares would have been £5.40 each using our Network Railcards. We therefore each need a further £8.75. Finally, I had to spend approximately £4 of my own money phoning your reps mobile to find out what time the return transfer was. This equates to over £50 per person to compensate for our costs and time, although the annoyance and frustration caused by your policies feels like it has cost us significantly more than this.

3) You should get someone senior to look at the sheet of paper that your reps hand out at Grenoble explaining the reason why customers will be held at the airport for several hours. This contained several glaring grammatical errors, and further annoyed customers by patronisingly telling them what a good opportunity they now had to spend their time reading the welcome pack and enjoying the amenities of Grenoble airport. We would all have happily read the welcome pack on the coach and enjoyed the amenities of Alpe d'Huez rather than Grenoble Airport!

I trust you will take these concerns seriously, and I eagerly await your views and actions.

Yours faithfully,