Can you cancel holidays in extreme heat and wildfires? Simon Calder explains

Your rights to cancel holidays in extreme heat and wildfires

Transcript

00:00Europe is heating up this summer and we are going to see temperatures well above 40 celsius in

00:07places. That is extremely concerning as part of the climate picture of course but it's also

00:13worrying if you are going on holiday, particularly if there is the threat of wildfires

00:19as increasingly we have seen in Mediterranean destinations over the years. If you have booked

00:26a trip to the Mediterranean perhaps to Andalusia, the so-called frying pan of Europe, maybe to the

00:34eastern Mediterranean where we've seen wildfires in Turkey and in Greece, then unless the foreign

00:41office warns against travel to those locations the tour operator will presume that your trip is

00:48going ahead as normal. Now you may think well actually I've got a pre-existing condition which

00:55means that it's very difficult for me to travel in extreme heat. If you have declared that condition

01:02to travel insurers then you will be able to cancel and get your money back. Otherwise there's a couple

01:10of options, one of which is to talk to your holiday company and hope that they will be able to say to

01:17you, yep we will let you switch from say Andalusia maybe to northern Portugal, somewhere a little bit

01:24cooler and breezier. Alternatively if you've booked a proper package holiday through a company like

01:30TUI or Jet2 holidays then you are able legally to transfer that to somebody else, give them about a

01:38week's notice and you'll probably need to pay a fee of about £50 per person or so. If you're traveling

01:45independently, you've made your own arrangements then normal terms and conditions will apply for each

01:52for each component of that trip.