In response to Mrs Sotos’ letter ‘Booking troubles with WA Shearings’, I can recommend Greatdays Travel Group, based in Manchester or Surrey-based JAG Travel, specialist firms for groups, to arrange her trips.

For coach trips, both will hold places whilst you have plenty of time to gather deposits and then only ask for small token deposits per head or even a small fixed deposit per group. Numbers and names do not need to be confirmed until usually six to eight weeks before the actual trip so there’s no risk for the group organiser and names can easily be swapped without penalty, which makes life so much easier. Even for flights, its not always necessary to have to provide names at the time of booking. You can also request their insurance policies at any time, usually up until and including when the balance is paid. So there would be none of the problems Mrs Sotos encountered.

Their costs aren’t inflated to cover this practise, in fact both firms offer some of the best deals on the market, so I don’t understand why other firms can’t adopt this more flexible attitude. This flexibility is certainly one of the reasons I like to use these particular tour companies.

Allison Udy
Centre Manager
Milton Village Community Association, Derbyshire