Red Sea Holidays recouped the money it paid to one false holiday sickness claimant, but still thinks the UK should follow Germany’s lead on the ‘ticking time bomb’ issue. Ben Ireland reports
British courts should follow the German lead and insist that 20% of guests from an all-inclusive hotel must make a claim for it to be valid.
Peter Kearns, executive director of Egypt specialist Red Sea Holidays, said the precedent‑setting ruling, made in a holiday sickness case in Germany, was a “sensible” way to stem the problem.
A long-term solution, he added, must involve increasing the amount of medical information needed to prove a claim.
“We should introduce it here. It’s a really sensible approach,” Kearns said.
“Claims management companies might be very good at farming claimants, but they couldn’t get 20% of guests at the larger hotels together to make fake claims.
“As it stands, [the issue] is a ticking time bomb because we don’t know how far it’s going to go.”
Previously, Tui UK and Ireland managing director Nick Longman has erred on the side of caution with the 20% rule, which he fears could give the impression that operators are trying to block genuine claims.
Kearns said the scale of the problem in Egypt is significantly less than in Spain because of the UK flight ban to Sharm el-Sheikh, but feared it could have been worse as “99% of Egypt holidays are on an all-inclusive basis”.
“We’ve had our fair share of issues with the escalation of illness claims,” he said.
“We [tour operators] are very quickly becoming solicitors. People feel the legal profession can run rings around the travel industry, which for smaller tour operators poses a very big problem.
“The German courts recognised quite early on that unless they changed the law relatively quickly, the same thing as what we’re seeing in the UK could happen.
“They said that if the food‑related illness is from the buffet, an isolated illness is highly unlikely if not impossible: it’s the same food, served by the same staff at roughly the same time.”
Red Sea Holidays had damages returned to it after it found out a customer had gone on a diving excursion after claiming to be ill.
The customer said he had fallen ill during a stay in Sharm el-Sheikh in May 2013.
He lodged the claim more than two years later, in November 2015, saying he had been unable to go on a diving excursion, and went on to win £2,000 in damages and £4,500 in costs in September 2016.
The following month, the same customer lodged a second claim against the operator, saying he had been sick on a separate holiday to the same hotel in November 2013, again claiming this had forced him to miss a diving excursion.
Red Sea Holidays spoke to the diving company, which not only proved he had been on the second diving trip but also the first one.
Red Sea Holidays has since started blacklisting customers it believes to be making false claims.
“Some people are really arrogant,” Kearns said. “If it’s that easy, they will try it on. We used to take the approach that it was cheaper to settle out of court, but that was before the number of cases snowballed.
“We’re glad the industry is backing Travel Weekly’s campaign. Together we can stop this problem.”
Fight Fake Claims gains backing of Travel2/Gold Medal owner dnata
Dubai-based travel group dnata has backed our Fight Fake Claims campaign, and vowed to challenge every claim it suspects to be false.
The backing of the Emirates-owned group, which includes The Global Travel Group, Travel Republic, Travel 2 and Gold Medal, adds nearly 1,500 travel trade names to the campaign.
Sebastien Doussin, dnata vice-president of ground services, said: “We will challenge every claim that we suspect to be fraudulent.
“If this continues, it will force hotel partners to look at their rates and all-inclusive offering. In the end, the only loser is the honest customer. With a rise in claims of 700% in the all-inclusive market, the industry is facing an unquestionable issue that is no fault of its own. It will inevitably lead to customers paying for the fraudulent actions of a few, or all-inclusive holidays being withdrawn.
“Claims companies using unscrupulous actions will be pursued and action taken against them. We support Travel Weekly’s campaign and call for fundamental changes to be made.”
