What to do if you’ve booked a holiday through lowcostholidays.ie

We're getting a sense of what holidaymakers can do if they booked a trip through budget online travel operator Lowcostholidays, which went bust over the weekend.

The company currently has 27,000 customers overseas on holidays, and a further 110,000 who have booked trips for the future. Although, Lowcostholidays mostly has a UK clientele, its Irish outlet - which started operating in 2010 - is believed to have 15,000 people that are likely to be directly affected by its closure. As the repercussions of the company's closure continue to reverberate in the industry, experts are giving a clearer sense of the compensation avenues available to customers. https://twitter.com/TravelExpert_IE/status/754270596830208000 David Hodnett, director of legal affairs for the Commission for Aviation Regulation, told RTE:

"Persons who have yet to travel should try to ascertain from lowcostholidays.ie if their booking will be honoured. If not, they should make a claim to the commission for a refund of monies paid to date. "There may be people who are abroad and they find they have to pay a second time for accommodation that they've already paid for via lowcostholidays.ie. In that situation those persons should also claim for reimbursement from the Commission for Aviation Regulation."

That being said, the commission's bond only covers customers who have booked both overseas travel and accommodation. Hodnett said that people exempt from that cover may be able to claim money back through travel or credit card insurance. Here's a link to the Commission's Expenses Claim Form. (This is what it looks like, in case you get lost on the site) The process of disputing card payments is called "chargeback", and the first thing to do in the process - if the supplier (lowcostholidays) can't provide a refund - it to contact your card provider (the bank or credit card) immediately. Tell them the details of the transaction you are disputing, and request that they follow it up with the supplier’s merchant (the bank that processes the supplier's card transactions). For any other queries call 01-8889000 , and keep checking the Commission's dedicated page for updates.