TUI is taking its own customers to court because the travel organization wants to contest a lawsuit about vouchers from the Travel Disputes Committee. According to the Consumers' Association, the travel organizer should be deeply ashamed to want to be right about the back of their own customers. The Disputes Committee is unanimous in the opinion that TUI must comply with the law. It has also been agreed that ANVR members, including TUI, must adhere to that judgment of the court in conflicts.

Our editorial team has been writing for almost a year that a customer does not have to accept a voucher. In the past we have dealt with cases from Sunweb en Airtrade who similarly kept customers on the leash in order to extend the term and delay the payment of an unsolicited voucher. Time and again, consumers run into problems because of the attitude of many travel companies. 

Chairman Frank Oostdam of the ANVR travel umbrella stands behind TUI and lets you know The Telegraph: 

"The Disputes Committee was created to judge things that go wrong during the trip, not payment issues. It is a wrong decision to handle these cases anyway. It has not been disputed that consumers are entitled to a refund. Our vouchers only give an extension of up to a year in an extremely difficult corona time, which no one could have foreseen."

no perspective, stop booking

We understand that unsolicited travel companies got into trouble in March last year, but consumers shouldn't have to pay for that now. Last weekend, Oostdam tweeted that it is not prohibited to book travel, despite the government's travel ban, and called on consumers to do so. His thesis is that no one has become ill from booking a trip. This is understandable, because the goal may be to convert as many vouchers as possible into travel before March so that they will not be immediately eligible for payment.

Despite his earlier statement that no one could have foreseen this, it is wrong to continue to encourage people to book without any perspective on a safe travel date. Booking travel now causes months of trouble afterwards to get paid travel sums back. The self-induced lack of confidence in the travel industry is due to the way in which travel companies deal time and again with customer inquiries. Today it has already come to the point where not the customer service but the legal service answers questions from travelers when they request to redeem vouchers.