Thanks for all your replies. It is such a shame. I have found the
Miramar website now with the notice on. I want to book the Bressol
apartments which are opposite the post office so these are probably the ones that Lollipop is referring to. How dreadful to be thrown out halfway through your holiday. There is a Bressol
apartment advertised on the PP website but I am not sure who the contact is, it maybe a member of the owners family. One used to be advertised last year with the Travel Club rep as the contact but not recently.
I am rather cautious and found it great just ringing the Travel Club and having it all arranged and they were always very reasonable as we have 3 children and you could always get a two bed room apartment at a good price with no stupid minimum occupancy charges as with the usual travel companies who expect 5 people to sleep in a one bedroom apartment, or hefty flight supplements just to travel at a sensible time. Also now the children are grown up but still want a free holiday if they are around, we could book with a minimum occupancy of 3 and the older ones could just come if they wanted to at the last minute. You can’t do that with Thomsons!
I am not sure I agree about it being more secure booking directly with the owner as you have very little comeback if something goes wrong, unless you are able to pay with a credit card which a private individual probably wouldn’t be able to accept. I don’t think insurance companies will cover you for this, though I know some are starting to now but then probably only for ABTA/ATOL companies, not a private individual. I wait to be corrected on this though. I would like to think that everybody who features on the PP website is reliable though! You do hear such horror stories though and most people need to be careful when trusting their hard earned cash in this way
I have a flyer from Sun Club which fell out of a magazine once and was puzzled because most of the Travel Club properties were “exclusive” to them and when I rang and asked them, they asked me to send them the Sun Club flyer as they seemed puzzled. I wonder who Sun Club are and how they managed to offer all these exclusive to Travel Club properties? They have an ABTA symbol but not ATOL so I am very wary.
Sorry this is such a long post!