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Should you pay the balance on your British Airways Holiday and what are the alternatives?

One of the most frequent questions I get is about having a British Airways Holiday and whether you should pay the balance or cancel now.

BA Holidays are treated slightly differently to a flight booking:

  • If you have a hotel or car hire booking that was originally classed as non-refundable, you may not get your money back if you decide to cancel and take a voucher. BA are working with suppliers to see if there is leeway in the T&C.
  • If BA cancel the flight and don’t provide alternatives, they should refund the costs of the hotel or car hire even if non-refundable.
  • You have to pay the balance on time or cancel and take a voucher, or your booking will be treated as cancelled by you under the normal terms and conditions (which usually means losing your deposit).

 

So what should you do?

Here are the possible options:

  1. Wait until the last minute to cancel. Cancel the day the balance is due and take a voucher for the deposit. At least you have only lost part of the money and you can use it to rebook something else. This means you won’t have a larger sum of money potentially tied up in a voucher. It also gives the best chance of your flight being cancelled and you get a cash refund instead. If your hotel or car hire was non refundable this may mean you don’t get your full or any deposit back.
  2. Pay the balance and wait to see if the flight gets cancelled anyway. Then you can get a full refund. However, there is no guarantee that you will get a cash refund as BA are still operating some flights and may not cancel. If you pay the balance and have to take the voucher instead of a refund, there is obviously a small risk that BA could go bankrupt leaving you to try and claim a large sum of money back via your credit card company.
  3. You could move the dates of your holiday. This is free but there could be a supplement to pay if there is a fare difference.

For holidays bookings there is no easy answer. There is a risk in both decisions. A lot depends on your appetite for risk, how likely you would be to spend a voucher for a large sum and your personal financial circumstances.

I am in the same situation currently for a June trip to the USA. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen and I have a month before the balance is due. My plan is to sit on it until the last possible moment to pay the deposit and see how the world looks then. If it looks unlikely I will try to move it if it can be done free and we both have a suitable time in our schedules!

You can see more about how the British Airways refund vouchers work here. 

Do you have a BA holiday booked and are wondering what to do or have recently made a decision whether to pay the deposit or not? Let us know your experiences in the comments below or on social media.

 

 

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25 comments

  1. We have a balance due on Tuesday for a trip to Barcelona on May 6th. Seems very unlikely it will go ahead and our travel insurance covers us for travel disruption caused by FCO advice or pandemic. We have paid more than the deposit due to having spend x with BA get x Avios on both of our BA cards recently. Original purpose of the trip was to see the F1 race which has already been cancelled. Haven’t decided what to do yet.

    1. Almost identical situation, holiday on 7 May and made additional payments for the same reason. I was surprised to get a balance reminder though – when we called to cancel a previous one (cancelled by BA) the agent said that reminders were not going out and the balance was not being asked for until 3 weeks prior. That was either wrong or there has been a change in policy. I know the hotel is cancellable so I think we are going to pre-emptively go for the voucher rather than wait until the flight is (may be) cancelled.

  2. You mean balance ?
    “I am in the same situation currently for a June trip to the USA. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen and I have a month before the deposit is due. My plan is to sit on it until the last possible moment to pay the deposit and see how the world looks then.”

  3. Michelle I believe you are confusing deposit with balance.

    You say for example “Wait until the last minute to cancel. Cancel the day the deposit is due and take a voucher for the deposit.”.

    Surely the deposit is paid when you book the BA holiday?

    As a point of reference I rang yesterday to cancel a trip at the beginning of May the day before the balance was due. I was advised to take the cash refund and accept loss of my deposit as a way of avoiding a large amount of money being tied up in a possible voucher. At least we know we will not be travelling as planned so we have salvaged some degree of control given the situation we are all in.

  4. I had a BA Holiday trip booked to the USA in May, balance plus some extra paid.

    The outbound AA flight was cancelled last week with a message saying BA would be in touch about my options. When I then got the email reminding my balance was due soon, I called them.

    Didn’t take long to get through, immediately got offered a refund of what I had paid.

    1. Have you actually had the money – we had a similar cancellation for a holiday in April, offered a refund of the deposit but yet to see it.

  5. I have a holiday booked for 6th June and have only paid the deposit, I am planning to wait until just before the balance and making a decision then. I don’t want to lose my deposit but not sure I want to risk paying the balance. Realistically I don’t believe the holiday will go ahead.

  6. Could please clarify the BA status for renewal? As an example, my year ends in July, I have 880 tier points will I need the remaining 170 tier point by the date my year expire ? Or is BA giving extra months to customers to fulfil the criteria?

  7. I have paid my deposit, seats and transfers. BA have said i am not able to receive a voucher as i have booked a non refundable holiday with them, so im not quiet sure how you are able to get a voucher…my holiday is to Singapore on May 14th. Full payment is expected on 9th April.

  8. What about customers who were part way through a flight to the USA on 14 March only to be told at immigration we needed to get back on the next available flight to the UK. BA holiday ruined. No refund as of yet for hotels or car hire. Phone number given is for anyone flying in the next 72 hours. Been on my booking and put in a claim but customer services cannot help as they don’t have the right system!

  9. One of the problems (haha) with BA holidays is that there never appears to be any info in the confirmation emails or non-flight vouchers about whether the hotel/car part is cancellable. The voucher linked in my confirmation email is not even the same as it was originally as it now mentions coronavirus measures, which it didn’t back in October when we booked and the world had not heard of Covid.

    If you choose to cancel, and the hotel is non-refundable, you will get a voucher (maybe, we haven’t seen any vouchers yet after 2 weeks) for the flight portion only. If they cancel, you should get the full amount back.

    My top tips now are to screenshot the hotel room booking page, showing the cancellation policy, when you book and to save copies of the non-flight voucher as soon as you get them.

    1. That’s a good tip. Sadly we only notice these things when we already need the information!

    2. We have a booking towards the end of May, with flights and 3 hotels in 3 different cities.

      On our booking confirmation one of the hotels states that it is non-refundable so I assume for other bookings that if there’s nothing stated to the contrary in the confirmation it is fully refundable.

      We intend to wait for BA to cancel the flight, as opposed to accepting a voucher, in the hope we will get a full refund otherwise we will look to claim the difference back through credit card company.

      One thing we don’t know is the cost breakdown so we’ve no idea how much we stand to lose for the non-refundable hotel.

  10. Thank you for covering this topic Michelle. I received our balance reminder overnight. We have flights plus hotel booked for Barbados departing 24th May. So far we have paid deposit and seat fees. Balance is due by 4th April.

    Like Geoff, I cannot find any information in my emails about whether the hotel is transferable. I don’t believe the holiday will go ahead but there is conflicting information about how best to proceed. We are inclined to lose the deposit and seat fees but BA’s website refers to additional cancellation charges provided at the time of booking.

    1. Do not pay on April 4th.
      Message BA on twitter and ask them to confirm you don’t have to pay until 3 weeks before – contrary to what any of the payment reminders or your manage your booking page says.

      We are due to fly May 23 to the US and I contacted them this morning. We now know our balance isnt due until May 2.

      Good luck!

      1. Hi Ruth,

        Thank you very much for this advice, i’ll certainly do that.

        Thank you; you too!

  11. I paid balance for April holiday on 5th March and it was cancelled by BA on 20th March with full refund returned to c/c a few days later, at this time the flight was still shown as departing on the date booked in April !. Can’t fault the service.

    1. Glad to hear that some people are getting good service refund-wise – or at least some service. The problem is that it is all so variable. When you do get through in person they sound very accommodating but so far we have yet to see any of the promised refunds – or vouchers.

      We had an avios 241 trip planned to Japan which we cancelled and rebooked to US West Coast back in mid-February. Separately, we booked car hire through BA. The first post-lockdown event was an unsolicited refund of the car hire but it took another few days before they admitted that the flights were cancelled. We had been planning to cancel and accept the £35pp fee (this was just before the online solution was posted) but the cancellation meant we would get a full refund. We have had the points re-deposited and the 241 voucher returned (and extended) but no sign of the money 11 days later.

      This week we had a BA ‘prepare for your trip’ email about the original Japan flight and today we have had the message to say that online checkin is now open for tomorrow’s cancelled flights to California (which is showing as cancelled in MMB).

      So we are still waiting for a refund of the fees from the avios cancellation, the deposit from a cancelled BA holiday and vouchers from 2 other cancelled flights – oh yes, and a refund from hotels.com! Minor problems really in the big scheme of things but useful to hear how others are getting on.

      1. It is taking at least a couple of weeks for manual refunds in my experience. If it is a simple cancellation such as Avios I got it back in about 48 hours.

  12. I’ve got a BA holiday planned for July 2020 (flights, hotel, transfers) to Dalaman, Turkey. The balance is due in early June. I’ve got British friends living near Dalaman who tell me the Corona Virus problem is worse in Turkey than it is in the UK. I presume BA will cancel my holiday before I need to pay the balance. I’ve tried going on line to check out my options and it tells me I need to ring. I’ve tried ringing and it says if I’m not travelling within the next 48 hours refer to the website. Proper confused!!

    1. They are unlikely to cancel this far ahead. Hang on for as long as you can as you may get a refund if they cancel.

  13. I’m in a similar situation, US trip booked for June with the balance due in 3 weeks. I sent a direct message on Twitter and got a reply 6 days later informing me that the the balance will be due 3 weeks before departure instead of the normal 6 weeks. I’m gonna sit it out until the due date as I reckon it will be cancelled anyway.

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