The best beach houses in North Cornwall

Coronavirus Update – Tuesday June 30th 9pm

Our advice will continue to be updated regularly. Please read through and consider which aspects apply to you. There are few changes below – we continue to have little information or certainty. Over the coming week or two, we will expect to start publishing some details of how we will prepare for guests in July/August and how we will ask guests, who can travel, to play their part to keep everyone safe.

The current UK government advice can be found here – https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

We are expecting guests to arrive from Saturday 4th July. Please read further below if you have an existing booking with us, including our latest suggestions on paying balances.

Do also look at our guidance and instructions for guests coming down from the 4th July – click here

And also, do have look, here, at our ongoing guide to what’s open, what may not be, and tips for making the best of your stay in Trevose in the time of Covid!

First of all, our phones are very busy, and our staff are busier than ever!! Most mornings, we will not be answering the phone, instead asking you to listen to the Voicemail message and ideally to email rather than leaving a message. Later in the day, we will try to answer phones – but where not possible, please listen to the Voicemail message and act accordingly. For balance payments by card, we will normally have to ring you back – whether you have left a voicemail or emailed. If you do want to check what you have to pay, please email enquiries@raintreehouseholidays.co.uk and ask. We will try to prioritise replies to these simple emails.

Please could all our guests remember to treat our staff with respect and understanding, whether on the phone or by email. This is an incredibly difficult time and all our staff are dealing with hundreds of issues and customer concerns every day, with ever changing information and real concern about livelihoods. We know it’s also very difficult for all our guests and we want to be able to help.

Arrivals, coming soon

We are emailing all guests coming for the 1st week or two of July with special instructions and information about their trip. Much is the same, some is a little different. You can see the update here.

Cancelling your holiday

Should you wish to cancel your holiday, we would ask that you check with your insurance provider that this would not prejudice any claim you may make. We will be able to help with any documentation you need to make a claim. If you have not taken out travel insurance, or you are unable to make a claim, then we will include you in our Offer process providing you are able to state clearly that you either don’t have, or are unable to claim on, any insurance.

For bookings where guests do not expect to be able to travel, cancellation is likely to be the best option – allowing another guest to book your week, and you to receive the maximum refund against what you have paid.

Guests who have cancelled can always reinstate a booking if they subsequently decide they wish and can travel and it has not been booked to another guest.

Cancellations should always be made by email to enquiries@raintreehouseholidays.co.uk

Balance Payments

Please try to pay by Bank Transfer if this works for you. We are very busy, and taking card payments over the phone is time consuming. Please try to email rather than ring, and you can ask for a call back to pay your balance if you do need to pay by card.

For guests expecting to come from the 4th July onwards (July guests for now), we have been asking for balances to be paid 2 weeks before your start. We can be a little flexible but, generally, we are moving back to normal ‘month in advance’ Balance payments, and Balance reminders will start again soon. So if you are coming in mid-end July, and soon into August, please do start to pay your balances.

If the worst happens, after you have paid your balance, and your week is not possible, then you will have the choice to have your balance refunded and revert to a normal Covid deposit situation; or to take a 100% Credit for the whole full rental forward to a new booking. We hope this means there is no additional risk for guests in paying their balances.

As we are currently accepting new bookings from July 2020 onwards, it may be possible that cancelled weeks in July and later may be re-booked to other guests, allowing you to receive a near full or significant refund, if your week re-books, as per our standard Terms and Conditions – www.raintreehouse.co.uk/our-terms/

Alternatively, guests would be able to reinstate any cancelled booking from July onwards if it remains un-let, provided we are informed at least 4 days before your cancelled booking is due to start.

All our bookings are governed by our standard Terms and Conditions – www.raintreehouse.co.uk/our-terms/

General information for getting in touch

Phones are expected to be very busy and our reduced number of staff are now working from home throughout office hours, so please use email where possible. We can always try to ring you back where a chat would be helpful. We understand this is a very stressful time for guests.

We will continue to prioritise our email replies. Often this means that we will work from the bottom – meaning that replies can be expected to take 3-4 working days or sometimes longer. Even these timeframes may come under pressure as we are now moving staff to work on preparations for bookings that we hope will start in early July. Please bear wth us – frustrating as it is, nothing will spoil so please do expect a few days before each reply.

However we will be replying to all the emails – so please try to be patient. 

Requests for call backs for Balance payments or confirmation about Balance amounts required will be prioritised.

General cancellation notes and beneficial offers

Guests should note our standard Terms and Conditions as these lay out the standard situation for all cancelled bookings. As above, however, we do hope to be able to offer beneficial terms for re-booking at the same house later this year or next. There will likely be some differences depending on which house you were booked into, and we will not necessarily be able to confirm details for a few weeks from now. For some, this may fall after the original dates of your holiday.

Some have asked why we can’t immediately refund all money or move a booking to next year. It sounds like this would be fine and we understand that in normal times Raintree would often move a booking for you. The problem we have now is that many bookings, or even all bookings within a long period, would like a refund or to move. We are an agent, and we can’t just move all financial loss directly onto each of our home owners when our Terms and Conditions are clear about how cancellations are handled and when insurance is always recommended to guard against this kind of scenario. However, we, and our homeowners, want to be fair and help guests where we can and have agreed offers for all guests who end up with Covid affected weeks. Large costs have been incurred in preparation for all bookings. We continue to be sensitive to particular cicumstances and can compromise when a guest’s situation warrants it. We hope all can reach a situation they feel is fair in this very difficult situation.

We are very sorry about the current situation, but we feel that the welfare of our guests, owners and staff must always take priority in these unprecedented times. We hope that everyone stays well and safe and we look forward to welcoming you to Raintree and North Cornwall once the uncertainty passes.