The best beach houses in North Cornwall

Coronavirus Update – Tues March 31^st morning

Our advice will continue to be updated regularly. Please read through and consider which aspects apply to you.

The government’s latest advice issued tonight can be found here https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

First of all, 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.

Thank you for bearing this in mind. We know it’s very difficult for all our guests too.

We hope to communicate directly with each guest affected over the next week or two, with an offer that we have agreed with each owner. We are sorry for the time it is taking to clarify this. Please bear with us, and do read further down this Update for details and explanation.

New bookings

We are still not taking any new bookings for weeks starting up to the 1st week of June.  The earliest new booking start date is currently Tuesday 2nd June. This date is subject to review and should the situation change we will update accordingly.

Existing guests, March and April bookings

The government has banned all travel for 3 weeks from 23rd March, running through to Monday April 13th. This now means that no holidays are possible to be taken throughout this time. We consider, from briefings made by the government over the last days, that effectively travel is or will remain banned through to the end of April.

Guests staying up to the end of April 2020 must get in touch with their insurance providers as a matter of importance. We are afraid that it will not be possible to take holidays during this period.

Please liaise with your insurance provider before cancelling your week to make sure you follow their process correctly. We are not expecting any guests to arrive for any booking starting in late March or April.

On current guidelines as above, it will not be possible for us to try to re-let any cancelled weeks during the March and April period. We will be working with our house owners to offer a suitable and appropriate plan to enable guests with bookings starting in March or April to consider re-booking later this year or next and hope that we will be able to offer beneficial rates, taking into account the rental money each guest has paid. Please bear with us. We would hope to be able to communicate further details within a week or two.

Very importantly, it is essential that all guests during this period contact their insurance provider as this will always be the initial route for recompense where possible. Credit card providers may also help.

Existing guests, May 2020 and later bookings

For existing guests with bookings starting in May 2020 and later, we would suggest you continue to consider your personal situation along with the advice provided by the government about travel in the UK.

Balances are due 1 month before your stay, so, before this deadline arrives, it will always be sensible to consider your situation. For those who choose to cancel (for bookings in May 2020 and later), we will also be planning to publish how you may be financially helped if you wish to re-book for later this year or next – again, this may differ house-by-house, and should be available within a few weeks.

As we are currently accepting new bookings for June 2020 onwards, it may be possible that cancelled weeks in June 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 June onwards if it remains un-let, provided we are informed at least 4 days before your cancelled booking is due to start. Cancelled weeks in May might also be able to be reinstated – this will depend on how matters progress as we head through towards the end of April.

IMPORTANT: Consulting your insurance provider still remains the first and best recourse when a cancellation is made for any date. All our bookings are governed by our standard Terms and Conditions – www.raintreehouse.co.uk/our-terms/

Cancellations should always be made by email to enquiries@raintreehouseholidays.co.uk if possible, but speaking to your insurance provider first is always advisable.

General information for getting in touch

Phones are expected to be very busy and all 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.

For emails into Raintree, we will continue to prioritise our replies. Often your date of arrival will be most important here, so we would typically respond to emails for April dates before we reply to an email regarding a May or June booking. But we will be replying to all the emails – please bear with us.

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. Raintree also has to consider its staff and its survival – for instance if we allowed all March/April/May bookings to move to 2021, Raintree would be in a very grave situation immediately.

We need to speak to all our home owners and to model what the impact of this situation will be for Raintree. We want to help, as do our home owners. We understand how bad this is for all our guests. But we need some time to agree how far we can go to help all the different groups of guests that are booked to stay at Raintree. That is why we say we hope to have further details within a few weeks.

We hope to have matters clarified within a few weeks. We will communicate with all affected guests in due course.

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.