The best beach houses in North Cornwall

Coronavirus Update – Monday May 25th 9am

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

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

We are currently only accepting new bookings from the beginning of July 2020 or later. We are continuing to monitor the situation and government advice so this date may be subject to change. We are asking for a reduced 20% Deposit for all new bookings from July to September this year (normally 40% Deposit). If the week is Covid affected and cannot go ahead, half the deposit and the booking fee will be at risk. Guests will need to consider if this is acceptable before booking.

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. We know it’s also very difficult for all our guests and we want to be able to help.

Guests with an existing booking – late May and June

The government’s latest advice makes clear that travel for holidays in the UK will not be possible during May and very likely through June.

With this in mind we are now communicating to all guests up to the middle of June with offers for rebooking, and will continue to communicate over coming weeks to all guests as their booking approaches. The offer includes a partial Credit towards a future booking.

Guests up to 14th June have now received details of our offer to rebook.

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.

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

Guests staying later in 2020 – July and beyond.

For existing guests with bookings starting in July 2020 and later, we would suggest you continue to consider your personal situation along with the advice provided by the government about travel within the UK. We are also monitoring the situation and will be in touch should the advice change. We currently hope these bookings, from July onwards, will be possible.

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 your date of arrival will be most important here, so we would typically respond to emails for May and then June dates before we reply to an email regarding a July or August booking. However we will be replying to all the emails – please bear with us. Response times could be as long as a week due to the volume of rebookings and details we are going through with each guest.

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.

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.