With the coronavirus outbreak, many travelers are requesting to cancel their planned trips to Ireland. This situation heavily impacts the tourism sector and leaves travelers in a difficult position. Will they be refunded? Does it simply depend on each company’s policy? Here’s an overview of your rights.

COVID-19 Creates Confusion Over Refunds for Upcoming Trips

Know Your Rights When Cancelling a Trip to Ireland

First, let’s recap the situation: we are currently living through an exceptional and historic period, unavoidable in nature. Governments are taking measures that affect everyone and force many travelers to make decisions based on common sense.

This fact is crucial to better defend yourself against an organization or airline refusing to refund you.

We are indeed currently facing a case of force majeure. This is a situation recognized in consumer law that can support your refund claims.

In tourism law, this is referred to as “exceptional and unavoidable circumstances,” which entitles consumers to request cancellation and, importantly, a full refund of the amounts paid.

But beware: everything depends on your specific situation! Has your trip been cancelled by the providers? Or did you cancel it yourself? This distinction will likely determine whether you receive a refund.

Here’s a detailed explanation below:

How to Get a Refund for Your Plane Ticket?

There are two scenarios here:

• The airline has decided to cancel your flight: you will be automatically refunded, without additional compensation due to the exceptional and unavoidable nature of the situation.
• You choose to cancel your ticket while the flight is still operating: you may not be refunded (especially if you did not purchase cancellation insurance beforehand).

The second scenario is the main source of customer frustration (and understandably so). Currently, airlines maintaining their flights believe they are not obligated to refund customers because no current law prohibits air travel. Since flights continue, they consider refund requests unjustified.

This unprecedented situation has yet to be resolved by governments and suffers from many inconsistencies: governments encourage everyone to act responsibly, while some airlines refuse to support decisions aimed at containing the epidemic.

How to Get a Refund for a Complete Trip Booked Through a Travel Agency?

A trip can be fully refunded or postponed if it is cancelled by the tour operator.

However, the situation is complicated if the trip is maintained but you wish to cancel it yourself: generally, you will not be able to get a refund. However, if a large part of the services included in the trip price are no longer available locally due to coronavirus (activities, services, excursions), you may be entitled to a full refund.

You can invoke Article L211-14 II, which states that “The traveler has the right to terminate the contract before the start of the trip or stay without paying termination fees if exceptional and unavoidable circumstances occurring at or near the destination have a significant impact on the execution of the contract or on passenger transport to the destination. In this case, the traveler is entitled to a full refund of payments made but not to additional compensation.”