‘Our £2,000 Turkey cruise visited muddy beaches and had appalling food’

Your experience bears no relation to the promised tour, which includes visits to different sites each day and is flagged on Tui’s website as “best for culture”. But Tui has refused to budge and is still only offering £510 in vouchers or £380 in cash. It dismissed your complaints about the food and air conditioning and says that a nine-day religious holiday around the dates of your trip meant that marinas were full and there was no docking availability so the itinerary had to be altered. Tui claims this was only a “minor” change to your package holiday so a full refund isn’t due — but it’s hard to accept that this wasn’t a “significant change”, which would have entitled you to your money back. Your next step would be to try a chargeback through your credit card company and/or register a complaint with Abta’s alternative dispute resolution scheme (abta.com).

✉ On the day of my 50th birthday in mid-November, six of my closest friends and I are going to Paris, arriving at lunchtime and getting the last train back at 9.11pm. We’ve all been to Paris before, some of us many times. Two aren’t fast walkers, but the rest are. Importantly, none of us is feeling very flush with money. Can you recommend a good itinerary, including lunch, an exhibition, shopping and sightseeing, so it’s special but not too pricey?
Sal Jennings

Start your big day with lunch at Brasserie Bellanger, not far from the Gare du Nord and a great spot for classic French staples such as snails, steak-frites and croque monsieur at reasonable prices served by lovely, young (English-speaking) staff (mains from £10, lanouvellegarde.com). Then take a champagne cruise along the Seine (which will solve the problem of the fast and slow walkers) with Bateaux-Mouches from Pont de l’Alma (£25pp, bateaux-mouches.fr) followed by a trip to the Pompidou Centre for its autumn blockbuster celebrating the centenary of surrealism (centrepompidou.fr). The fabulous boutiques of the Marais, Paris’s chicest shopping district, will be on your doorstep before you head back to L’Ours, a relaxed and cosy bar near the Gare du Nord which has “Happy-Ours” from 6pm to 9pm with all cocktails costing £7 (animaux.bar).

✉ Last year we stayed in Cyprus at a Sunrise hotel that offered allocated sunbeds, which we loved because it took the stress out of the early-morning scramble. We’re now looking for other hotels that might offer this. The only others I can find are also in Cyprus, and we’d like to visit a different European destination. Can you suggest anywhere else?
Ysanne Denbow

No one wants to get up at the crack of dawn to bag a sunbed and it’s surprising that more hotel groups don’t offer the chance to book them in advance. You could try the Sunset Harbour Club in Tenerife, which allows you to choose which beds you want the day before. If you don’t turn up within an hour of the booking, the pool attendant will re-allocate them. A week in a self-catering studio apartment in September starts at £857pp, including easyJet flights from Luton, hold luggage and shared transfers (thomascook.com).

✉ We’d like to spend a week in the Austrian Tyrol over Christmas. Can you recommend a hotel that puts on events and where we can soak up the atmosphere over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day?
Jill Jacobs

Christmas in the Tyrol should be magical, but you might have to adjust your expectations about events because the main day for celebrations in Austria is Christmas Eve and while December 26 (Boxing Day here) is a public holiday, it would be unusual for a hotel to lay on activities then. Stay at the excellent family-run Hotel Wiesenhof in Pertisau and on December 23 you can expect to be entertained by singing shepherds. There’s a traditional gala dinner on the evening of the 24th and on the 25th, if the weather’s good, there should be a small alfresco party with grilled sausages and glühwein. Of course you could also add your own festive outings, perhaps a horse-drawn sleigh ride or a trip into nearby Innsbruck. A week’s half-board from December 21, including local museum entry and Achensee card for free local bus travel, starts at £2,180pp (inntravel.co.uk). Return flights to Innsbruck-Gatwick returns with British Airways start at £429pp, including hold luggage (ba.com).

✉ In early July I booked a late-August flight to Hamburg with Opodo. I selected an Opodo Prime price without realising what Opodo Prime was. At the end of July I had an email saying I’d renewed my subscription with Opodo Prime and found my Barclaycard had been charged £69.99, which I hadn’t authorised. When I spoke to Opodo I was told I’d ticked the Prime box and would have to pay the subscription fee, but I was offered £25 off. I would rarely use it. What rights do I have in resisting the charge for subscribing to something I would never have joined had I known there was a charge or what the amount was?
Mary Gass

You chose the discounted Prime fare for your flight to Hamburg, which was cheaper but also signed you up to Opodo’s Prime membership for a trial period — which of course you failed to cancel because you didn’t realise you’d joined up (there’s no mention of the annual fee on the booking page). Fortunately, however, you rang Opodo on the last day of your trial membership and it should have given you the right to cancel without penalty. An Opodo spokesperson apologised for your experience and said it had processed a full refund of the subscription fee. “To compensate for the error, we are pleased to offer Ms Glass a complimentary one-year subscription to Opodo Prime, allowing her to enjoy all the benefits of the programme at no cost.”

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