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Dot com or dot con? Don’t be a victim of holiday fraud

The report by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau stating that consumers had lost £2.2 million last year to online holiday fraudsters must send a chill through the hearts of the holidaying public.

Sunvil takes 15% of its bookings to Greece, Cyprus and the Azores on-line and next year more online bookable destinations will be added. Many of our customers boast that they know our programme better than we do, so high is our repeat and recommendation rate! Is our site just as likely to be hacked as those of Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia?

Absolutely not; it is much less likely that any monies go directly to a fraudster’s bank account. Why? Because there are big differences in the way we work and the way the online platforms function; they simply pass on booking requests to hotels and villa owners. At Sunvil, we control the whole process, from the flight to the transfer and/or car hire and the accommodation. We basically act as a principal, so bookings come through to us and then we in turn communicate with our overseas suppliers. We are therefore far more closely and personally involved because we are so hands-on in our work

It has taken us over 40 years to create a trusted brand and we have no intention of throwing our reputation away.

Metallia Beach, Thassos

Furthermore, you can choose how to deal with us at Sunvil. You can write, you can e-mail, you can telephone us, book through one of our travel agency partners, as well as book on-line; the price is the same whichever method you use.

We conform with the 1992 Package Travel Regulations, which means that, should anything go wrong, we have to put it right at no extra cost to our customers at whatever stage of the holiday process, from the initial enquiry to the return flight home. The recent strike by Norwegian Airline’s domestic service pilots cost us just under £10,000 in re-booking our clients and re-arrranging their holidays. Those who had booked independently had to sort it all out by themselves and to bear the extra costs personally. By contrast, the majority of the online platforms act as agents, not principals; consumers do not realise how and with whom they are dealing.

It’s also very much simpler to deal with us at Sunvil as we handle all the components of the holiday for you through a single source – Sunvil.

So does all this extra service come at a higher price? Sometimes, yes, but certainly not always – and certainly not a huge amount extra; the big benefit is that you always know that your money is secure with us and that Sunvil will look after you well should there be problems of any kind, from pilot or ferry strikes to volcanic ash clouds; we offer a lot of extra back-up and service alongside our carefully-crafted holidays for what is, in fact, a very modest price tag.

Noel Josephides

Chairman, Sunvil

Kioni, Ithaca

By Noel Josephides

15^th April 2015

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Noel Josephides

Noel is Sunvil’s Chairman. Born in Cyprus in 1948, he joined John der Parthog at Sunvil in 1973. Before that and following university, he spent 3 years as a trainee buyer at C&A Modes and then worked for a large Cypriot builder and property developer for whom he set up a London Office buying electrical components for the Middle East and importing lemons from orchards in Cyprus. He still researches new destinations for Sunvil and is heavily involved in matters relating to the travel industry. He is a previous chairman of ABTA, a long standing director and previous chairman of The Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) and former chairman of The Travel Foundation - the travel industry’s sustainability charity.

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If your enquiry is of an urgent nature, please telephone our dedicated reservation teams on the numbers listed below.

Our lines are open from 9.00am to 5.30pm Monday-Friday and from 9.30am to 4.30pm Saturday.

Greece: 020 8758 4758
Cyprus: 020 8758 4759
Portugal, the Azores, Spain, Italy, Sicily and Scandinavia: 020 8758 4722
Latin America: 020 8758 4774
Marketing: 020 8758 4731

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