Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Clients may be concerned by the announcement on 17th March by the UK government advising all UK citizens to avoid all non-essential travel worldwide, which is in addition to the existing travel restrictions to and within Italy and France.

This advice applies for an initial period of 30 days from the date if issue and, thus, any clients whose holiday departure date is prior to 17th April 2020 may be entitled to cancel or postpone their holiday.

Where the departure date is after 16th April, the advice issued by the UK FCO regarding travel to specific countries including Italy and France is in relation to ‘imminent’ departures and, whilst there is no legal definition of ‘imminent', and each tour operator has its own process for managing future departures, imminent travel is generally considered to be travel within the next few days. In accordance with the guidelines issued by the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) Hargreaves and Nurse Holidays trading as Just Sardinia, Just Sicily and Just Corsica have stipulated a 14 day period as the limit for ‘imminent travel’, meaning that clients will only be entitled to request a refund of the amount paid for their holiday if the scheduled travel date to Italy or France is 14 days or less from the UK FCO advice being current. Accordingly, for any enquiry relating to the cancellation / amendment of a holiday where the departure date is more than 14 days ahead of that enquiry, the normal Terms and Conditions relating to cancellations will still apply.

Below are the links to the UK FCO website guidance to travel and to the ABTA guidance on travel to countries affected by the travel advice issued by the UK FCO

• UK Foreign and Commonwealth office >
• ABTA >

For specific advice on how this situation may affect your holiday and travel plans, please contact our customer services department at customerservices@hnholidays.co.uk

The above information is believed to be correct at the time of issue 11:50 26/03/2020