Virgin Atlantic Holidays Recensioni 

Whilst we were on holiday the hotel The Shelburne Sonesta, New York, took nearly $1500 from our credit card that they held the details on from when we checked in. They explained to us that it was because Virgin Atlantic Holidays (VAH)had not paid them for our rooms. They then claimed they had reversed the mistake but it has taken 31 days to get our money back. We had to arrange to arrange emergency funds as this was our spending money whilst we were there. Several VHA people have since been involved but no one person tried to help us resolve it. There hasn't been any care shown and a derisory credit for a future holiday with them. I've taken it to ABTA but they've shown themselves to be irrelevant.

In summary:

- Due a refund of well over £1000, which had been told was "Processed"

- Waited 7 days for a payment link, had to chase to get one sent.

- 15+ Days later - No Refund has been provided

- Emails Ignored

- Agents pass the buck and take no ownership of the issue on the phone

I always reserve judgement on an organisation for how they react when things go wrong.

Are they sympathetic, Do they keep you informed? Do they accept responsibility for their mistakes?

Unfortunately the answer is No to all of the above.

I type this whilst stuck on hold for over an hour, presumably behind a queue of other annoyed customers.

How they are even affiliated to the Virgin name I have no idea!

Never Again.

**UPDATE** Day 16...No refund and no progress update for Virgin Holidays.

**UPDATE** Day 22...Still No Refund.

**UPDATE** 36 Days and I have my refund, only after submitting a legal letter to VH HQ

Flew from Manchester to Atlanta. 10/10

Booking Ref: 6885090 – Extremely disappointed with our Virgin Holidays experience

We booked a holiday to NYC for three adults and one teenager. Virgin’s website presented a room at the Intercontinental Times Square as suitable for our party, but it simply wasn’t. The room was 350 sq ft with two full beds and no space for a third adult. The hotel confirmed no rollaway or sofa bed was allowed due to fire regulations. They even provided bedding for one of us to sleep on the floor.

When we raised this with Virgin, the only “solutions” from the hotel were to pay $2,008 for an additional room, or $250 per night as a “reduced rate”. This was incredibly embarrassing and not something we should have been expected to pay when Virgin’s own booking system allowed this room for our party size.

We also paid extra for a “superior bay view” but were given a 3rd floor room overlooking a street-level gift shop. Nothing like the upgrade we paid for.

We were charged a $40/day amenity fee that was never clearly disclosed. Virgin couldn’t show where this information was given.

Before travelling, we were charged twice for seat selection (£156 twice), then experienced further confusion with seat upgrade charges. We paid £400 in total for seating upgrades but still had issues.

We contacted Virgin repeatedly via WhatsApp and email while in resort. Their initial replies were dismissive and didn’t address any of the issues. After that, we were ignored completely while still on holiday.

This was a particularly important trip for personal reasons, and the lack of support and communication from Virgin overshadowed what should have been a special family holiday.

I have now escalated the entire matter to ABTA and am submitting all evidence.

Lara at the Cardiff Virgin Holidays branch was superb when our honeymoon to Jamaica was cancelled due to the hurricane damage. She worked with us to find a location that met our needs and expectations, and as a result even though we can’t travel where we originally planned, we have a new location that we are delighted with! Thank you Lara!

Excellent customer service skills, demonstrated good understanding of my situation and applied great knowledge and ability to sort out my issue in one brief phone call! Thank you Ayane Daher-Barkat!

One word….. excellent.

The young lady who helped us today was
Sydnee at the Norwich branch…. what a truly lovely young lady who knew her job inside out….. a real asset to Virgin…. thank you.

I would put zero stars if I could.
I don't usually post things like this, but feel compelled to today. Please be aware if you make the mistake of using Virgin Atlantic Holidays.

My step daughter has travelled to Arizona with British Airways (visiting her boyfriend). She was due to fly back on the 26th of November. She also has a flight for her and her mum and a hotel booked with Virgin Holidays to New York on the 1st of December and returning on the 6th December. Step-daughter has been invited to stay in Arizona for thanks giving and so instead plans to travel to New York from Arizona and meet her mum there. Simple you would think. Inform Virgin that step daughter won't need the flight to New York (maybe pay a charge for amending the booking). But no. What they have said is, if she doesn't fly from London to New York, they will cancel her flight home, leaving a vulnerable young woman alone in New York with no means of returning. She doesn't have the funds to book another flight home and Virgin have confirmed that even with prior notification, they will leave her completely stranded.

To make matters worse, (we were authorised to speak to virgin on her behalf), we paid a visit to virgin holidays in Cribbs Causeway. We had the unfortunate experience of speaking to Laura or Lauren. She likes to huff and roll her eyes at you if she finds you a bit irritating. Also, when I pointed out that her company were choosing to leave a vulnerable, female single passenger in New York with no means to get home, when she had already paid for the flight, she decided she wouldn't speak to me any further because, and I quote "you are being very direct with me". I'm not making this up. I didn't swear, I wasn't rude and I wasn't abusive in any way. So WOKE is also alive and well at Virgin Holidays too. Never, ever will I ever use Virgin again for anything.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm well aware that if you don't show without notice on an outbound flight, the return is often cancelled. But that is not the case here. They have been notified, and are choosing quite deliberately to leave her high and dry in New York.

I booked a holiday with Virgin and its the first I have used them in sometime, as I have always found them expensive compared to BA holidays, however on this occasion they had a £200 off discount with them.

I booked my holiday, entered the discount code and it came up that it was accepted it even still says it on my booking. It was late at night and I actually did not notice until the day after that the discount had not actually came off.

I emailed the customer service department, never heard anything so about 10 days later I emailed again. On day 18 they finally replied to me.

They said the holiday I booked was outside the dates for the £200 discount, even though the code was accepted. Tough was the response I got from Virgin and guess what I am outside the cool off period, which I suspect was the reason they did not answer for 18 days.

I am taking it further but people watch out and pay attention unlike me!

They did not add the points to our membership. So we lost all the points, that should have been added by the advisor.
I did contact customer services but they said as it's been over 6 months they can't help.

AVOID! On arrival to Orlando and entering the villa at Windsor Island Resorts we had been allocated via the entrance code, which was emailed to us the day before departure, we opened the door to find that it was already occupied and another families belongings were in the property, we tried contacting Virgin immediately as well as Tropical escapes who are the property management company that Virgin use, to be told that we had been allocated the property so we should remain in that property and advice the family when they return that they would have to leave as this villa is allocated to us, we of course did not feel comfortable with not only starting the holiday by confronting the family that were residing there already but the beds had been slept in and the fridge and cupboards were stocked with food for their stay and their valuable property was in the villa. We refused to do this and left the property, my husband went and fetched the security from Windsor Island gates, who attended and entered the property using the code we had, once he saw that the villa was clearly occupied he told us that we could not reenter under any circumstances and that he would have to call the sherrif as we would be trespassing. Ultimately, Virgin and Tropical Escapes had put us in an extremely vulnerable situation, with the threat of potentially being arrested or shot for trespassing, should the family occupying the property be American and carrying a gun. Absolutely disgraceful advice and support from Tropical escapes. We were then ushered off the property by the security, which was extremely embarrassing and distressing.
We then spent over an hour trying to get through to Virgin to sort out the issue and get some sort of accommodation allocated to us, which we eventually did but the newly allocated villa was a downgrade from what we had originally booked, and arrived at, in fact it was far from suitable, but it was a bed for the night which was more than what we had at the time and Virgin advised that it was out of hours and this was all they had available at that time so At this point it was 10pm and we had already missed out on our first evening at Disney.
Day 2: Both the phone call or the visit requested from the local Virgin rep didn't happen by 10am as promised, and by 1pm we decided to go and make the most of the rest of the day, visiting Disney, albeit much later that we had anticipated. However, we went and had a fantastic but short visit to the park, but when we arrived back at our Villa at 11.20pm we found that the code for the door had been changed whilst we were out and we could not access the villa. ALL of our personal belongings, including diabetes medication, passports, money, cards and clothes were in the villa that we did not have access to. We tried calling Virgin, numerous times but we were met with an automated message saying the lines were now closed and to call back during the opening hours, we tried contacting Nikita on the number she had called us from the previous day which took us directly through to Virgin Atlantic, who were extremely rude telling me the only thing they can do is change my flight. We then called Tropical escapes, who were unable to locate our booking, my husband was on the call to them for over 2 hours trying to get a resolution. I then managed to get through to a Virgin out of hours emergency number that I had found online and was instructed to leave a voicemail, which I did explaining the situation and asking for a call back. In the mean time we had again visited the security on the gate at Windsor island resort, who have nothing to do with the Villas and are only their for traffic control in the resort, but they were very helpful in trying to locate the property owner to help us as the 7 of us were sat outside on the curb with nowhere to go in the middle of the night and they felt sorry for us. The security did eventually find the property owner after alot of digging and we managed to gain access to the property at 3.30am when the owner remotely opened to door for us. Virgin a Tropical escapes had been completely useless during this horrific experience, being homeless in the middle of the night, sat on the curbside in awful conditions and paying £20k for the privilege!
I spent endless hours of my holiday calling and emailing to try and get an apology and an adequate resolution and we were offered $200 Disney dollars between 7 people! You can't even get a quick service meal each with that! I then attempted once we were home and again spent weeks arguing with customer care managers due to the lack of empathy and accountability. Needless to say £20k once in a lifetime holiday was an absolute nightmare and completely ruined, no way would I ever use or recommend Virgin holidays again. I thought when I booked that I was using a reputable company...boy was i wrong!

Dear Virgin Holidays Customer Relations,
I am writing to raise a formal complaint regarding the service I have received from your Northampton store, specifically from a staff member named Joel Archer, in relation to my holiday booking for Florida in May 2026-
We originally booked a two-week holiday through the Northampton branch and later made changes to our booking, which incurred a £250 admin fee. This fee was listed on the total holiday bill due.
Recently, I noticed that the same holiday is being advertised on your website for £3,000 approx cheaper, our original holiday priced at £8609.81. Because of this significant price difference, me and my husband contacted the Northampton store to ask for updated pricing for travelling on a different date 13th may instead of 16th may, including the admin fees, so that we could make an informed decision about whether to amend or continue with our existing booking.
However, I was extremely disappointed to find that this information was withheld. I was told by Joel Archer on email that I would need to pay the previous £250 admin fee again before being provided with any pricing, meaning I was expected to pay £250 in admin fees and then additional £250 if we went ahead with the change, all without even knowing whether the new price would be suitable.
This approach is unreasonable and does not align with transparent customer service. Had we been given clarity on the new pricing and decided to proceed with the date change, we would of course have been prepared to pay the appropriate admin fees totalling £500. Our request was simply to understand the cost before committing further money.
Because this information was withheld, the situation reached a point where we would rather lose our booking £750 deposit entirely than to continue working through the store with Joel as his attitude has been discusting. This is unacceptable and has resulted in unnecessary financial loss and significant frustration.
Joel archer has been a terrible travel agent from as soon as he got the sale from us, he has lacked care and couldn't be bothered attitude with us in comparison to how lovely and helpful the girls were in store. i have phoned head office today and spoken with a lovely lady Rabia who advised that pricing up/ quoting a change to the date of our booking- a price should have been given and if we decided on making that change then of course admin fees would have to be paid, but not paying admin fees before full transparency of the pricing is wrong- this should not have been withheld and gatekept from the customer. Customer service should have been put first and should have been more important than worrying about his own loss of commission.
I would have been happy to pay the admin fees due but not willing to put more money to you when you already hold £750 depsoit if you cant give a price of what was advertised online on the virgin website..
I have always trusted Virgin Holidays with my travel plans, but this experience has left me extremely dissatisfied and feeling pressured into paying fees without transparency of what the new price would be if we went ahead.

***had area manager Lynn hogg phone me and she didn't care, absolutely shocking service no resolution.***

Terrible service avoid

I booked a holiday with Virgin Atlantic back in January of this year, and had been paying in instalments. I was paid early from work in October, so decided to clear the remaining balance a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. However, I was charged the remainder of the balance a too. Effectively paying twice. This has been a huge inconvenience. I spent several hours trying to contact Virgin, to be passed from 1 department to the next, or be cut off by their useless web-bot. Eventually I managed to speak to someone who proceeded to tell me what had happened. I was fully aware of what had happened, I just wanted to know why it had. Also more importantly when I would get a refund. This process has been so long winded and handled incredibly poorly, we're 3 weeks down the line now and I have not had my money back. I have tried making contact with a manager, however a regular agent keeps responding to my emails and does not give a hoot that I am out of pocket and now in my overdraft. They just keep saying that it is my fault for clearing the balance early. I am thoroughly disappointed and very upset by this whole episode. No offer of an apology or anything remotely helpful has been posted my way. I sincerely hope it is a very good holiday, because this is probably the worst customer service department that I have ever dealt with. * update. I have still not received any form of correspondence back from these cowboys, nor has my £225.41 been returned...*

Lucinda was helpful and knowledgable about the trip we wanted to make and was helpful in looking at various options with us. We even finished with booking the holiday and toasting with a glass of proesseco and a Lindt.

Went in to see the Girls at Virgin Atlantic Holidays at Next High Wycombe to have a whinge about Sandals Negril from previous holiday when we wished to return and it was a Sandals promotion appointment.Claire Hawgood listened attentively to what we complained about and then managed to find a holiday back at Sandals Negril that addressed our complaint and the 3 of us left very happy customers again Holiday booked

Andrew was amazing! Extremely helpful, friendly and made our experience enjoyable. Would highly recommend.

Jo has been amazing, so efficient and fast with her responses. She has made looking for our holiday so much easier and has been really helpful. Thanks Jo!

Both Sydnee and Beth at the Norwich store provided an efficient and successful resolution to a long term holiday booking problem. Cannot thank them enough.

Really disappointed with the customer service from such a brand. I went online last week, booked and paid in full for my holiday. After receiving no email confirmation from Virgin, I called them. I was advised the reservation wasn’t possible as the rooms were no longer available, even though it was visible online and payment was made??? I was then informed there was no booking for the payment to be attached to even though it had left my account. A manager called me to advise the same and said she would contact accounts to locate the payment and process the refund immediately. A week on and this still hasn’t happened. I’ve made several calls to virgin to confirm if the payment has been located and refund processed however, staff advise they don’t know how to help, hang up or return my call to the main menu. Virgin has over £13k of my money and I have no holiday. I’ve now had to instruct for my bank to retrieve the money.

Good news I spoke to a manager and she extended our holiday by a day and paid for an extra nights accommodation. So happy was passed from person to person but finally got someone who was helpful. Salma pre departure thanks for sorting things out for us x