Simon Calder issues mobile roaming warning for summer holidaymakers
Holidaymakers in Corfu have recently faced bills of up to £300 due to their phones connecting to Albanian mobile phone masts.
This issue of unexpected roaming charges is not confined solely to the Corfu and Albania region.
The Independent 's travel expert, Simon Calder, provides essential information on how to avoid these additional costs.
Watch the video above.
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The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Our flight was cancelled because of the software glitch – can we get compensation?
Q Our flight was delayed and should have left before Wednesday's air traffic control failure. Then the failure happened, and our flight was subsequently cancelled. Are we entitled to financial compensation? Clare B A You were among around 25,000 passengers whose flights were cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday as a result of the 'software glitch' at Nats, the national air traffic control service. The event temporarily closed the skies above southeast England and led to dozens of diversions and delays. In peak summer, there is little slack in the system. With planes, pilots and passengers out of position, cancellations swiftly began. When a flight is cancelled, the default assumption in UK and European air passengers' rights rules is that airlines are obliged to pay compensation of between £220 and £520, depending on the length of the trip. But if the carrier can show that ' extraordinary circumstances ' were responsible, it dodges that liability. The general principle: if the cause was beyond the airline's control – such as bad weather, a security incident or airspace closure – there is no need to pay out. Your case is unusual because you should have been safely clear of the UK before the system failed. You can put in a claim with the airline, arguing that a timely departure would have avoided problems. Expect the claim to be declined on the grounds that it would only have been a modest delay had the system not failed. You could then go to alternative dispute resolution, a free service for passengers. If this fails, you could go to Money Claim Service – or at least write a letter before action stating your intention to do so, giving the airline a chance to settle. The next step, actually making a claim, requires you to pay a fee; I am not sure I would advise you to go ahead. Whatever the cause of a cancellation, the airline is responsible for providing accommodation and meals until it can get you to your destination. If you had to fix things yourself, send the itemised evidence to the airline. There should be no issue in getting the money back, as long as you leave any alcoholic drinks out of the claim. Q You wrote about British Airways wanting to charge £900 extra for switching you to an earlier flight. I believe that if you turn up early and there are seats available, it's a no-brainer for any airline to let you on. So why doesn't BA allow it? Mary C A I find myself in the unusual position of defending a British Airways policy that did not work out in my favour last Friday night. These were the circumstances: I was flying from London Heathrow to Istanbul and unexpectedly arrived at the airport in time to catch the earlier flight. Seats were available, but they were in business class only. I was told I could fly on it, but only after paying the difference between what I had paid for an economy ticket (£266) and the prevailing business fare (£1,203). I politely declined. I can come up with any number of arguments for why it would have been in BA's interests to allow me on board, after perhaps taking £50 from me and upgrading an elite member of the British Airways Club to business class in order to make room for me. The airline would have gained extra loyalty at zero cost. BA would also have avoided potential extra expense, had the later flight 'gone tech', requiring alternative flights and hotel accommodation, and the payment of £350 in compensation. Yet there are some powerful arguments against allowing those on cheaper economy tickets to switch to earlier flights. The first is this: tickets on a flight that gets you to Istanbul close to 1am are always going to be cheaper than those promising an early evening arrival. If free switches were permitted, then passengers would game the system, booking a later flight in the hope of changing to an earlier one. Next, flexibility has a value – and airlines prefer to reserve this facility for passengers who have paid more for their trips. If the opportunity to switch for little or no cost were granted to everyone, that benefit would be eroded. Finally, and most practically: this was all happening at Heathrow within an hour of departure. Given all the demanding dimensions of dispatching an aircraft, catering to the whims of a cheapskate passenger are low on the list of priorities. I hope I have presented BA's argument reasonably. Q What can you tell me about Vueling? Also, would you say that flying with them is worth the risk? I've read some pretty awful reviews. But when I was looking for flights to Rome in September, Vueling popped up as the carrier on the British Airways site. Nick C A Vueling, based in Barcelona, is Spain's leading budget airline. It has an interesting route network. As well as operating lots of flights between London (Heathrow and Gatwick) and the usual suspects of Barcelona, Malaga, Paris and Rome, it serves smaller Spanish cities including the northern trio of Bilbao, Oviedo and Santiago. Vueling has a useful link from Gatwick to Florence, which I prefer to Pisa as a gateway to Tuscany (except when poor weather scuppers the landing). The airline connects Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester with Spanish destinations. And if you ever need to visit west Africa, change planes in Barcelona and continue on Vueling to either Banjul in Gambia or Dakar in Senegal. I have flown frequently on Vueling, most recently from Paris to Gatwick, and have another flight booked in September from Gatwick to Barcelona. I haven't studied reviews, but my conclusion is this: Vueling is fine from an operational point of view, with no significant advantages or disadvantages compared with easyJet, Wizz Air or indeed British Airways on shorthaul. They all fly Airbus A320 series aircraft with much the same seat configuration. Indeed, the 'layout of passenger accommodation' (or LOPA, as it is known in the industry) is identical on Vueling and British Airways, which are sister airlines. The main difference is that BA keeps the middle seat empty in business class. The crew are friendly and professional, and Vueling has a good safety record. It also has an unusual but welcome policy of tackling overbooking by inviting passengers on heavily booked flights to switch to another departure in return for a voucher. One aspect at which Vueling does not perform well: customer service when things go wrong, with cancellations or long delays. A fair number of people have contacted me to say that getting compensation – or recompense when they have had to pay for hotels – proves difficult. But if Vueling has the best schedule and price for your trip, there is no reason to avoid the airline. Q My 11-year-old nephew is obsessed with aviation. What can you recommend in the way of flight-related websites and aircraft attractions that would appeal to him? Sean K A I use the excellent free Flightradar24 service professionally all the time – to check flight cancellations and delays across major airports, for example. But it is also a mesmerising website/app for anyone interested in aviation. Right now, I am looking in real time at flights coming in from Corfu, Zurich and Ho Chi Minh City to London Heathrow. You can filter for passenger, cargo, military and business jets, as well as the elusive 'lighter-than-air' category. For destination dreaming, your nephew might like to try the Great Circle Mapper website. You tap in the airport codes separated by a hyphen (eg LHR-SFO) and it will instantly show the straightest line ('Great Circle route') between London Heathrow and San Francisco International. Not only is it an excellent way to see how that UK-to-California route goes well into the Arctic – he can also start to learn all those tricky airport codes, such as ORD for Chicago and AGP for Malaga. In terms of UK aviation museums, for mainly military aircraft, I recommend the Imperial War Museum outpost at Duxford, near Cambridge. For civil aviation, the Runway Visitor Park in Manchester is excellent. It is adjacent to the taxiways at the UK's third-busiest airport, and also has a Concorde – the closest anyone these days can get to the supersonic era. Around the world, the best aviation museum I have been to is Aeroscopia Toulouse, on the edge of the airport in southwest France. It can be combined easily with the fascinating Airbus factory tour, which I hope will fuel an interest in your nephew in working in the world of international connectivity.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
My easy-breezy family holiday to Europe's wackiest theme park
I used to be fun. Before I had kids, planning for a theme park visit would have meant getting excited about rollercoasters and wondering if I would have time to ride the best ones twice. Now? It's all fretting about parking, luggage and the sheer tedium of how to get around a busy attraction in the school summer holidays with three small kids. Or is it? I was the first journalist through the doors of the new hotel at beloved Dutch theme park Efteling, just ahead of the official opening on August 1, and the first clue that things might be a bit different here came a week or so before we arrived. Check-in at Efteling Grand Hotel was completed online, our car registration was taken and valet parking confirmed. Fast forward to our stay and there we were sailing through the automatic barriers, handing our car keys to a man in a waistcoat and watching our luggage being whisked away while the children pinged around the hotel's elegant lobby like cats released from cages (or, rather, preschoolers unclipped after a day spent in their car seats). It's about a four-hour drive from the Calais end of the Channel tunnel to Efteling in the south of the Netherlands, an hour or so from Rotterdam, and it showed. In the lobby our five-year-old banged on the keys of the grand piano, her younger sister sprinted up the spiral staircase and their two-year-old brother clambered over an artfully arranged pile of vintage suitcases. Fortunately, there were indulgent smiles from the hotel staff as we corralled them all into the lift and up to our suite. Thanks to the Efteling app, I had our room key already to hand: no in-person check-in required. Rooms at the hotel are vast. Ours had three separate bedrooms (two doubles, the other with bunks), while even the smallest I saw came with a built-in single kids bunk. All 140 of them have views of the park — across to the thatched peaks of the entrance building and the fountains of Vonderplas lake, or into the Fairytale Forest, where recreations of 31 fairytale scenes, including Rapunzel in her tower and Sleeping Beauty in her castle, are dotted throughout a pleasant woodland. The kids pressed their palms against the floor-to-ceiling windows and fizzed with excitement. There's a nod to the grand 19th-century hotels of Europe throughout the hotel, with squishy carpets in bold monochrome print, wood-panelled walls painted rich magenta and plenty of brushed gold, but what really sets Efteling Grand Hotel apart is its location. This isn't one of those theme park hotels that requires shuttle buses and lengthy walks to reach the park gates; it is literally inside the park. Plus, guests not only have their own dedicated entrance to the Fairytale Forest, but also access to the park half an hour ahead of everybody else. So we were into the park at 9.30am the next morning, standing alone outside Hansel and Gretel's house and coming face to squealing face with a dragon. There's a glorious almost-wild feeling to this part of the park, with logs to climb on and paths that wind between the trees. This zone dates back to 1952 and was the work of the Dutch artist Anton Pieck and the film-maker Peter Reijnders. It's a charming place, not least because it immediately engages all three children, who spot gnomes and a troll king, and talk to a parrot that talks right back, speaking sagely of not answering the door to the big bad wolf. The highlight? Probably the Pinocchio attraction, where the four-year-old shrieks with glee as she swings a vast fishing rod in the face of a giant monster fish and finds the wooden boy hiding inside its mouth. Because the hotel is just inside the park gates we were able to break up exploring its attractions with short rests in our room or a quick swim in the indoor pool. This immediately became my favourite spot in the hotel, with a more spa-like feel than any family pool I've seen: the water was properly warm, there were bubble jets the kids could sit among with us and a soothing dusky-blue-and-white colour scheme throughout. Even better, the shallowest pool was only 5cm deep and came with a water jet and an array of (tastefully coloured) plastic cups for little ones to play with. It kept our youngest entertained for ages, while the complimentary armbands meant our two nonswimmers could safely pootle around the deeper pools more or less unaided. I actually relaxed for a few minutes there. Unfortunately the hotel's restaurants didn't quite nail it. There are two, both overlooking Vonderplas lake: Brasserie 7 on the ground floor, which serves classic dishes such as French onion soup and steak tartare (mains from £21), and Mystique, a family fine dining affair on the first floor. I could perhaps chalk up Brasserie 7's glacially slow service to teething problems, but I can't imagine families wanting to book Mystique's 'adventurous flavour combinations' (£56 for three courses). It's not recommended for children younger than nine, but even so, we're talking ingredients such as wasabi root and kohlrabi and I'm not sure you would want to spend several hours sitting at a restaurant table, given the park stays open until 10pm. Better, I'd say, to come here for a drink, taken while perched on a stool overlooking the crowds during the nightly Aquanura fountain show that lights up Vonderplas lake. On our final afternoon I took advantage of the hotel's superb location, sending my husband on the easy stroll back to the room with the kids while I grabbed the opportunity to indulge my love of rollercoasters. Thanks to Efteling's separate lines for solo riders, which slot you into otherwise empty seats, I was able to walk straight on to Joris en de Draak and was speeding along its wooden track, whooping, arms raised, before the kids would even have found the TV remote. Within the hour I had also ridden the speedy steel coaster Python, the indoor coaster Vogel Rok, which swoops like an eagle through utter darkness, and my instant favourite, Baron 1898. All my pretrip fretting over practicalities hadn't allowed any time for reading about Efteling's rides, which left me totally unprepared for Baron 1898's whopping 37.5m freefall. And so, surprised and delighted, I let out an involuntary giggle/gasp as we hung motionless above the drop — and sparked a booming belly laugh from the man seated next to me. Perhaps I can still be quite fun after all. Helen Ochyra was a guest of Efteling Grand Hotel, which has B&B family rooms for four from £508, including valet parking and park entry ( Drive from the UK, or take the train or fly to Eindhoven
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
A splashier splash — London's poshest pools
Many of us dream of a cool pool, perhaps surrounded by comfortable day beds, or indeed a chic Mediterranean restaurant serving cold rosé wine and crustacea, maybe even a panoramic view. But we Londoners do not need to jump on a plane to enjoy such delights, they can be found right here, in dreamy marble-clad basements and on fancy rooftops. Furthermore there is no off-season with these pools, they are as lovely in winter as in summer. If you are looking for somewhere to swim in serenity, Surrenne (a private members Club in The Emory), is an excellent choice. Since its opening in April 2024, the subterranean wellness sanctuary has offered fitness classes, spa treatments and nutritional guidance. During the day their 22m pool is illuminated by a sky light, and in the evenings by candlelight. An underwater speaker provides a soundtrack for your strokes. Poolside cabanas with matching cream-coloured curtains line one side of the pool and the changing room is kitted out with ring lit mirrors and all the Dyson appliances you could possibly desire. The sand coloured walls, floor and general décor creates a harmonious vibe. • Dynamic destinations for luxury travel Exclusive access is reserved for hotel guests or members who get to enjoy the 2000 square metres of tranquillity that not only encompasses the pool but also treatment rooms, gym and Tracy Anderson studio. Membership is £10,000 per year (with an initial £5000 joining fee). This Grade II* Edwardian Baroque building is where Winston Churchill once conducted a war and the intelligence services orchestrated global espionage. Now it is a Raffles hotel, opening in 2023 after a £1.4 billion renovation. The hotel's spa is the grandly titled Pillar Wellbeing Centre, encompassing 2,500 square metres over four-floors. The pool is 20 metres long with double height ceilings, the walls are sand coloured and there are cushioned beds for recuperating after laps. If you work up an appetite the spa kitchen offers cold-pressed juices and seasonal dishes. The spa is available to hotel guests and members of Pillar Wellbeing. A membership will set you back by £6,500 a year for an individual, £12,000 for joint or £25,000 for the platinum membership (that includes unlimited personal coaching, extra spa treatments, guest passes and discounts). Situated barely a stone's throw from the Thames, this hotel is not just known for its lavish river front rooms, it is also celebrated for its four-floor, 3,300 sq m Espa Life spa. One of these floors is carved out exclusively for thermal relaxation. It is there that you will find their two pools. A stainless-steel swimming pool with ambient lighting is crafted for gentle laps and has mattress-like pool-side beds, whereas the vitality pool is more mindless floating. There is a sauna and steam room as well as an ice fountain where you rub crushed ice over your heated skin. And lest we forget the relaxation pod — well for, relaxation. Meanwhile, in the changing rooms there are heated marble loungers and sleep pods as well as a fully equipped vanity station and healthy snack selection. Available to those having a treatment at the spa, hotel guests and members; the £625 per month membership will not only provide access to the pool and spa but it also gives you six spa treatments, small group personal training sessions, two blow dry appointments at the Corinthia salon and ten guest passes. Set within Carlton Tower's three floor Peak Fitness Club and Spa is London's largest naturally lit swimming pool measuring 20-metres. The pool is on the second floor with almost the entire ceiling made up of windows – you may quite easily mistake it for an outdoor pool. Until it rains, of course. Sun loungers line the edge of the pool, accompanied by a jacuzzi as well as the thermal spa (with sauna and steam room) nearby. The changing rooms have warm Bottino marble décor, plush robes and thoughtful touches like jewellery trays. • The most exuberant swimming trunks for summer To access the spa you will need to be either a member of the club or a hotel guest. Prospective members must submit a detailed written application that if accepted provides access to the fitness and spa facilities (pool, gym, treatment rooms) as well as the chic members club lounge overlooking Cadogan Gardens. If successful, members will fork out a joining fee of £2500 followed by a £550 monthly fee. Private members club, Shoreditch house, has a fully heated 16 metre rooftop pool which is open all year round. It shares the roof with a bar and Japanese restaurant so you can refuel with sushi and sake. The style is inspired by the 1920s, with vintage-looking red and white striped loungers and blue tiling — this pool is for those who love to be at the centre of the party, not quietly relaxing solo. • Francesca Amfitheatrof's golden summer Only members and their plus-ones can use the pool. Applications are reviewed quarterly, and memberships start at £200 a month. They also include full use of the workspaces, restaurant, library and health club (with spa and gym). The Berkeley rooftop pool is only 13.5 metres long, but the view over London's rooftops and Hyde Park is boundless. If you manage to peel your eyes away from the city's skyline for one second, you will find you've been transported to the med, with lemon trees placed around the pool's perimeter and fuchsia-coloured flowers adorning the bar. Open from 7am-7pm, this heated pool has stylish loungers lining just the one side so that the toe-dippers amongst us won't miss a second of the views. Despite being available to hotel guests only, this summer — after 7:30pm on Thursdays to Sundays — this swimming sanctuary turns into Capri in the City where a spot can be booked to enjoy Italian-inspired cocktails like an Amalfi Gin Granita and share plates of Lobster pizza or burrata and watch the sun set over Hyde Park's treetops. All whilst laying horizontally on a pool side lounger — if the table and chairs aren't fun enough for you. Soho House's newest London outpost offers workspaces, gym, fitness classes, terrace, bars, restaurant but most importantly a rooftop pool. A lift in the entrance hall will zoom you up to the ninth floor where the blue-tiled heated pool is the central feature to the French-inspired restaurant that surrounds it. At 16 metres long, you'll find more social swimmers looking for a dip n' dine than Olympic athletes. Snuggly sofas with chic wooden chairs and tables are arranged on the terrace's edge to maximise the panoramic cityscape views. The rooftop of this Brutalist building brings geometric shapes and bold colours together to create a stylishly retro aesthetic. If you fancy a splash around in the 180 House pool, the £200 a month membership will get you (and three plus ones) access to everything they have to offer. But a £316 a month 'Every House' membership provides unlimited access to all amenities offered by their 40+ houses across the globe.
