Travel Alerts

This page is where you’ll find all the latest travel advice so please check for any updates that might relate to your upcoming tours with us.

A message from the CEO, Jackie Willis

To all our valued customers in 2020

In these challenging times for each of us individually and for the travel industry, I wanted to set out our position with regard to your holiday bookings for the remainder of the year.

As a medium-sized travel company, we are dealing with the impact of an unprecedented situation on hundreds of tour departures and thousands of customers. It will take time to do this, and we need to be sure that we are following the latest UK Government advice at all times. As such, we are working through our tours strictly in date order, please be assured that we will be in contact with you, but I would respectfully ask for your patience so that we can we can deal with the most urgent matters first.

From a personal perspective, I’ve been in the travel industry for 40 years and I have never experienced a situation like this. It is genuinely unprecedented, and changing all the time. We are doing everything we can to prioritise the health and wellbeing of our travellers, and to offer you the most convenient alternative arrangements if COVID-19 results in the postponement of your tour. Please bear with us and we will be in touch with you as soon as possible.

Thank you again for your custom, and best wishes from Authentic Adventures.

Jackie Willis CEO,
Specialist Journeys

We continue to monitor our tours on a case by case basis. Unfortunately many of our tours need to be cancelled in August and September due to the following:

  1. UK Government advice
  2. Our suppliers are not yet in a position to put our COVID19 11-point plan fully in place to our satisfaction
  3. Many guests are voluntarily transferring to 2021 now making these tours unviable

The following conditions apply to these tours:

  • We will make the decision whether to cancel these tours based on the above three governing factors.
  • If it does become necessary to cancel your tour, there will be no charge to transfer to the new travel dates and we will match your 2020 price (or refund the difference in the event that the 2021 price is lower). Alternatively, you may choose to transfer to any other 2021 tour (with no admin fee to pay) and we will match its 2020 price. Many 2021 tours may now be found on our website, and you should also have received your 2021 First Edition brochure (if not, you can request your copy here).
  • If you wish to transfer to a different 2021 tour before we contact you, there will be a £50pp admin fee to do so and the 2021 price would be payable.
  • If you wish to cancel now, normal booking conditions would apply.
  • We have reduced our balance payment due time from 84 days to 42 days. However, should we still not know if your tour can go ahead at 42 days prior to departure we will not take any further payment until we have secured the holiday within FCO advice and our own personal Covid19 11-point safety plan.
  • If your holiday balance is due and your tour is currently going ahead it would still be payable, and not to do so would result in the cancellation of your booking and retention of your deposit. Please note: there is no risk in paying your balance – your holiday booking/monies will be fully protected as part of our ATOL/ABTOT accreditation.
  • We reserve the right to cancel your tour within 12 weeks if the number of late customer cancellations make the tour commercially unviable.

 

  • If we have not already contacted you to advise cancellation, we are currently operating on the assumption that your tour will go ahead as planned.
  • Should any of the three key points above make your tour unviable we will contact you as quickly as we can.
  • For your peace of mind, your balance for holidays due to depart up to 31 December 2020 will not now be due until 42 days prior to departure (previously 84 days). There may be a couple of exceptions to this, where we are obliged to commit to payments in advance – you will receive a letter advising your balance due date.
  • If you wish to transfer to any 2021 tour now, there will be an administrative charge of £50 per person to do so, and the 2021 tour price will be payable.
  • If you wish to cancel now, normal booking conditions apply.
  • We reserve the right to cancel your tour within 12 weeks if the number of late customer cancellations make the tour commercially unviable.