Ahmedabad: Consumer Court ordered a city-based tour operator to provide tourist compensation, whose families were made to share apartments in Switzerland with foreigners, during a European tour in 2017.
This case involved Brijesh Bhatt of Vadodara and Olive Tours Pvt Ltd.
In May 2017, the Bhatt family continued a tour to Europe held by Olive Tours and paid Rs 4.47 lakh for the package.
When tourists reach Swiss, they should live in an apartment given to them.
However, when they arrived at the apartment, they found it had been occupied by a family of three.
The Bhatt family felt difficult to adjust but said that they could not afford additional 120 Swiss francs per day for separate hotel rooms and had to accommodate foreigners.
When Bhatt expressed displeasure to the tour manager, he was promised a refund of 50%.
This did not happen and Bhatt approached the consumer dispute recovery commission, Ahmedabad (city) and urged him to direct the tour operator to return half of the package costs.
The Commission issued a notification to the tour operator but did not receive a response, lead it to hear this case ex parte.
After hearing this case, the Commission said, “When tourists do a foreign tour after spending large quantities, they go with high hopes and when they have to share rooms with strangers, it’s natural that they are surprised.” Need notices about the fact that the Bhatt family pays Rs 1.14 Lakh to rent apartments, but because they have to share it with other families, the tour operator was ordered to return half of this number – Rs 57,000 with a 7% interest.
It also ordered tour operators to pay Rs 30,000 as compensation for tourists for their legal expenditure and harassment caused by them.