Hi Binkie,

I have replied to this sort of question in your previous thread for Flavours of Tuscany 2018:

Some time ago, we offered some of our tours as “make your own way” however there were some issues which impacted on the overall holiday itinerary for the entire group.

We are aware that we have a number of travellers from overseas and are always looking at ways to make our holidays more accessible to them. As such, we are trialling this “make your own way” with travellers from Canada and if it is a success, we’ll look to roll it out to other travellers around the world.

I hope that this helps.

Kindest Regards,

Amy

In relation to Sarah S's mention of Canadian travellers joining the tours on a land only basis, why only those from Canada? As a British lady living in France and longing to join one or more Just You holidays, I would welcome the chance to join a tour at the hotel or indeed at the airport instead of wasting time, and more importantly money, flying to the UK just to join the tour to its destination. I have seen other posts from fellow Brits living overseas (Stella?) who would also welcome this opportunity.

Hi Katy,

The reason we have set up the facility for groups to book is to prevent the above scenario. A group would be allocated a different departure and not on the same tour as those individuals who have booked.

I can advise that we have already declined some group bookings who were looking to travel with the main tours and provided them with their own dates.

Kindest regards,

Julia

Julia

JY should have offered the group booking another date in June and kept the 1 June for single travellers or has been mentioned  direct them over to Travelsphere not pinch the brochure dates.

Still disappointed and so are a lot of other readers on here.

Gill

Julia thank you for the clarification.

Katy

Hi Katy,

The reason we have set up the facility for groups to book is to prevent the above scenario. A group would be allocated a different departure and not on the same tour as those individuals who have booked.

I can advise that we have already declined some group bookings who were looking to travel with the main tours and provided them with their own dates.

Kindest regards,

Julia

My worry would be that on a tour taking say 25 total, a block booking was taken of say 15, leaving the other 10 spots to solo travellers. The solo travellers would then constantly have to work round the fact that the group wanted to always sit together at meals, on the bus, would want the timings to suit them, etc etc. Awful

Don't have issues with a couple of friends on trips, sometimes they've met on previous JY trips.

Hi Julia.

I suspect that this may also have happened with the Sardinia trip (2nd May 2018 departure), that I queried about a couple of weeks ago? 

I know that the whole issue of block booking has come up several times on the forum and it is certainly something that I do not agree with in any form.

I can't believe this has been allowed to happen for a brochured departure date. Why where the group not directed to travel sphere? After my experience with a group of ten travelling in Appulia last year, I was given an appologly and assured that this should not have happened. In that instance, JY must have been well aware of the group booking: the bookings were linked with group members allocated adjacent rooms. I appreciate that some smaller group bookings can slip through, but for a supposedly singles company to group book a whole tour leads me to question what JY considers the core business to be? Canadian travellers on land only basis, groups or singles?

Hi Julia,

Thank you for explaining that, and replying so quickly. I have nothing against bespoke tours, as such, as long as they do not affect other single travellers, but this one must have slipped through the net!

Cheers,

Hils

Hi Hils,

Let me step in on this one... I’m sure you are aware, as we are, that groups have been booking individually to get around the not being able to book together on a Just You holiday. This has meant that on occasion our individual travellers holidays have been affected.

To try and prevent this, and to try and keep the integrity of the Just You brand being for like-minded single travellers, the decision was made that we would provide a facility, for those who want to travel as a group on a Just You holiday to be able to book together on a bespoke date. This would mean that a group who would be known to each other are not travelling with the rest of our Just You travellers. On this occasion, it appears that a brochured date may have been used (and subject to demand, we would look to replace this).

Having this facility is a good thing – it will enable us to keep group bookings away from our regular Just You tours and our ultimately our independent solo travellers.

Kindest regards,

Julia