Brits making bogus sickness bug claims could face a holiday BAN as travel giant TUI starts blacklisting fraudulent tourists
Other tour operators like Thomas Cook and Jet2 are set to follow and will share details of fake claims between them
BRITISH holidaymakers who make false sickness claims face never being able to book a holiday with a tour operator again.
Travel giant TUI is starting to blacklist tourists it suspects of making bogus compensation bids.
Other operators like Thomas Cook and Jet2 are also set to join TUI – which owns First Choice and Thomsons.
The firms could soon start to share their banned list of customers to protect themselves from future claims – leaving excluded tourists struggling to book a break.
Nick Longman, the firm’s UK Managing Director, said: "It's been an absolute explosion.
"We have seen an enormous 1,400 per cent increase in claims in the last two years.
"This is clearly a massive issue for us - it´s a massive issue for the industry".
Nick told that his firm had opted to blacklist customers from booking with them again if they believed their claims to be false.
It is also sending letters early in the claims process to warn customers that it would be they, not the claims management companies, committing fraud if their claim was disproved.
About 50 per cent of letters sent as part of a trial scheme have led to claims being dropped, and the operator has just sent letters to a further 100 claimants it believes to be playing the system.
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Nick added: “This [the letters] has given rise to a number of solicitors saying they have dropped their claims."
In Spain, the scam is said to have cost hoteliers £50 million in the last year alone - as British tourists on all-inclusive deals have been encouraged by rogue claims companies to fake food poisoning in order to recoup the cost of their holidays.
The City of London police, the force responsible for investigating false insurance claims, have also confirmed that they will be working with hotel chains and tour operators to prosecute those suspected of making fraudulent clams.
And Cehat, the Spanish hoteliers’ association, has told the UK's four leading tour operators that hoteliers will no longer accept contractual arrangements where discounts are made to hotelier invoices to pay for false claims.
The Majorca-based travel website reports that the president of Cehat, Joan Molas, has sent a letter to the chief executives of Tui, Thomas Cook, Jet2 and Monarch to say that hoteliers have had their fill of these false claims.
He is demanding forceful action by tour operators if they wish to maintain current commercial relations.
The association notes that there has been talk of legislative measures since last autumn but that there is still no sign of any new regulations and claims that the hoteliers are forced to pay because of "inadequate legislation" in the UK.
One hotel in Crete is now suing a British couple for £170,000 for allegedly having made a false claim almost three years after they had been on holiday at the hotel.
The typical pay out for a sickness claim is somewhere between £1,000 and £2,000.
Last month Turkish hotel bosses secretly filmed a Brit dancing by the pool after being tipped off that he was going to make a scam illness claim.
It was previously revealed Spanish hotels could axe all-inclusive holidays for Brits on the back of an increase in the number of fake claims.