Holiday horrors

Travellers battle for refunds after entals go wrong

- Anna Tims tackles Airbnb and Booking.com disasters, from a tree collapsing on to a Provence cottage to being trapped in a Barcelona flat

The 100-year-old oak fell on the first day of the holiday. It crashed on to the terrace where James and his partner, Andrew, had been breakfasting minutes earlier, smashing the table and chairs and crushing the windscreen of their hire car.

The Airbnb cottage in Provence, France, was engulfed by the branches that broke the living room window and damaged the roof. "I was sure the ceiling was going to come in," says James. "If it had fallen minutes earlier we would have been seriously injured or killed."

It took a day for the host to winch the tree off the cottage and make emergency repairs, but the traumatised couple feared the property may be structurally unsound and decided to book into a hotel for the rest of their week's holiday.

Airbnb was unperturbed. "We understand this may have caused some inconvenience to you," it wrote in the first of many identical AI-generated messages before closing the unresolved case with a cheery "Keep safe. Stay healthy."

The host was unperturbed too. "All that happened to you was that you heard a loud noise and saw a tree lying on the terrace," she said in a reply to the couple's request for a refund. "You have chosen to remember the worry and trauma instead of celebrating a unique memory."

Now the summer season has ended, the holiday horror stories are flooding in to Guardian Money.

Unlucky travellers are reporting being locked in or out of their accommodation - if it existed or left stranded at night in strange cities if it did not. There are tales of filthy bedrooms, unsafe equipment and illegal sublets. One factor unites these ruined holidays: they were booked via online booking platforms, which refused a refund.

The growth of sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com has prompted a rise in travellers putting together their own holidays. The companies pour the world's property portfolio on to a website and promise to sate wanderlust on a budget.