According to Corendon, delivering the luggage at Brussels airport was the fastest option. “If we had to deliver everything at home, it would still take weeks. Now hundreds of travelers can already have their luggage from tomorrow.”
Authenticate first
Duped travelers must travel to Brussels themselves to collect their suitcases and other left luggage, because the items are behind customs. The holidaymakers must therefore first identify themselves on site, the Corendon spokeswoman explains.
The fierce forest fires turned the sky above Rhodes orange, as can be seen in these images:
All Corendon customers who flew back from Rhodes to the Netherlands because of the forest fires have received an email about their luggage. But it is not certain whether everyone who misses a suitcase will actually find it in Brussels, says the spokeswoman. “We collected and returned everything we could find.” Because not all luggage had a label, Corendon could not approach all customers personally.
Travel organization TUI does deliver the luggage of evacuated holidaymakers at home. “But we also had far fewer holidaymakers in the affected area than Corendon,” says a spokesman. She says that a TUI team is currently collecting the suitcases on Rhodes.
Evacuated TUI customers have received an email in which they can indicate where they left their suitcase and what it looks like. The spokeswoman says that as far as Dutch holidaymakers are concerned, it only concerns a few suitcases. “Most Dutch people just took their luggage with them.”
Exceptional situation
Travel industry association ANVR says that travel organizations are not obliged to return suitcases and bags left behind. “So it’s really a way to accommodate customers,” says director Frank Oostdam. He emphasizes that the situation on Rhodes was a very exceptional one, which means that travel organizations cannot be held responsible for returning luggage. “What the travel organizations do, both TUI and Corendon, is actually leniency. They don’t have to do it.”
2023-08-03 20:29:08
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