Britons lose Spanish villa holidays as morairaway.com shuts down

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Dozens of British families have lost expensive summer holidays worth an average £3,000 after booking through a defunct website, www.morairaway.com.

And the number is mounting as British-based holiday lettings websites that carried adverts for morairaway.com try to get in touch with customers who booked and paid.

The final amount involved could top £500,000. Spanish police have already launched an investigation into the Malaga-based company whose website does now not work and whose telephone number is out of order.

The victims include Parminder Chana, who planned to celebrate his 21st wedding anniversary in style at a luxurious villa in Spain, surrounded by his family.

He spent nearly £3,350 for a two-week stay at a five-bedroom villa with swimming pool in Javea near Alicante.

“I wanted to do something special for our anniversary and we booked this villa as it looked very nice and professional,” said Mr Chana, 46, a property developer from Essex. “Now we hope this will act as a warning to others who may not be aware of what has happened.”

When morairaway.com stopped answering emails and there was no response to calls to its telephone number, Mr Chana took the unusual step of flying to Alicante to investigate.

He established from Spanish police in the area that no villa existed at the address he had been given in Javea. Mr Chana made a complaint to police who launched the investigation.

It now appears that morairaway.com had for the past three months placed adverts on British-based letting agencies, including www.holidaylettings.co.uk.

Timesonline has learned that two English names were given as contact details to holidaylettings.co.uk - Tony Duncan-Smith and Simon Dawson - who described themselves as agent advertisers running the letting agency, morairaway.

Other sites including www.holiday-rentals.co.uk also carried adverts, along with a Spanish based site, www.spain-holiday.com

The lettings sites merely act as a classified agent and refer on enquiries, rather than take bookings themselves. They make their money by charging for adverts by time and position on the site.

However they insist that checks were carried out on morairway.com as with all advertisers - but that nothing flagged up a warning.

Kate Stinchcombe, a spokeswoman for holidaylettings.co.uk, said: "We did as many checks as we can. We have a number of checks that flag up suspicious behaviour, such as firms using multiple IP addresses or the payment process not correlating with addresses supplied.

"We use software and inhouse systems, while a number of our customer services team creating the adverts also saw nothing. They (morairaway) did everything right, and behaved like an average advertiser.

"We are really shocked that this has happened. But as nothing was flagged up, we don’t have any concrete evidence that this is fraud or if the business just collapsed."

Holidaylettings.co.uk has contacted 400 customers who made enquiries through its website to morairaway.com, and already found out that between 35-40 had proceeded to book. The figure for holiday-rentals.co.uk is believed to be similair, and the losses are mounting by the hour.

A spokeswoman for Holiday-Rentals said: " We are doing everything possible to assist the police with their investigations, and assist and advise the individuals affected. Those who registered for our Rental Guarantee will also be covered for any losses up to £3,300 (or €4,000). "

John O’Brien, 41, who runs a specialist building company near Glasgow, paid morairaway.com £3,600 for three weeks in a villa in Javea for his wife Angela, their three children and four other family members next month.

“We booked online and transferred the money without questioning it. It was a long-deserved summer holiday,” said Mr O’Brien. “We feel so silly but we have busy lives so we trusted them. Now we have nothing booked.”

Other victims, including Dutch and French customers, have contacted expatriate websites like www.expatforum.com - where one poster says the morairaway.com domain name has only existed for nine months - and only bought for a year.

A Spanish police spokesman said: “We can confirm we are investigating if these people have been defrauded.”

All efforts to contact morairaway.com by The Times in Spain proved unsuccessful as its website says it is ‘under construction’ and their telephone number appears to be out of order.

As customers paid direct, their only recourse to getting their money back is if paid using a credit card. But it is believed that some booked through Paypal, which also has procedures to reclaim if queried witin 45 days.

As the holiday season reaches its height, this apparent scam will do the struggling Spanish tourism industry no favours.

The number of British visitors to Spain this year has fallen 18 per cent, according to figures released yesterday by the Spanish Tourism Ministry.