Episode 1 Rip Off Britain

We asked you who's left you feeling ripped off when it comes to your

holidays, and you came back with a catalogue of travel disasters.

It happens all the time, that somebody else has paid less for

their holiday that I've paid more for.

The costs of these things is certainly going up and up.

I always think someone's trying to rip me off somewhere along the line.

Whether it's a deliberate rip-off, a simple mistake,

or a catch in the small print,

we'll find out why you're out of pocket and what you can do about it.

Your stories, your money.

This is Rip-Off Britain.

Hello, and an especially warm welcome to Rip-Off Britain, which is

coming to you from the sunshine of Tenerife, which is where we've come

to try and get to the bottom of some of the problems that you've been

telling us you've had with your holidays.

And I have to say that, in recent months, we seem to have had even

more of those than ever before, no doubt because this really has

been an especially turbulent year for the industry as a whole.

It certainly has. Whether it was airlines going bust

or hurricanes tearing through resorts,

tens of thousands of holiday-makers have found themselves in some cases

quite literally in the eye of the storm as a succession of travel

dramas and disasters, some man-made, others natural,

played out, with the whole world watching.

Well, of course, the situations that so many of you had the misfortune to

be caught up in meant big customer service challenges for the airlines

and companies involved.

And while some of those businesses did treat those affected very well,

that wasn't always the case.

So, today, we're going to look at what went wrong.

We're going to try and see if lessons can be learned,

and prevent something similar happening again.

Coming up - holidays in the headlines,

as thousands of you were caught up in 2017's biggest travel dramas.

The wind was so fierce that it was pushing the water through the double

doors off the balcony, and obviously the room was flooding.

What impact will those events have on your travel plans this year?

And how holiday-makers talked into making bogus sickness claims

threaten to change the face and price of family holidays forever.

Well, it certainly seems that 2017 was a year when travel stories

dominated front pages and headlines like never before.

Some of the reasons for that, such as civil unrest,

particularly violent hurricanes, are always really difficult to predict.

But other situations, like airlines cancelling flights,

airlines going bust,

with hindsight seem to have been bubbling away for quite some time.

Either way, what all of those stories have in common is

the devastating effect that they had on those holiday-makers that were

caught up in the very heart of the story, and often hundreds of miles

away from home.

From emergency evacuations...

Asking us to leave is unnecessary, I think, at the moment.

But I understand that we need to do it.

..to wildfires sweeping across coastlines.

The shocking thing about it was how quickly it took hold.

For some of you, the holidays you booked in 2017 will stick in

the mind for all the wrong reasons.

Whether because of a man-made disaster...

-..or Mother Nature flexing her muscles.

-It was quite frightening.

We had to just wait for it to hit and hope for the best, really.

British holiday-makers were caught up in a succession of dramatic

events that threw their holidays into turmoil and, in some cases,

left them reliant on others to get home safely.

It all started in January, when hundreds of British tourists,

enjoying some winter sun in the Gambia, were flown home on

emergency flights when the country faced political unrest.

Thousands of European tourists, mostly from the UK,

being flown back home on special flights.

With the Government on the cusp of a military coup,

the Foreign and Commonwealth Office here in the UK took the rare step of

advising holiday-makers against all travel to this popular African

tourist destination, and more than 3,000 Brits already there were told

that their holiday company would be flying them home

as soon as possible.

The crisis was short-lived, and the official advice now is that trips to

the area are mostly trouble-free.

But this was just the first of the year's stories to highlight two

key nuggets of advice.

First, make sure you're up to speed on the latest official guidance for

wherever you're going. Some travel insurance policies may allow you to

claim if the UK Government is warning against travel somewhere.

That's sometimes the case after terror attacks, too.

Always check your policy to see if you're covered for a cancellation pay-out.

Second, check your travel insurance covers you in the way

you'd expect if you miss out

on some or all of your holiday.

Some policies have exclusions that mean you won't be protected as you

might have thought - as became clear when two very different

calamities came along.

In March 2017, French air traffic controllers went on strike,

and 100,000 passengers were left stranded.

Tempers flared at airports across the UK and France.

The way that people have been here disrupted today, it's, um, well,

-it's totally unfair.

-Just two months later,

a major IT crash in Heathrow left 75,000 British Airways passengers

facing long queues and massive delays over a busy

May Day bank holiday weekend.

Flights from both Heathrow and Gatwick airports were cancelled,

and around the world, aircraft were grounded and passengers left stuck

-on planes and in terminals.

-They could have done so much better.

And I work in IT, and to blame this on IT problems,

it's basic enterprise practice to have a disaster recovery solution.

Many travel insurance companies took the view that IT failures and

air traffic control strikes were not covered by their policies.

Others, like the airlines involved,

were prepared to reimburse the cost of flights but not any consequential

losses, such as accommodation, which highlights a very clear benefit

you will get from booking a package holiday.

If the tour operator can't get you to your destination,

you will get a full refund.

But whilst any sort of delay can be hugely frustrating,

it shouldn't put any lives in danger.

Unlike the situation faced by hundreds of British tourists in

the South of France, two months later.

A heatwave in the region turned the woodland into a tinderbox,

and fires spread quickly along the coast.

It's little patches of fire that keep breaking up,

they are the most dangerous ones,

they're the ones that can lead to widespread bushfires,

and then they become out of control.

As the blaze spread across Southern France,

10,000 residents and holiday-makers had to be evacuated.

Diana and John Wardle from Yorkshire were staying near St Tropez,

in an area just metres from the flames.

I think the shocking thing about it was how quickly it took hold.

First of all, we saw smoke, then we saw a bit of flame,

and then it shot right up the hill, and the whole hill was on fire.

While more than 4,000 firefighters tackled the flames,

all holiday-makers like Diana and John could do was watch.

We just stood there for quite a long time, watching the flames

and watching the fire planes coming in with water buckets,

and the bellies of the fire planes that just doused...

to try and douse the flames.

As the fires spread along the Riviera,

John and Diana were forced to sleep on the beach,

along with dozens of other peak season holiday-makers.

We sat in the car on the promenade, looking back towards the, um,

the nature reserve, and that was, I mean, that was just ablaze.

It looked like Dante's Inferno, really.

Worldwide, forest fires are on the rise.

But as they are classed as acts of God,

travel expert Simon Calder says that finding a travel insurance policy

that covers you from any losses you may suffer because of one can be tricky.

The forest fires in the Cote d'Azur in Southern France devastated

a beautiful region,

and of course proved traumatic for thousands of holiday-makers.

If you find yourself in that situation,

evidently, all you can do is follow the advice of the local emergency services.

And, once you're safe, perhaps consult your travel

insurance policy to see if you're covered for any extra expenses.

But perhaps the strongest reminder of the force of Mother Nature came

in August, when hurricane season started in the Atlantic,

and the first to make itself known was Hurricane Harvey,

killing 82 people and causing 190 billion worth of damage.

It was the scariest thing we've ever seen. There's no words for it.

This is just devastating for everybody.

But hot on its heels was Hurricane Irma, which made landfall

in the popular holiday destination of Cuba,

where British tourist Jenny Hill was staying,

before tearing across the Caribbean en route to the US mainland.

The British Virgin Islands look like they've been hit by the blast wave

of a bomb. Houses have been ripped apart,

and contents scattered for miles.

The most powerful hurricane ever recorded,

Irma caused devastation everywhere it hit,

killing 75 people and leaving thousands more homeless.

It was quite frightening when you realised, you know,

it was actually going to happen.

There was probably about 15 of us or so, maybe 20.

We were just there, and so,

we just obviously all went to our rooms and that was that.

We had to just wait for it to hit and hope for the best, really.

Jenny was travelling with tour operator Thomas Cook, which probably

had the greatest number of British tourists on the island -

4,800 in all.

With evacuating that many people simply not feasible,

the company's priority was to keep everyone safe until the storm

passed, so with all its hotels built to be hurricane-proof,

that's where it advised its customers to remain, and while that

was undoubtedly the right decision, the whole experience,

which Jenny filmed for us while she was there,

is one she will never forget.

The wind was so fierce that it was pushing the water through,

through the double doors of the balcony, and obviously,

the room, the room was flooding.

So you tried to stop the water that way, and ended up pulling

the sheets off the beds to stop the water, but it didn't work.

It was still coming in. And then, obviously,

the corridor flooded on the other side of the door,

so the door swelled on that side.

'This is Cuba this morning.'

At its peak, Hurricane Irma stretched 6,050 miles from east to

west, with record 130 miles an hour winds turning streets into rivers,

ripping down power lines and uprooting trees.

Forecasters predicted the worst of it would last for 24 hours, but

Jenny says she was unable to leave her hotel room for three days.

The days were so long, because there was no water.

It was so hot, there was no air conditioning.

And it was so damp, because of all the flooding,

because it was seawater that had come through, it smelled really bad.

-It was just awful.

-Despite the severity of Irma,

there's no concrete evidence to suggest that hurricanes are getting stronger.

But as Simon Calder points out, there's a very simple way

to lower the chances of getting caught up in one.

You get great prices on Caribbean holidays in September and October

for one very good reason.

It's hurricane season.

Most of the time, people get away with it and have great holidays.

On this occasion, they very clearly didn't, but I think the holiday

companies have responded as generously as they could and should,

giving everybody their money back.

Next time, if you don't want to be caught up in a Caribbean hurricane,

don't go to the Caribbean in hurricane season.

Well, as the weather calmed,

another storm was brewing on this side of the Atlantic.

And the focus of the anger?

Ryanair e-mails 400,000 customers,

telling them their flights have been cancelled.

Chief Exec of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, was forced to cancel 20,000

flights after admitting it had made a mistake scheduling pilots' leave,

meaning the airline had too few pilots to service all its flights.

The error affected over 700,000 passengers,

among them Carol Milligan,

who was just about to board the plane home from Portugal when she

found out it had been cancelled.

My friend checked her phone and had received a text message from Ryanair

to say that the flight was cancelled.

No explanation,

just telling us that we could rebook the flight

or apply for a refund.

Carol desperately needed to get home to her children, who are disabled,

but the first alternative flight Ryanair could offer was

an indirect one, later the following day.

So Carol felt she had no option but to pay out almost £307 for flights

on another airline that would still get home later than planned,

but earlier than Ryanair could manage.

By the time we eventually got something booked,

it was 10:30 at night.

There was no accommodation that we could see or we could find

for five people at that short notice.

Well, when we contacted Ryanair,

it told us that, whilst it sincerely apologises for this flight

cancellation, it was Carol and her friends' choice to take a full

refund of their unused flight and to make alternative arrangements,

despite being offered free flights the next day.

It added that, as well as a refund of the cost of her original Ryanair

flight, Carol has also received around 400 euros compensation,

in line with the EU guidelines.

But Carol says she's lost trust in an airline that she previously

relied on, and she doesn't think the options she was given by Ryanair

were good enough.

For us not to be able to get home to our children when we told them

we would be home for them was really distressing.

It was extremely difficult, and all I can say, for myself,

I just felt completely numb.

And Simon Calder says that the Ryanair story,

though completely unprecedented,

does raise some concerns over how well consumers are being protected

when something like this happens.

If an airline cancels your flight and it can't offer you a reasonable

alternative, then it has to buy you a ticket on a different airline.

And if Ryanair is refusing, well, of course,

you could go to Alternative Dispute Resolution, or indeed take them

to court, but write them a polite letter first.

Ryanair's issues with its pilots resurfaced in the run-up to

Christmas, but if it ended the year with its reputation bruised,

it is an airline that always bounces back - unlike one of its rivals.

After half a century of flying,

Monarch was grounded for good on Monday.

The company was simply losing too much money.

News that Monarch -

the country's fifth biggest airline - was out of business

for good came at a bad time for Stephen Hardy,

who'd just paid for flights to Spain later in the year.

We first heard the Monarch problems on the smartphone, and it was just

a little headline. We followed the news on the Saturday and Sunday, and

on the Sunday they'd gone bust, and that left us wondering where we went

-with our holidays.

-While Stephen was at home, trying to find out if he

had lost the money he'd paid for his flights, the British Government was

faced with the largest peacetime repatriation ever, as over 100,000

Monarch passengers stranded abroad had to be brought home,

but though some of those people had their holidays cut short,

Stephen feared he now wouldn't get any time away.

I went on the site to try and see what was happening.

There was no way onto the site,

because then you're hearing stories of people losing thousands of pounds

in flights and things. I'm thinking,

"Thank goodness it's only £216," but that's our holiday gone.

We can't afford to rebook until I get the money back.

Stephen used PayPal,

but because he paid for his flights outside the company's

buyer protection scheme timeframe, he wasn't eligible for a refund.

The company did however offer him a full pay-out as a gesture of

goodwill, two months later, which came just in time for him

to book another trip.

And while there's no imminent sign that 2018 will see any other big

names go bust, the best way to ensure peace of mind when booking

a holiday is to do it in a way that gives you protection

if anything goes wrong.

So, an ATOL certificate if you're buying a package,

or paying by credit card if you're getting flights only.

And remember, forest fires,

cancellations or even hurricanes notwithstanding,

the majority of holidays do run smoothly,

which is why even after a year of high holiday drama,

Simon Calder is keen to emphasise that there's never been

a better time to travel.

However awful the headlines look, however anxious you might

understandably be feeling about travelling abroad,

please trust me on this.

I spend an awful lot of time looking at the risks to travellers,

and I can assure you that there has never been a safer time

for British holiday-makers going abroad.

There's never been better value either, so go and make the most it.

Now, the phrase, "The customer is always right," was really put to

the test in 2017 for some of the biggest names in the business,

and that's because, following a sharp rise in the number of reports

of food poisoning cases, investigations by the holiday

companies discovered a string of entirely bogus claims being made,

in the hope of getting ill-deserved compensation.

Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you this,

but the finger was pointed very much at British holiday-makers for being

the worst culprits in this, and the consequences of that have led to

some companies implementing some serious measures

that could very well affect your next holiday.

First introduced in the UK as holiday camps in the 1930s,

the all-inclusive holiday has spread worldwide, but it's still most

popular with the British, making up 17% of all the holidays we take.

But some recent behaviour by some of that number has put the future

of this kind of holiday in serious jeopardy.

Natalie Needham is the service manager for the tour operator

Thomas Cook, and around three years ago, her company, along with other

major tour operators, began to notice

something very, very strange was happening.

There'd been a sharp increase in the number of holiday-makers returning

to the UK and then suddenly claiming that they had suffered a bout

of food poisoning while staying at their all-inclusive resort abroad.

This probably increased around 50%.

It didn't really come as known to us in resort.

It was more back when they got back to the UK, and then

the hoteliers obviously started to get a little bit worried of why

the increase was so high in a short space of time.

Although some cases of holiday-makers falling ill is to be

expected, the number of people reportedly doing so

had risen from 5,000 in 2013

to around 35,000 in 2016 -

a staggering 500% increase.

It started off with one, two,

three families claiming and getting money, and then obviously

they've seen how easy it is to be done,

and then it's just progressed from there.

When resorts across Spain,

the Balearics and the Canaries all spotted the same trend emerging,

the holiday companies began to investigate, and a very worrying

pattern of behaviour was soon discovered.

It became clear holiday-makers were being approached in their resorts

by what holiday companies have dubbed "sickness touts"

or even "illness farmers" -

people who've been employed by claims management companies to make

tourists some very tempting offers.

They say that, for very little effort,

you can make a tidy profit out of submitting a claim via them

to be compensated for food poisoning suffered after eating at

-an all-inclusive resort.

-One of the biggest hotels on the island,

there was probably about 80 people outside with clipboards,

so as people was in and out of the hotel,

they were being approached by these illness farmers and asking them,

taking all their contact details, asking them to make a claim,

telling them to go to the pharmacy, get receipts.

And we could see it happening a lot.

And their tactics seemed to be working.

Over a year, hoteliers across Spain paid out an estimated £88 million

to holiday-makers who all claimed they'd fallen ill after eating

the food at an all-inclusive resort in which they were staying,

and rather than going to the expense of defending sickness claims,

some hoteliers have been settling out of court to save money.

I think the hoteliers are a little bit scared. Over the last year or two,

they've been paying out a lot of money for these fake illness claims.

Suspecting that holiday-makers were being encouraged to submit false claims,

one tour operator, Jet2, hired private investigators to catch

some of these illness farmers at work, and the results could not

have been clearer,

with hotel guests being told that simply buying medication would be

sufficient proof to earn them a big pay-out.

Oh, right, OK.

Now, it's these sort of practices that have got the hotel industry

concerned, and perhaps the worst part of it is that the only people

that seem to be involved in the deception are us Brits.

I think there was just a lot of worry,

because we'd seen such a high increase in the previous year.

It was the thought of, "What are we going to do about it?" So, yeah,

there was talks of the hoteliers not wanting to serve the Brits any more.

One hotelier in Mallorca, who works in partnership with Thomas Cook,

is Sebastian Darda.

A 40-year veteran of the trade,

his hotel has been hit with numerous false sickness claims, and he's in

no doubt as to who the culprits are.

100% of false sick illness claims

are coming from the British... British persons.

In my hotel, at the end of the year,

we have more people coming from Asian countries,

and then they have been having the same meal as the British,

and we never had any claims at all.

Those concerns are echoed by quality control officer Agnes Meyer who,

at another hotel in Mallorca, is carrying out her usual routine notes

and observations.

Hotel providers employ her to carry out rigorous checks on a hotel's

health and safety, which can include everything from the water quality of

the swimming pool to the lettuce at the salad bar.

We do quality checklists.

We check on cleanliness, we check the room service, the food.

We also eat a lot in hotels.

Then, for those hotels who do not meet our targets,

we will set up quality improvement plans.

But some of the hotels that have passed all Agnes's meticulous

checks have still seen a spike in the numbers of sickness claims

coming from British holiday-makers who've stayed there.

We have German or Polish or Belgian guests in the hotel,

and they're not sick,

so it's most likely that it's not the fault of the hotel.

In the hotel where 1,000 people are in, it can be normal that one, two

or three are ill, but it's not normal that all have food poisoning,

and this is, yeah, quite ridiculous.

Solicitor Marc Ripoll is a Spanish lawyer representing some of

the hotels and insurers in Mallorca.

Now, he says the rise in fraudulent claims is jeopardising the future

of this type of holiday.

Some hoteliers were seriously considering

withdrawing from all-inclusive.

That was for the last year.

I think that some of them still consider it.

It's still something that can happen.

Marc believes that certain UK solicitors' firms aren't doing

the correct medical checks or indeed asking for sufficient evidence from

their clients, which has a knock-on effect for hotels

and insurance firms in Spain.

They've been unethical, some of them,

especially as to the fraudulent claims.

They haven't really taken the sufficient measures

to make sure this claim was genuine or not.

And these concerns are shared by authorities back in the UK,

including the travel organisation ABTA.

Its Chief Executive, Mark Tanzer, has a theory as to why some

claims firms are focusing their attention on these food poisoning cases.

In 2012, the Government changed the law so that legal fees that could be

charged for personal injury claims arising in the United Kingdom

were capped, so that made it less attractive for people to pursue

whiplash claims and so forth for the lawyers.

So then, they switched their attention overseas,

where there isn't currently a cap on those fees, and that can be

a very lucrative business.

But Mark is concerned that holiday-makers don't fully

understand the consequences of making a false claim.

In fact, in 2017, it launched a campaign to spell all of that out.

Hmm.

Fake sickness claims have created an enormous amount of damage.

They've risen very, very steeply over the last 12 to 18 months.

If you make a false claim, the penalties are very severe.

It's a criminal offence, it's fraud,

and what we've been trying to do through our campaign is to

make people aware of that, and we have seen a lot of people are now

withdrawing claims, saying they've put them in, but actually

they now wish to withdraw them, which suggests that they hadn't realised quite how serious a step

they were taking when they made these accusations.

And just how severe the consequences can be was highlighted by the recent

case of Deborah Briton and Paul Roberts.

Thomas Cook took the pair to court after they had submitted a claim

for £20,000, alleging they'd been struck down with food poisoning

while staying at one of the company's resorts.

The courts ruled in favour of Thomas Cook.

The couple were found guilty of fraud and sentenced

to nine and 15 months respectively.

And in an attempt to deter holiday-makers from submitting

false claims for sickness in the future,

Thomas Cook says it's been forced to take other drastic action.

One of the biggest hotels on the island, what they use is

a wristband, so if you go in and out of the restaurant, you have to sign yourself in. If you go out on

the beach bus, you have to sign yourself out, so it's not like keeping track

on the customers, but we would know if they've been out and about.

If holiday-makers leave and possibly eat away from a resort,

it's then very difficult for them to suggest that the food poisoning they

suffered was due to food they'd eaten on the site and not elsewhere.

We're just trying to obviously put higher measures in place to stop

these people trying to make fake claims.

We don't want to follow their every move,

but this is the way we're clamping down on it.

And Thomas Cook is also keeping a close eye on individuals who have

submitted claims for food poisoning in the past that are suspected

-to have been fake.

-Every month,

we receive a report to say, this is a list of people that have made

a previous fake illness claim.

We obviously put all measures in place to keep a further eye

on these particular people.

As for the coming 2018 season, although the holiday companies

recognise that most of us customers are honest people, there's no doubt

that, should these types of pay-outs continue, the future of

all-inclusive holidays very much hangs in the balance.

We don't want to, obviously, take our customers to court, but if we

obviously know or understand or have got the evidence that it's actually

a fake illness claim, we have to do something to try and stop

everybody else following suit, and I think...

and this was the only way to do it.

Still to come on Rip-Off Britain...

the Dubai dream that turned into a nightmare.

Although you're telling yourself you're not going to prison,

we all knew I was going to prison over there.

And you try and fight it, but there's no...

you can't fight anything over there.

Our travel expert Simon Calder is full of the secrets to save you

money on your travels. He's also got tips on everything from how to avoid

the crowds to the best way to steer clear of those tourist traps.

This time, it's Western Australia.

In 1947, the "Kangaroo Route", the journey from the UK to Australia,

took four days and involved nine stops.

Today, taking a trip down under is much quicker.

In fact, in 2017,

the first 17-hour flights from the UK to Perth were introduced,

but they don't come cheap.

So you've spent maybe the best part of £1,000 on your

return flight to Australia.

What is there to do for free in Perth?

Well, if you go along to the iCity information kiosk on Murray Street,

there's a really good 90-minute daily guided walking tour,

and it won't cost you a bean.

You'll get to see the sights of Perth, and what's more,

with no tipping expected, it's genuinely free.

And if the heat of the city gets too much for you,

then Simon suggests heading to the very relaxed ocean suburb of

Fremantle - around half an hour by train or slightly longer on a trip

down the Swan River by boat.

For somewhere cheap and quirky to stay, check in to Fremantle Prison.

It's a UNESCO world Heritage site that's been converted into

a backpacker hostel.

You could pay as little as around £70 a night for a family room,

or just £13 for a dorm bed.

With huge distances between cities and towns, and an extreme climate,

the Australian Government urges tourists and inexperienced drivers

who want to head off the beaten track to be well prepared.

For outback driving,

the Australian authorities recommend that you have at least three days'

emergency supply of food and water.

Hire or buy a satellite phone,

and don't underestimate the dangers of crocodiles, sharks and snakes.

A news story that you probably see regularly in the headlines concerns

holiday-makers being arrested and detained in the increasingly popular

destination of Dubai,

often for offences that the majority of people reading about them

might consider to be relatively minor.

Such experiences can be horrendous for those involved, and it can take

an awful lot of persuasion from people in some very high places

to get them released.

Whether it's the people, the food or the culture,

one of the pleasures of travel can be experiencing the unfamiliar.

But whilst the difference between cultures is generally

something to be celebrated, there are some places where simple

misunderstandings can lead to catastrophic consequences.

And there's one country in particular where holiday-makers have

found that out the hard way - Dubai,

as Jamie Harron from Stirling knows all too well.

He was on a short stopover in the country when he was charged with

public indecency after he allegedly touched a man's hip

in a bar in 2017.

Very good. Very happy to be home.

Jamie spent five days in prison

before being released without his passport,

but then had to remain in the country for another three months,

accruing over £32,000 in expenses and legal fees, trying to get home.

It was only after he was eventually sentenced to three months in prison

that campaigners say the case was dropped on the orders of

the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Even now, when I'm home, I still can't actually believe that

it was three and a half months, four months, for what it was, like.

As Dubai's reputation as one of the world's leading tourist destinations

has increased, and tourists have flocked to its seductive mix

of sand, sea and shopping,

so the risk is increased for a cultural clash to end up

falling foul of local laws.

In fact, there's been such a rise in cases like Jamie's,

that there's now a special group of UK lawyers stationed out in Dubai

to assist those who find themselves in similar situations to get home.

Radha Stirling is one of the team.

The UAE is quite a contradiction of countries.

On the one hand, it's marketed as the Vegas of the Middle East,

and on the other hand, the laws don't reflect that.

The law is still very clear, and it's still as you would expect

a Middle Eastern country to be around 30 years ago,

so even though the marketing has caught up,

it's very, very confusing to a traveller.

It's very easy to get in trouble.

Billy Barclay from Edinburgh is someone else who found himself

in trouble in Dubai, during a family holiday in 2016.

He and his wife and two children had always enjoyed the country as one of

their favourite destinations,

and the family was always respectful of local laws.

We knew it was a Muslim country.

We knew it had laws, but we just thought, if we go, you know,

about life, our normal routines, everything would be fine.

As on previous holidays to Dubai,

the family just kept themselves to themselves

and didn't have any problems.

That was until Billy went to a bureau de change

to exchange some of his British money for the local currency.

The chap had said to me that he couldn't understand why we had

sort of different notes, you know, some English,

some Scottish and different Scottish ones, you know,

because in Scotland, you have several £20 notes.

They couldn't understand that.

Not recognising one of the Scottish notes

that Billy was trying to exchange,

the cashier claimed it was a fake and called his manager,

who immediately phoned the police.

Billy and his family were then taken in for questioning.

They took me and my family away to the CID police station

in Ras Al Khaimah,

about half an hour drive from the Al Hamra Mall.

We were there for about 13 hours.

While the Dubai police carried out their investigation,

which included searching the family's hotel room for any more "fake" notes,

his wife Monique and two children

were told to wait at the police station

until Billy was released and told he could go free.

Then eventually, we got the passports back.

They'd cleared us of any crime.

They said, "No charges are being brought,

"we're very sorry this has happened to you and you're free to go."

And that's when I asked them, you know, "Is everything OK?

"Can we come back or are we..."

And they say, "Yes, no problem. This is an accident."

So, despite the day spent in a police station and with

reassurance from the Dubai police that no charges would be brought,

Billy and his family went on to enjoy the rest of their stay.

In fact, they had such a good time,

they booked a return ten-day holiday in 2017.

But as soon as the family arrived back in Dubai,

the police took Billy to one side.

Well, the chap tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me back

and I said, "Is there a problem?"

And he said, "Come with me," and from there,

they were going to take me to the police station.

I said, "No, I want to see my family. I need to know...

"I need to tell my family what's going on."

And she came up to the police station with us

in the airport and they said I had a case in Ras Al Khaimah from last year.

The police told Billy that the case involving the so-called fake £20 notes a year earlier

had been reopened and that he was to go with them

to face further questions.

And I was like, no, this was all solved.

And they just couldn't take it in.

You know, I was trying to explain my case to them that it was cleared

and they kept saying, "No, it's a paperwork error. This is a paperwork error.

"You will stay with us. Your family will go to the hotel and you will be

"with them within an hour."

But an hour came and went and Billy wasn't released.

In fact, this was only the beginning

of what was to be a long drawn-out legal process.

Just sitting in a room, you know.

A room maybe the size of a couch.

It was just horrendous.

No water or nothing in there, you know.

I was in there from eight o'clock in the morning to 4:30,

and that's when they arrested us, shackled us,

and took as away to the headquarters police in Dubai.

Billy spent the next three days in custody,

locked up in a cell with other inmates and without any contact with the outside world.

So, that's when I started to worry, and I thought, you know,

I'm up on a fraud charge here.

This isn't a petty crime over here.

There's chaps in there, for, you know, holding hands or turning up,

being drunk in the street, you know,

that are facing years in prison and I'm charged with fraud,

and that's when I know this is getting bad now, you know.

After four days in custody,

Billy was released, but his passport was confiscated,

meaning he couldn't leave the country.

For the remaining six days of the trip,

the family battled to get his passport returned, without success.

So Billy's wife and children had no choice but to return to the UK without him.

The worst moment for me was saying goodbye to my kids, you know -

letting them go to the airport on a plane,

coming home and I'm stuck there not knowing and them not knowing when

they are going to see me again.

Billy remained in Dubai while his case made its way through the country's legal system,

and when, after three weeks, he was told his case had been

referred to the Abu Dhabi High Court, he feared the very worst.

I'm facing prison and although you're telling yourself that you're not

going to prison, we all knew I was going to prison over there.

And you sort of try to tell yourself you're not and you try and fight it,

but there's nothing you can... You can't fight anything over there.

Back at home, his family were desperately worried,

and in the middle of the ordeal,

Billy's mother suffered a stroke, which he believes was brought on

by the stress of his situation.

With nowhere else to turn, Billy's family got in touch with Radha Stirling,

who encouraged them to talk to the press about their ordeal in the hope

that it would put pressure on the authorities to release him.

As soon as we went to press, within around 24 hours,

the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Board

intervened in the legal process and got his passport back,

so you can see how important it is that people actually get

their story out into the media.

All charges against Billy were dropped and he was flown home,

but he's racked up debts of over £12,000,

thanks to the legal fees and expenses he incurred

during the four weeks he spent in Dubai.

Even worse, his mother went into a coma just before he got home

and died a few days later.

I missed out on, you know, my mum's last days.

She might have wanted to say a couple of things to me that she couldn't say to me.

I was robbed of that, being detained in Dubai.

What's also so sad about Billy's case is that as a regular visitor,

he was well aware of the country's regulations and restrictions

and respected them, but to avoid falling foul of the law in whatever country

you're visiting, it's worth ensuring that you too

have checked out on the Foreign Office website

the traditions and culture of your destination.

Emma Rowland from the charity Prisoners Abroad says that not only will that

leave you better prepared, but it could actually save you

from getting into trouble.

It's always worth doing a bit of research before you go

to a destination, because that's part of the fun of planning your holiday,

learning a bit about where you're going to go,

what you're going to be doing.

It's all part of the anticipation, and then, of course,

if you do learn a bit about local laws and customs that you might not

expect, it can also help you to avoid any potential pitfalls when you get there.

Billy says he will not return to Dubai,

the country he once loved,

and all he and his family can do now is come to terms with the loss of his mother

and try to repay the huge legal bill that he's stuck with.

It's completely ruined our life.

Obviously, I've lost my mum over all this carry on, you know.

And thousands of pounds. Everything is gone.

You know, they've just completely ruined our lives.

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Well, I'm afraid that's all we've got time for in the programme today

and I have to say, I hope that your holiday was nowhere near as dramatic

as so many of those that we've actually featured today,

and I don't know about you guys,

but I still can't quite get over some of those pictures

that we saw from the very heart of the hurricanes.

I tell you, that was seriously scary stuff.

Very scary stuff, and I'm going to be really honest -

I'm not very good in extreme weather conditions.

I end up, for some reason or other,

in my head, rolling every disaster movie scenario into one,

and it really does make me feel extremely nervous.

I'm a wuss, really! So I do feel for all those people affected,

but remember, if something goes wrong when you're away,

it doesn't have to be a major event, as we've just seen today.

We're always interested in hearing from you while you're still

at the centre of the action.

Yes, no need to wait till you get home.

You can just get out your smartphone and tell us right away what's been

going on. But rest assured, however and whenever you get in touch,

we'll be reading every single one of the messages and letters that you

send us and even if yours isn't featured on the programme,

it helps us work out which topics we should be covering,

so keep them coming.

And we'll be back with more of your stories very soon.

-But until then, from the three of us, goodbye.

-Goodbye.

-Bye-bye.