Rhodes wildfires: What rights do holidaymakers have as thousands forced to flee hotels?
Raging wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes have sparked the evacuation of around 2,000 tourists from its resorts.
The Greek government said it had evacuated 19,000 people in the “largest ever” wildfire evacuation in the country’s history.
Local media said the fires had reached three hotels, which had already been evacuated, with three coastguard vessels plus one from the army evacuating people from two beaches.
But what should holidaymakers do if they have booked to travel to the island?
Largest ever evacuation from Greece – latest on Rhodes wildfires
Are airlines still flying to Rhodes?
Jet2 cancelled all flights and holidays to Rhodes until next Monday (31 July), saying “we will be contacting affected customers with regards to their refund and rebooking options”.
TUI also cancelled all flights to the island until Tuesday, with customers looking to fly out on Wednesday given the opportunity to rebook or cancel free of charge.
EasyJet cancelled package holidays until Tuesday, and though it said it is currently “operating flights as normal” it was offering those who had booked to travel to or from Rhodes the chance to transfer to another date or request a flight voucher up to next Saturday.
Meanwhile, British Airways said it is offering customers on the island who need to return home early the opportunity to change flights free of charge and Ryanair said flights were “currently operating as normal and unaffected by the forest fires”.
Thomas Cook has cancelled all holidays to areas of Rhodes most affected by the wildfire – such as Kiotari and Lardos – until July 31. The travel agency announced it had been in touch will all customers due to travel today (23 July) or tomorrow (24 July) to those areas to arrange “swift refunds”. It has also offered full refunds to customers due to depart for other parts of the island on Sunday and Monday who wish to cancel.
Thomas Cook will be in touch with people booked to travel on Tuesday to discuss their options, the firm added.
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Tourists flee hotels as Greek wildfires rage
If I’m with another operator, can I get a refund or a cancellation?
If it’s a package, the Package Travel Regulations say holidaymakers can cancel and receive a full refund “if unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances occur at the place of destination or its immediate vicinity which significantly affect the performance of the package or the carriage of passengers to the destination”.
“If you have been notified that your holiday which is due to depart in the next few days has been cancelled, then your travel company will be able to discuss your options with you – that could be offering a full refund or they might be able to discuss an alternative holiday,” said Emma Brennan, a spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA).
Those seeking refunds for independent travel could have less luck.
“If you booked everything independently, if you booked a flight and that flight has now been cancelled, then they will need to provide a refund for that, then you would need to go through and speak to every element of your travel provider to understand what the terms and conditions are – what’s the arrangement with the hotel or accommodation that you have booked, what’s the refund policy, the same for any transfer or car hire,” she said.
The fine print of holiday conditions will differ with each operator.
What is the foreign office saying?
The UK’s foreign office has urged British travellers affected by the wildfires to follow guidance from Greek emergency services.
“If you are planning to travel to Rhodes, please check with your travel operator or hotel prior to travel that the area you plan to visit is not impacted by the current wildfires,” it said.
However, it has stopped short of advising against travelling to Rhodes – a move that would significantly help anyone seeking compensation.
A burnt hotel during a wildfire on Rhodes
Am I covered by my travel insurance?
Whether holidaymakers are guaranteed compensation under their travel insurance policies hinges on if the UK government advises against travel to the area.
“The primary purpose of travel insurance is to cover the costs of emergency medical treatments or repatriation should the worst happen, which can run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds,” a spokesperson for the Association of British Insurers (ABI) said.
“It can cover you if you need to cancel or cut short your holiday, but it’s likely this will only be under limited circumstances, for example if you or a close family member fall ill, not because of a disinclination to travel.
“Insurance can cover you if advice from the government changes since you’ve booked your trip, and it’s no longer considered safe to travel to the destination.”
A beach covered in smoke during the wildfires
Instead, anyone concerned about travelling to the area should check with their travel provider and air carrier, the spokesperson added.
Some travel insurance policies may cover affected holidays under certain circumstances, so people are advised to check the scope of cover provided by their travel insurance.
How often do migrants successfully fight their removal from Britain on the basis of their human rights?
The clamour from the right for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights has been growing – even some high-profile Labour figures say it needs reform.
So, I’ve come to an immigration appeal court – unannounced – to find out how it is used by migrants and their lawyers here.
Decisions delayed, outcomes unpublished
I get to the fourth floor of a large court building in Birmingham.
The first case I’m ushered into to see is a 38-year-old Nigerian man. He came on a student visa – but that ran out.
Just before he did, he put in a claim to stay on the basis of his relationship with a woman, who is originally from Barbados but has lived and worked in Britain since 2015.
The judge, who will decide their fate, dials in via video link. He hears the man’s partner has a 17-year-old daughter.
She lives with her biological father, but the couple insist she is so close to the Nigerian man she calls him “Dad”. This is an appeal being made under Article 8 of the ECHR – the right to a family life.
The following day, it’s a different judge – this time he’s here in person.
The man in front of him is appealing against deportation to Kenya. He came to the UK as a baby with his mother and siblings.
As a teenager, he was jailed for almost 10 years for stabbing a man, causing serious injuries.
It emerges that his case is also based on Article 8 of the ECHR. Since leaving prison, he’s fathered a child who has just turned two.
There are arguments made too under Article 3 of the ECHR – which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment – due to the man being diagnosed with “generalised anxiety” and depression.
It will be a few weeks before decisions are made on these cases – and the results won’t be published by the court.
I leave, thinking how opaque the process feels.
It’s also easy to see why some politicians are pointing to the ECHR – a treaty signed after the Second World War to protect the rights of everyone in the Council of Europe – as a barrier to removing more migrants.
Between April 2008 and June 2021, 21,521 foreign nationals were due to be deported because of crimes they’d committed
Is the ECHR really a barrier to deportation?
“I think there’s a strong kind of political dynamic there which has led to, in some ways, you might say, a kind of scapegoating of the European Convention,” says Alice Donald, Professor of Human Rights law at Middlesex University, London.
She’s not convinced that withdrawal from ECHR would make a big difference to the number of people the UK is able to remove or deport.
“The honest answer is we don’t know, we don’t have enough data to say that,” she says.
“The data that we do have, for example, in relation to the number of human rights appeals against deportation by foreign national offenders, which has been very much in the news this year, suggests that it would really make only a marginal difference.”
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Those figures, published by the Home Office, reveal that between April 2008 and June 2021, 21,521 foreign nationals due to be deported because of crimes they’d committed appealed, and 2,392 were successful on human rights grounds only. That’s around 181 on average per year.
We don’t have figures for how many other types of immigrants are allowed to stay on the basis of human rights. Small boat migrants who claim asylum would usually rely on another convention.
“In terms of asylum claims, it is governed by the 1951 Refugee Convention as a different treaty,” Prof Donald explains.
“There is, of course, overlapping protection with the prohibition of torture in the European Convention… so if the Refugee Convention were still in place, then of course people seeking asylum would rely on that.”
She also believes there have been “a number of erroneous stories or exaggerated stories”.
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Reform would deport legal migrants
Debunking the chicken nugget myth
In February 2025, it was widely reported that an Albanian criminal’s deportation was halted over his son’s dislike of foreign chicken nuggets.
“What actually happened in that case is that it went to the upper tribunal (second-tier immigration appeal court) which ordered that he could be deported. And also specifically said that the evidence to do with chicken nuggets was nowhere near the level required,” Prof Donald says.
What leaving the ECHR would mean
Withdrawal from the ECHR would mean the guarantees it provides would be removed for everyone in the UK, not just migrants.
It not only protects the rights to life, liberty, fair trial and freedom of expression among others, but also prohibits torture, slavery and discrimination.
Pulling out of the treaty could also breach the Belfast Good Friday Agreement – though some say such an outcome is avoidable.
However, in a country where immigration is the top issue of concern for voters, there are some who now think that is a price worth paying.
The King and Queen will meet the new Pope during a state visit to Vatican City next month.
The couple will join Leo XIV, who was elected pope earlier this year after the death of Pope Francis, in late October to celebrate the 2025 jubilee year, Buckingham Palace said.
The Catholic Church typically marks a papal jubilee every 25 years.
Charles and Camilla‘s visit is expected to celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the Jubilee year’s theme of walking together as “Pilgrims of Hope”.
The King is Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role which dates back to Henry VIII, who named himself Supreme Head of the Church of England after he was excommunicated by Pope Paul III and broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century to marry Anne Boleyn.
The King and Queen had a meeting with Pope Francis just 12 days before he died.
The King and Queen meeting Pope Francis before his death. Pic: PA
Their historic state visit to the Vatican in early April was cancelled due to the then-pontiff’s poor health, but they managed to visit him privately during their trip to Italy.
The meeting with Francis, in what would be the final weeks of his life, was arranged at the last minute and took place on their 20th wedding anniversary on 9 April, with the pontiff wanting to personally wish them a happy anniversary.
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In an official message released following the news of Francis’s death on 21 April, the King said he and the Queen were “most deeply saddened”.
In May, Charles sent a private message to Pope Leo XIV congratulating him on his election, Buckingham Palace said.
Call handlers at the mental health helpline Samaritans are warning of a mass exodus of volunteers after the charity announced plans to close branches.
The ‘volunteer listeners’ say a shortage of people taking calls will lead to longer wait times to have them answered.
In July, Samaritans chief executive Julie Bentley said it was no longer sustainable to have so many branches.
In a video message to staff, seen by Sky News, she said: “Many of the branches we have today came into existence at a time when Samaritans was set up as a local service, providing separate local numbers. But that hasn’t been the case for some time.
“Our service today doesn’t need the number of buildings we currently have.”
Colm Martin, a volunteer listener for five years, said the announcement came “out of the blue”.
Colm Martin was left surprised by the announcement of closures
“We cannot make sense of it. This is supposed to be about improving a service and we can’t understand how closing half of all of the branches will improve the service or encourage more volunteers to come forward.”
Mr Martin says he thinks Samaritans will lose volunteers.
“Not because they want to leave, but because they’re forced out, because there isn’t a branch local to them that they can go to,” he said.
Last year, three million people called the Samaritans in need of support. Its website reads “every life lost to suicide is a tragedy”.
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About 23,000 trained volunteers work with the charity to listen and provide fast support to those experiencing suicidal thoughts as well as other mental health issues.
Ms Bentley told Sky News: “The improvements we’re proposing would mean callers getting through to Samaritans quicker while making it easier for anyone to join our amazing group of volunteers, regardless of their circumstances or busy lifestyles.
“Samaritans will continue to be there for those struggling to cope across the UK and Republic of Ireland, day and night, 365 days a year.”
Angela praised a Samaritans volunteer who helped her at a time when her father was dying
Surbiton-based Angela remembers calling Samaritans for help 40 years ago when her father was dying of cancer.
“Whenever I reached out to any family member, they’d say ‘oh come on, you’re strong, you know what you’re doing. You’re a nurse’, she said.
“One night, I just reached an emotional limit. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and I thought ‘I’m going to burst here’.”
Angela says she cannot recall how long the call lasted but says it was answered quickly.
“He hardly spoke, he just let me empty all my thoughts and he listened,” she said. “That was so powerful to have someone just listening and not interrupting, not dismissing my feelings.”
The charity is set to vote on the proposed changes, which would take place over the next seven to 10 years, this weekend, although in Ireland the consultation process is not due to start until 2027.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK.
Alternatively, you can call Mind’s support line on 0300 102 1234, or NHS on 111.
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