Dozens of individuals, couples and families lost thousands of euros in an allegedly fraudulent holiday scheme, and they are still waiting for justice and their money back seven years later.
Twelve families shared their ordeals with Times of Malta, describing how Maltese timeshare company Platinum International left them stranded after they booked their holidays in around 2018.
After paying in advance for flights and hotels in several destinations, they arrived to find their bookings unpaid and the hotels demanding payment.
Many went through the entire holiday thinking it was all paid for, only to discover on the last day, at check-out, that the hotel had no registered payment for their stay.
Many would show receipts and proof of payment given to them by the Maltese company, but that meant little to hotel receptionists in several destinations, who would just say they never received the money.
In panic, the couples and families would try to call the Maltese travel agent to resolve the issue, only to hit a series of brick walls. The agent would either ignore their calls or say there was a delay in the transaction.
About half of the families said she told them her mother was seriously ill in hospital or had just died, and that this was not a good time.
The families would then have no option but to pay thousands of euros to settle the hotel bills or else risk missing their flight back to Malta, hoping for a refund when they got back home. But that refund never came.
Many of the families filed police reports but, to this day, nobody has been charged over the case and questions sent to police remained unanswered.
Efforts to reach the company for comments were also unsuccessful.
Holidaymaker handcuffed
One man who refused to pay a hotel in Germany found himself handcuffed and arrested by the German police.
Ivan Borg was with his wife, Pauline, and another family on that trip, and at check-out they were handed a whopping €7,000 hotel bill. He refused to pay, insisting he had already done so in Malta.
They tried calling the travel agent, who didn’t pick up.
“I insisted I did not need to pay and before I knew it, the receptionist had alerted the police and I was handcuffed and taken to a police station and remained arrested until I paid it all,” he said.
“I can’t shake off the embarrassment I felt that day, being handcuffed in a lobby full of tourists and escorted out by police. Every time I tell the story, I get the shivers.”
Upon landing in Malta, a furious Borg headed straight to the company’s office and demanded his money back. He did get a full refund but he is the only one of the holidaymakers who spoke to Times of Malta who did.
We were never booked in the first place.
Lino Valletta wanted to take his family on holiday to take their mind off a trauma they had gone through weeks earlier. Burglars had broken into their home, ransacked the entire place and stole anything valuable they could find, including some gold and cash.
When he walked into the timeshare company’s office to book the flight and the hotel to Spain, little did he know he would soon lose even more of the money he had left.
“She [the travel agent] was sweet and seemed sorry for how we were robbed. She booked the flights and the hotel, and printed out receipts. The printed tickets even had an Air Malta letterhead. And we paid her for everything,” he recalled.
“On departure day, she called me and said Air Malta had cancelled the flight and it would cover refunds soon.”
He believed her, but something kept nagging at him and, in the middle of the night, just before the flight was meant to take off, Lino hopped onto the airport website and went through the departing flights. And there it was – their flight was not cancelled at all but took off without them.
“The next morning, I called Air Malta and the hotel in Spain, and both said my name was nowhere in the bookings. We were never booked in the first place.”
When he went to the company’s office to demand an explanation and a refund, the travel agent told him her mother was ill in hospital but assured him Air Malta would still give him a refund.
That refund never arrived and the Valletta family lost over €2,000 in total.
Another victim, Jonathan Laferla, also booked the flights and accommodation with the company only to discover – just two days before take-off – that none of it had actually been booked. He did manage to pocket part of the refund, but not all of it.
Julia Micallef, another unfortunate traveller, claims to be owed some €5,000. Like many others, she also filed a police report but has heard nothing else from the authorities about the case since then.
How the scheme was meant to work
Platinum International offered timeshare schemes, a sort of pre-paid vacation plan where you buy the right to use hotels or properties in different destinations for a reduced price for a number of years.
The schemes could be legitimate and often work well around the world, especially for people who like to go on frequent holidays to the same places.
In Malta, the agents often used the hard-sell technique, holding group meetings to promote their ‘Rediscover the world’ scheme. The families said they were lured by the promise of cheaper fares once they bought the timeshare.
They would pay between €1,000 and €2,000 per family to enter into the scheme and could then book any one of a number of hotels in a number of destinations for seven nights for only around €500 per room.
Many holidaymakers who had enrolled in the scheme prior to 2018 said it had worked well for them for several years up until that point, but then it seemed to go haywire in the span of a few months, before the company shut down its Mosta offices and its officials “disappeared”.
Lorna and Massimo Schembri had been using the company for a while and it had all gone so well for them that they urged two other families to join them on a trip to Germany.
Two days before their planned arrival, they contacted the hotel and were shocked to learn their booking did not exist. Though the hotel was able to accommodate them, they were required to pay for their entire stay a second time.
All couples and families said that the second time they had to pay with the hotel’s normal rates – not the timeshare’s reduced rates – which is why some bills ran in the thousands.
Returning home, Lorna set up a Facebook group asking people to come forward if they had similar experiences. It has amassed 279 members so far.
Couple lost €7,000 in six months
Tiziana and Robert Demanuele say they lost at least €7,000 in six months.
They had booked two rooms for themselves and the expectant mother’s parents for a vacation in Lago di Garda, paying €1,000 to Platinum International in advance – €500 per room.
Upon arrival at their destination, the hotel informed them that while the rooms were indeed booked, the payment had never been received and they were forced to pay the rooms at their normal rate of €1,225 per room.
“We were completely shocked,” the husband explained. “My wife was pregnant, and we had planned this trip for months. To arrive and find out we had nowhere to stay, and then be asked to pay so much more, was incredibly stressful.”
When they contacted the travel agent for a refund she gave them the usual story: her mother was seriously ill in hospital.
“Naturally, I sympathised and told her to take her time. But after a few days, I had to follow up again,” Robert said.
To this day, they are still waiting for the money.
After going through a similar ordeal of failed payment transfers, Matthew and Mary Grace Farrugia were locked out of their hotel room while on holiday, with the hotel receptionist telling them they would not be allowed back into their rooms unless they paid an outstanding bill totalling almost €5,000, which they were eventually forced to pay.
There were some lucky ones, who managed to go on a few holidays with no hiccups before 2018. But people like Joseph Fenech only successfully used the scheme twice before it turned sour, and the unluckiest of holidaymakers did not even manage to enjoy a holiday before losing money.
When – after a seven-day vacation – a hotel in London told Anne and Conrad Casha that it did not accept payments through the scheme, the couple said they tried calling the travel agent who, again, told them her mother was in ITU.
They had to pay over €2,400 for that vacation and their only attempt at reimbursement – a cheque from the travel agent – bounced.
Platinum International (Malta) Limited, which was registered with the Malta Business Registry in 2003, has been struck off as defunct since 2022.
It had already made headlines in 2018, with Times of Malta reporting that 64 people were confirmed to have been stung by the scheme.
At the time, the company was owned by Briton Joseph Tolan, whose address is given as Adma in Lebanon.
This is not the first time that a travel agency has left consumers fuming. Between 2008 and 2013, a total of 150 clients were left stranded by the closure of Fantasy Tours.
And in August 2018, APC Travel Bureau Rabat had its licence revoked after numerous consumers complained that they had pre-paid for bookings which were not honoured.