Hudgell Solicitors has been instructed by holidaymakers who travelled on the P&O Ventura cruise ship – and were taken ill – on sailings between April and June this year.
Our legal team will now be asking serious questions and seeking ‘full transparency’ from P&O with regards to the number of reported illnesses on each of the cruises affected on the Ventura this year, and for details of the precautions and measures taken to reduce the likelihood of sickness outbreaks.
During one sailing around the Canary Islands, between May 11th -25th, as many as 519 people on board, or about 12.3% of passengers, were recorded as showing symptoms, a recent BBC Freedom of Information request revealed.
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Couple’s holiday ‘completely ruined’
Clients Howard and Hazel Lunn, of Devon, were on that sailing, having paid around £5,000 for their holiday.
Mr Lunn, 77, believes P&O ‘failed to meet their duty of care’ to passengers by allowing thousands of people to travel after illness outbreaks.
They were both taken ill during their holiday – Mr Lunn five days into their two-week break, and his wife in the following days, having both had to isolate in their cabin. He said:
Our holiday was completely ruined, as I am sure it was for hundreds of others.
I was ill from day five of the cruise and my wife was taken ill a few days later, as obviously we were isolated together, so she was almost bound to get it as nobody came to clean the room for a couple of days, and when they did it wasn’t done thoroughly enough in my opinion.
Once we’d caught the virus the holiday was effectively over. You spend days isolated in your cabin, and even when we were able to go back out we simply didn’t feel well enough to use the restaurants, the entertainment or any other facilities as we were wiped out and had no energy.
When we were isolated we’d go out onto our balcony and you could talk to others who were on the balconies of cabins nearby. It seemed everybody around us, at each side and on decks above and below, were ill too, so that led us to believe that a significant number of passengers were ill.
Email warned of illnesses the night before the cruise was to depart
Mr Lunn says he received an email from P&O only the night before they were due to embark from Southampton, asking them to arrive for boarding an hour-and-a-half later than they’d previously been told, as the company said it had ‘stepped upped our already robust disinfection measures.’
Mr Lunn said:
The email said that a number of people on the previous cruise had reported to the Medical Centre with symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, but there was no mention of norovirus, and by then it was far too late to cancel. In any case, there was no mention of any option to cancel, or be offered a refund, if you were to choose not to go.
It was only after we returned from holiday that we saw news reports of norovirus outbreaks on previous cruises, on the same ship, in the weeks before. If we had been given the full information, we would certainly not have put our health at such a risk.
We were told they cleaned the ship for an extra hour-and-half before we got on board, but how can that be enough when there has been such widespread illness on board in the previous days?
I know they’ve since introduced a longer period where the ship is empty and prepared for the next cruise, but still seven hours can’t be enough to effectively clean and disinfect such a huge ship.
What about the staff who have been exposed to the illness and are perhaps unaware they are carrying it? There needs to be more time between sailings, but I guess it’s all about profits.
‘Fobbed off’
Mr Lunn said he had found P&O’s handling of the matter ‘disgusting’ on their return and is now one of dozens of passengers to have instructed Hudgell Solicitors to pursue compensation.
We’ve turned to legal support as we were simply fobbed off by P&O when we asked for some compensation for what happened.
As soon as we left the ship it was clear that P&O were in denial mode. When we left the ship we asked for a report on our situation and were given a letter which confirmed our cabin confinement, but it was issued by Guest Services and not signed by a medical official, so it was no use when we tried to make an insurance claim.
The reality is we never saw anybody in the medical centre because as soon as we became ill we were told to stay in our cabin. I have since been sent a medical report from the ship in which a doctor is named and it says we each had ‘gastroenteritis and colitis of unknown origin’.
How they have managed to conclude this is anybody’s guess as no samples were taken from us and no physical examination was carried out. We had a telephone conversation with a nurse who must have come to that diagnosis through telepathy.
Mr Lunn and Mrs Lunn have now cancelled another cruise which they’d booked for October, prior to their May holiday.
I don’t feel we can take the chance of travelling with P&O again for now, not on their older ships anyway. Even when we said we wanted to cancel their approach was appalling. I asked for our deposit back but received a mandate which stated it would only be paid if I agreed not to pursue any further action relating to the holiday on the Ventura. I’ve never signed it,” he said.
It is a shame because this was for my wife’s birthday, but what kind of birthday would it be if we were locked up in our cabin unwell again. I think procedures need to change. This is happening too often on cruise ships.
Solicitor – ‘Full transparency needed on illness numbers and hygiene methods’
Anne Thomson, of Hudgell Solicitors, said:
We’ll be asking serious questions of P&O as to exactly what has happened on the Ventura this year and demanding complete transparency.
We are talking hundreds, possibly thousands, of people’s holidays being ruined by illness on this same ship this year, and that is clearly an unacceptable situation.
We’d expect them to be forthcoming with details as to exactly how many people were taken ill, how and why the illnesses were able to spread on board, and full details as to how they plan to prevent such a situation happening again, as it is paramount for them to do so for customer confidence in the future.
People pay significant amounts of money for cruise holidays and the crew, cruise carrier and tour operator have a duty of care to passengers to protect them from the risk of illnesses such as viral and bacterial infections.
We will be asking that passengers are fully refunded the cost of their holiday and awarded additional damages for the illness, pain and suffering they experienced. For some that will also include being recompensed for the time they had to take off work when they returned home.
Such large numbers of people being taken ill points to not enough being done prevention wise, and we’d very much expect P&O Cruises to settle these claims appropriately given the significant impact on the holidays of their customers.
