Ten months ago, my parents paid £4,000 for a holiday with Princess Cruises through the travel agent cruise118.com. Last month, three weeks before departure, my mum suffered a stroke. She’s now in intensive care, unable to speak and or move. I tried to cancel the holiday and claim the 25% refund due under the booking terms and conditions. BA immediately agreed to refund the flights, but cruise118.com informed me that, due to data protection rules (GDPR), only my mother, as the lead passenger, could cancel. My parents had annual travel insurance but it did not cover the region they were going to. My mother applied to upgrade it the day before her stroke, but by the time the quote arrived it was too late.
LHV, York
This is terribly sad. Your mother is only in her 60s and was active and healthy. Cruise118.com’s stance strikes me as utterly unreasonable. You had sent a letter from the hospital confirming her condition and offered to put your father, as a named passenger, on the phone.
I asked it how its interpretation of GDPR worked if a customer could not speak for themselves. Whereupon it acknowledged a “misunderstanding”. “We have an established process that allows cancellation to be processed on a lead passenger’s behalf, by providing appropriate medical documentation,” it said.
Because the window for the 25% refund had closed, it agreed to refund you and Princess Cruises, on discovering the circumstances, magnanimously returned the rest of the holiday cost as a goodwill gesture. My advice to travellers is take out travel insurance as soon as you book so you are covered from the outset.
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