On bedding made out of tablecloths and sunlounger mats, hundreds of TUI passengers were forced to sleep on a conference room floor days amid the global IT outage. Following a week-long holiday in Rhodes, Greece, Brooke Champion arrived at the airport on Friday, July 19 to discover that their flight had been cancelled. Brooke had travelled to the Greek island to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend Noah Pedder.
The 19 and 20-year-old claim they were bundled into a coach at 2 am with 'around 200' other passengers who were meant to be on flights back to both Gatwick and Manchester airport. TUI had arranged for all passengers to spend the night at a hotel. However, when the couple arrived at their hotel, they claimed they were shown to a conference room with tables and chairs and told to 'get comfy' rather than being allocated a room.
A 'frightened' Brooke says she stayed in this conference room for two nights with her boyfriend and four friends they had made on the holiday, who all had to take shifts sleeping to look after their valuables. After two nights of being left to sleep on makeshift beds consisting of sunbed mats with tablecloths on and sofa pillows, Brooke and Noah finally made it home but claim they were told it was 'unlikely' they'd receive compensation. TUI have apologised for their customers' experiences but said that their holidays were 'impacted by the global IT outage that resulted in some delays and cancellations'.
Brooke, from Adisham, Kent, said: "We had.