My complaint:
We booked our whole holiday with Celebrity to include flights, transfers and 10 night cruise. We flew with Vueling. On arrival we were very impressed by the number of Celebrity staff at the airport and how they assisted us boarding the coach for the ship transfer. We had a lovely cruise and a fantastic ship. We disembarked Celebrity Beyond on Monday 28.8.23 in Citiavecchia – Rome. We were due to get flight VY6224 from FCO to London Gatwick. Got to the airport fine although no Celebrity Rep on board the coach. Due to a failure in Air Traffic Control systems in the UK our flight to London Gatwick was cancelled at noon. Celebrity (and this is a major problem they have generally) booked us on a block booking with Vueling. This limits the use of airline websites and being dealt with as an individual as their is no booking reference. We waited 2 hours in a queue in the airport to access the chaotic (typical Italy) Vueling desk then offered a rebooked flight for the following Friday! We then waited another 7 hours to get a coach to a hotel for accommodation and some food as we had only been given a voucher for 2 euro each for 9 hours waiting. No Celebrity staff ever became involved and we felt they had washed their hands of us. They knew they had a large number of guests caught up in this and should have helped us all. They were legally responsible for the whole travel package. We were taken to an awful hotel called Belstay Roma Aurelia on the outskirts of Rome. The Trip advisor reviews say it all Don’t choose any room in this hotel.. The food and accommodation standard were very poor and not much better than a basic hostel. We stayed the first night in a pokey dirty room with well used mattresses!
We could not stay 3 more nights in this dump and called Celebrity for help. They would not relocate us to a better hotel more in keeping with their normally very high standards. All they could offer us was a flight on Thursday instead of Friday which we took. It was an indirect flight on Lufthansa via Frankfurt and that took hours longer to get home but at least we did on Thursday night. We sent complaint emails to Celebrity at the time and these were ignored (auto responses saying maybe 30 day wait whilst we were suffering in real time)- only our call did any good and nothing heard from them since. We managed to get out of that awful hotel by hiring a car and driving 90 minutes to stay with some friends who were holiday in Italy. (The car hire was Euro150 Celebrity if you want to reimburse me – i have the bills). I checked out the hotel so saved Vueling/Celebrity 3 nights of food and accommodation costs. My friends managed t get me a new supply of blood pressure medication from a local pharmacist as I had run out on the Tuesday. Of course no one seemed to care about the fact that a lot of travellers would have been in that predicament. Celebrity’s usual audience are not that young. We have travelled with Celebrity many times witnessed by being Elite Plus members yet even to loyal customers they turned their backs. Will think very hard before booking with them again as whilst the Flight cancellation wasn’t their fault they could have done so much better in the circumstances. I will definitely never fly with Vueling again.
Suggested solution:
By apologising and maybe reimbursing or ffering a credit for the car hire and food costs I incurred before we flew home.
