Holiday compensation/arbitration

flipflop_sandal

Hello,
Very new to asking for advice on forums so forgive me if this isn't relevant or appropriate.
We had a terrible experience on holiday last year.
We went on a cruise and when we arrived at the cruise terminal they couldn't find our booking details on their system. We had booked a deluxe suite (one tier down from a royal suite) with absolutely everything included. The booking was then created right there in front of us using just the details on our passports. During the duration of our cruise they never held the correct details of our booking. No personal details or emergency contact details. No pre-paid excursions. No wrist bands were issued for children in case of emergency. The cabin hadn't even been cleaned as they assumed it would be empty. We spent many hours of our holiday trying to rectify many issues. The holiday was one of the most stressful holidays I've endured.
When we returned home we sent a complaint letter to customer services and asked for a data access request as we believe there was a breach of GDPR. We heard back from data protection office with an explanation of what happened to our data which we find inaccurate. They use a cloud based real time software so can't understand why they couldn't sync our data to the ship. The data protection office also broke GDPR laws by not using blind carbon copy and not having a signed proxy statement to share my personal information via email to recipients outside of their company.
It took 112 working days, a further complaint to customer services and a complaint to ABTA before customer services even responded to our initial complaint. 
We are now at the stage of applying for arbitration. 
I just wanted to ask if, by the snap shot you have been given, would you think it was worth going for arbitration? Is it more of a legal GDPR issue? Any opinion or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

saajan_12

What are you asking for? Question one is whether they have done anything wrong, but question two is what the effect / compensation should be for that wrong. You may still need to address the first point, but assuming that's agreed, what damages or inconveniences did you incur and how do you arrive at the £ amount? 

bagand96

ABTA Arbitration will deal with your complaints about the holiday and any failures within the contract of the holiday. In particular in respect of the ABTA Member's Code and the Package and Linked Travel Arrangement Regulations 2018.

I'm not sure an ABTA arbitrator will investigate or pass any judgement on GDPR breaches.  I think any failures in the delivery in the holiday (which you haven't really elaborated on) and any GDPR breach are separate issues.

Alan_Bowen

I entirely agree with bagand96. As far as I can tell, they must have found details of your booking as otherwise you would never have been allowed on board the ship. Have you formally asked for compensation and had it refused? An arbitrator will look at what was promised and what was delivered, and that will determine what level of compensation is ordered. If you have been offered a settlement and refuse to accept and get no more at the end of the day then you lose your cost of arbitration and have to pay an equal sum back to the cruise line. 

The GDPR breaches appear to have occurred after your request for details they held was made at the end of the holiday and this will not be an issue to be considered by the arbitrator.  If you want to take that forward you would need to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.