My cruise has been delayed, what are my rights?

The following rights apply if you are on a cruise departing from the UK and any other EU Member State.

Information
If your cruise operator expects your departure to be delayed, the operator should inform you as soon as possible. If this is on the day of travel, you should be informed no later than 30 minutes after your scheduled time of departure.

Meals and refreshments
If your cruise is expected to be delayed for more than 90 minutes beyond its scheduled departure time, you should be provided with free snacks, meals and refreshments in relation to the waiting time.

Refreshments should be provided even if the reason for the delay is bad weather. However, they need only be provided if they are available or can reasonably be supplied. This will be affected by a number of factors such as the facilities in the port terminal or on board the ship, the time of day and the proximity of the terminal to local amenities.

ABTA tip
The Department for Transport suggests that reasonable refreshments for a delay of over four hours would be water or tea initially, with a snack or light meal. If the delay goes over eight hours, a hot meal should be provided.

Re-routing or reimbursement
If you’re subject to a delay, you would have the right to an alternative cruise or a refund if the delay causes a significant change to your original booking.

In practice this means that the delay would have to be quite long. As a rule of thumb, on a 14 night trip, the delay would need to be longer than 12 hours, and longer for longer cruises.

Accommodation
When a sailing is delayed and an overnight stay becomes necessary, your cruise operator should offer you accommodation free of charge, if possible.

This can be on board the ship, or ashore. The cruise operator is also free to look at other options, such asking you to go home, or to make your own arrangements and offering to reimburse your expenses. The cruise operator may limit accommodation costs to €80 (approximately £66) per night per passenger for a maximum of three nights.

However, no overnight accommodation has to be offered, or costs reimbursed, where the delay is caused by weather conditions endangering the safe operation of the ship.

Compensation
You don’t have an entitlement to fixed amounts of compensation. Your rights to compensation come under the Package Travel Regulations. 

Compensation wouldn’t be due where the operator can’t provide the services due to exceptional circumstances or an unforeseen event.