Elderly holidaymakers were held up at Dover docks when a local transport provider went bust.
All Destinations was supposed to have provided a fleet of cars to pick up hundreds of passengers aboard the Saga Ruby cruise liner on Wednesday morning, but the firm had collapsed the day before.
Staff at Folkestone-based Saga Holidays scrambled to find taxi companies across the county that could help, but many elderly holidaymakers still faced delays of more than two hours after the ship had docked.
Roger Perfitt, 63, had just returned from a 14-day cruise around the Baltic states.
He said: “Passengers were told to gather in the ballroom at 8am the morning we arrived and shortly after the captain came on the public address and read out a statement from head office. It said All Destinations had collapsed and there would be delays.
“It said all those who needed pick-ups would get them because Saga had worked through the night on an emergency plan.
“But it wasn’t wonderful. We left the boat at 10.30am and I didn’t get home until 3pm.”
Mr Perfitt said many of the taxi drivers had difficulty finding their allocated passengers, and that some groups shared vehicles because it was not clear who they were supposed to be driven home by.
He added: “I saw some old people sitting on kerbs looking really tired and the couple I shared a car with fell asleep almost as soon as they got in. It was a wretched end to a great holiday.”
Paul Green, head of communications for Saga Holidays, admitted there were lessons to be learned, but said the firm did the best it could at such short notice.
“We called in 70 people to work until 11pm to contact taxi firms and sort this out. It was a real team effort because we wanted to make sure our customers were looked after.
“When All Destinations went bust we had no idea what drivers they had called or if they had consulted anyone at all.
“We had an inkling something was wrong when some of the drivers, who work independently, told us they had not been paid.
“All the invoices we received from the firm were paid on time, so it is not acceptable that the drivers did not receive their money.”
Mr Green said Saga was in the process of setting up its own in-house chauffeur service.
The All Destinations website was still running when KOS Media went to press, but its phone number was “temporarily out of order”.
A sign in the window of its Dover offices reads ‘Ceased operating’.
POSTED: 14/09/2008 10:00:00
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