Tui river cruise passengers angry over coach trips replacing sailing

Richard Pearson arrived in Budapest on September 21st expecting to board a river cruise. Instead, he was told the ship was stuck in Vienna, unable to reach him because of the Danube's low water. He spent his first night in what he calls an "average" hotel, then boarded a four-hour coach to finally reach the vessel, the Isla. What followed was not the relaxing river journey he had paid £3,300 for. The ship sailed overnight to Krems—meaning no chance to watch the landscape slip past—then stayed put while passengers were bussed on day trips to places forty-five minutes to two hours away. The return to Vienna happened in darkness too. By the end of the week, Pearson calculated he had spent fourteen to fifteen hours sitting on a coach, plus additional time waiting for buses to arrive. "It wasn't a river cruise," he told the BBC. "It was a little bit of sailing, a floating hotel with coach transfers."

Pearson was not alone. Sue Crosby had booked the same ship for a September 14th departure—her seventieth birthday. A few days before she was due to travel, Tui sent a revised itinerary explaining that multiple coach trips would replace sailing due to low water levels. She and her husband asked for their money back. Tui refused. They went anyway, reluctantly. Even during the trip, the schedule shifted again. Crosby said there were only two half-days when passengers could actually experience what they had booked: a river cruise. "We feel as though we've been had," she said. The food was good, the staff attentive, but the core promise—the thing the holiday was supposed to be—had been hollowed out. What frustrated her most was not the water levels themselves, but how Tui handled the fallout. "It's how they handled it, and the fact they're still advertising the holidays now," she said.

David Mallon and five others received their revised itinerary days before departure and made a different choice: they cancelled. One member of the group had a health condition requiring him to avoid long periods of sitting, which made a coach-heavy itinerary impossible. Mallon called what Tui was offering "a glorified coach trip." With no refund forthcoming, the group booked a last-minute holiday to Kos instead and decided to pursue their money through the courts if necessary. "We don't blame Tui for the water levels," Mallon said, "but it's the way they've handled the consequences of that."

When the BBC asked Tui River Cruises about the complaints, the company issued a statement acknowledging that extreme heat across Europe had caused the Danube's water level to drop, affecting river cruise operators throughout the region. They said they had reviewed each sailing with nautical partners and arranged coach transfers, hotel stays, and adjusted travel plans to let customers still visit key destinations like Budapest, Vienna, and Bratislava. Tui noted that customers continued their holidays under the company's standard booking conditions and expressed regret that some passengers did not get the river cruise experience they anticipated. The company did not address the refund requests.

Pearson, Crosby, and Mallon are now pursuing complaints with Tui, and at least one has indicated he will take the matter to small claims court if the company does not return some portion of what he paid. The dispute hinges on a question of responsibility: whether a company that markets a river cruise experience bears any obligation to refund customers when the river itself becomes unnavigable, or whether the fine print of standard booking conditions absolves them entirely. For passengers who spent thousands of pounds on a holiday defined by its promise of sailing, the answer will determine whether they recover any money at all.