Trying It On: Compensation claims

The armies of non-working British society spend their time glued to the box, waiting for ads that will promise huge payouts for suing cigarette companies which they claim have made them stub out their fags on their faces. They do so, in between watching Jeremy Kyle and some half-wits who look as though they have stubbed fags out on their faces. Repeatedly.

Compensation culture, blame culture, money-for-old-rope culture. Holidaymakers are some of the worst when it comes to pressing, shall we call them, "ambitious" claims. Give holidaymakers enough rope and you'd think they might hang themselves, but no, they all too often get away with it. And were they to hang themselves, rest assured it would be someone else's fault.

You can well imagine that, rather than the normal pre-holiday routine of making a packing list and ensuring the passport's valid, there are those drawing up other lists - ways of seeking compensation which pays for the holiday plus some extra to cover the cost of the fags that they then stub out on their faces.

Brits will try anything on in order to extract some recompense, be it for tripping over a stone on a beach or claiming they got food poisoning in the local bar when in fact they had failed to properly defrost some chicken they had bought from a supermarket and ended up with salmonella. Or perhaps they sue the supermarket.

There are any number of absurd complaints that tourists make. Thomas Cook once produced a list. It included such gems as: "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners." Or, "we had to queue outside with no air-conditioning". There was also, famously, the chap who was awarded compensation because there were too many Germans in his hotel.

These sorts of complaint are what the local tourism industry refers to as the "sport" that Brit tourists engage in. Trying anything on. It's a whole different type of sport to the one that tourism officialdom might hope that holidaymakers would be engaging in.

There are genuine and reasonable claims for compensation; some which are genuine and reasonable enough for them to drag on for years, as with the claims against Thomson by holidaymakers who contracted cryptosporidium at Can Picafort's Son Bauló hotel in June 2003 and which were finally ruled on in January this year. But there are claims which are anything but reasonable; this is the "sport" of the holiday compensation claim.

Thomson may have dragged its heels, unreasonably so, you might think, but it, or rather TUI as a whole, has been plagued by serial compensation seekers. The group now has a black list which can be used to refuse bookings by any of its component companies. There are also websites which share information about the serial complainer.

However, the complaint coming from hoteliers in Mallorca is that tour operators tend to be all too quick to accede to compensation claims, and that the operators then claw back settlements from outstanding invoices to be paid to hoteliers. For the Mallorcan hotel, or it could be any other type of business, there is a dilemma. The judgement on the claim is not made locally but in the UK, under UK law and with the full force of aggressive ambulance-chasing firms of lawyers.

Claims can of course be challenged, but to do so would require lawyers and the defendant going to the expense of appearing in court. It is rarely worth the aggravation or the cost, even if settlements run into several thousand pounds for minor accidents. A difference between the UK and Spain is that the level of compensation in the UK is not set, which can result in high settlements, ones that are pursued vigorously by the ambulance-chasers who are not unknown to vigorously seek out potential claimants at airports and who make their services well-known via the internet and daytime TV.

There is negligence and then there are accidents and downright irresponsibility on behalf of the holidaymaker. If you are lagered up, dance on a table, fall off and break a limb, can this really be the fault of the hotel or bar? It isn't, but there will probably be a compensation-seeking lawyer in the UK who will make out that it is, and the hotel or bar will, more often than not, be left to foot the bill for a broken foot.

It's not clear how much spurious or unreasonable claims for compensation are costing Mallorca's hotels, but costing them they are. Black lists may stop some serial complainers turning up, but there are others who will take their place, looking for some pretext with which to try and extract damages that might pay for the holiday. The hoteliers might wish that the situation were different to that of the clauses which cover package holidaymakers, such as that which obtains for those who book privately in Mallorca. For them, the boot is firmly on the other foot, broken or not. Trying to get compensation from a Spanish court.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.