Rhodes wildfire: Holidaymaker says tour operator Tui urged to ignore evacuation order
Ian Noble, 41, claimed the company ‘valued money over the safety of their guests’.
A father forced to flee a hotel with his family to escape the fire on Rhodes has described his “utter disgust” for tour operator Tui.
Ian Noble, 41, claimed the company “valued money over the safety of their guests” by urging them to ignore initial evacuation orders.
Mr Noble, an IT professional from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, was staying at the Atlantica Dreams hotel with his wife, Rebecca, and their four-year-old daughter, Genevieve.
He was among the guests who received an alert from the Greek authorities on their mobile phones at 11am on Saturday ordering them to leave the area as the fire was spreading towards them.
We're walking in the pitch black with suitcases and a four-year-old
Mr Noble said Tui reps and hotel management convinced them it was safer to remain where they were.
But at around 9pm that night there was “banging on the hotel room door and we were told ‘you need to run, go now’,” he told the PA news agency.
A Tui rep told them coaches would collect them from the resort’s main gates, but the hotel manager started “screaming” at them to begin walking towards a beach.
Mr Noble said: “At this point there are no hotel staff, no Tui staff.
“We have no idea where we’re going. We don’t speak the local language and have no lights.
“We’re walking in the pitch black with suitcases and a four-year-old.”
When they reached the beach there were “flames coming towards us over the hills and you’re thinking ‘that’s close’,” he said.
Several people then appeared on pleasure boats and urged holidaymakers on the beach to wade into the water and climb onboard.
Mr Noble said: “We didn’t know who they were. It looked terrifying. There’s loads of us on the beach saying ‘there’s no way I’m doing that’.”
At that point he and his family walked back to their hotel.
They were eventually taken by coach to another hotel where they spent the night on the floor in a communal area.
The following night, an “incredibly generous” Greek firefighter let them stay at his home while he was battling the inferno, before they were taken to another hotel for the final two nights of their trip.
Mr Noble said: “It was a complete debacle. There was no communication whatsoever. No reps. Nobody to tell us what to do.
“I don’t blame the reps because they were clearly being fed rubbish by their upper management.
“They’re clearly not trained for this.
“Some of their houses burned down. You feel bad for them.
“I have nothing but utter disgust for Tui as a company.”
Mr Noble said if Tui customers had been told at 11am on Saturday they would be evacuated on buses and another hotel would be found as soon as possible, they would have been “bitter but not angry”.
How the situation was actually handled was “disgusting”, he said.
Our teams have worked round the clock to offer support and we brought in many additional reps to help assist as soon as the situation escalated
He claimed Tui “knew what was happening” in terms of the need to evacuate but convinced guests to remain at the hotel for several hours because the company thought “we still need to make some money” and “they valued money over the safety of their guests”.
He said his family has been offered a refund for the cost of the final five days of their holiday plus a £200 voucher towards a future Tui booking, which he described as “not good enough by a million miles”.
A Tui spokeswoman said: “We understand how distressing and difficult it’s been for those who had to leave their hotels and curtail their holidays due to the wildfires in Rhodes.
“Our teams have worked round the clock to offer support and we brought in many additional reps to help assist as soon as the situation escalated.
“They’ve done their utmost in challenging and difficult situations, collaborating with the local authorities who managed the immediate evacuation.
“We relocated impacted customers in new hotels as soon as we could and have brought hundreds of people home.
“Many more travelled back to the UK on flights yesterday and today and our teams will be in touch with everyone who impacted on their return.”