Ludlow: P&O working to refund 'as swiftly as possible'

In a statement posted on P&O’s Facebook page, Paul Ludlow said he was “very aware of the financial constraints everyone is under at the moment” and stressed “we are not delaying [refunding] intentionally”.

Ludlow said he understood “that some of you see us as a big business ‘holding on to your money’ as some of our guests have been commenting publicly” but argued that was not the case, describing how P&O had been adapting its technology systems to process refunds at a quicker rate.

“The first thing for me to stress is that the refund process is underway. We are proud to be a travel company which is able to offer refunds but the impact of Covid-19 upon our business, your businesses, and all of our lives has been devastating, and therefore the complexity and scale of this task has been unprecedented for us,” he said.

He explained how P&O’s first cruises were cancelled due to Covid-19 in the middle of March and although the line expected to process the first refunds sooner “we revised that to ‘up to 60 days’ when we realised the impact the pandemic was having on our wider business and teams”.