Compensation of 2.5 thousand pounds sterling ended the process of a tourist against an Egyptian hotel and a tour operator who sent her to this hotel. The process dragged on for several years, and the reason for it was the bites of bedbugs during a two-week vacation of a tourist in Hurghada. The “damage” was significant – the tourist had to go to the hospital. Moreover, in Hurghada, the tourist was not only bitten, but then not allowed into the pool…
The affected tourist, then 19-year-old Abby from West Yorkshire in Britain, flew to Egypt at a Hurghada hotel called the Nubia Aqua Beach Resort in October 2018. Her grandparents also stayed at the hotel. “My room looked clean, but smelled a bit of disinfection, but I didn’t think about it at the time,” the tourist said. However, the nightmare began literally the next day – the tourist found that she was covered with red marks and blisters. “I complained at the front desk – they told me that it must be mosquitoes,” the tourist continued her story. However, the number of bites increased, they also began to swell and turn into huge itchy blisters.
“It was a real nightmare, I was in pain, everything itched. And I could never relax – it seemed to me that everyone was looking at me, applying sunscreen was unbearable. One tourist even asked me if I had some kind of skin disease and if it was safe for her to go down into the pool where I had just left,” the tourist recalls. As a result, it came to the point that she had to go to the hospital – there the tourist was prescribed antihistamine injections. “The doctor was just shocked when he saw me, he said that he had never seen so many bites on the body of one person,” said the tourist. The doctor also revealed to her the cause of the bites: they were bedbugs.
“I repeatedly asked the hotel to move me and process the room, but eight days passed before the room was changed. And these terrible bites immediately stopped,” the tourist said.
Upon returning, the tourist contacted hudgell Solicitors, a company specializing in litigation. She requested an expert medical opinion. At the same time, the tour operator We Love Holidays Ltd denied any responsibility for errors in the hotel. Hudgell Solicitors argued that the tour operator failed to conduct appropriate inspections to assess hygiene, health and safety standards, and did not properly monitor these standards, or at all, thereby exposing the woman to a foreseeable risk of injury. The hotel itself at first tried to claim that the tourist brought bedbugs in her luggage, but in the end she pleaded guilty and paid compensation. The process dragged on for several years.
According to the tourist, most of the scars from the bites have already healed, but some “are still visible in the sun.” The psychological consequences also remained. “That didn’t deter me from wanting to travel. But now, every time I go into any room, I get worried – and diligently check the mattress and bedding. I am very afraid to experience this again,” the tourist said.
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