A FAMILY has been left ‘disgusted’ after TUI cancelled their package holiday and blamed it on a global IT outage.

Julie Williamson, along with her husband and 12-year-old son, were left stranded at Bournemouth Airport after their holiday to Paphos, Cyprus, was suddenly cancelled.

The family turned up to the airport, with bags packed at around 10.30am on Sunday, July 21, and were waiting in the check-in queue when they were told the devastating news.

“I phoned Bournemouth Airport the day before, ahead of the flight, to check the tech issues and I was told there were no flight cancellations,” said Julie.

However, after hours of waiting in a “mobbed” café and eventually being brought seating, passengers were informed via email that their whole holiday was cancelled.

Julie said they were told their holiday would be refunded in the coming weeks and if they wanted to rebook a holiday with TUI in the next 28 days, they would get vouchers for £200 per adult and £100 per child.

“We were told don’t bother going to Castlepoint because the travel agent said they are completely mobbed and can’t help you,” said Julie.

She added: “TUI customer service was absolutely disgusting.

“If that is how they treat their customers then I do not want to give them any more business.”

Julie and her family were eventually able to book another holiday to fly from Bristol to Turkey on July 23, with help from Hays Travel who she said were “superb”.

However, Julie has been told she will not receive any compensation for their cancelled holiday as it was impacted by the global technical outage from cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike.

The flawed update knocked many services offline around the world, causing flight and train cancellations as well as some healthcare systems.

“You would think after ruining someone’s annual holiday they will give you some kind of compensation or help,” said Julie.

“Children were in floods of tears at the airport and we were left high and dry.”

She added: “I don’t think I will ever book with TUI again.

“I am glad to hear Jet2 are coming to Bournemouth, maybe then we wouldn’t be left to fend for ourselves.”

A TUI UK & I spokesperson said: "We would like to apologise to our customers who were impacted by the global IT outage that resulted in some delays and cancellations.

"Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control the impact, alongside air traffic control restrictions over the weekend, meant we had to cancel some flights and delay some return flights home.

"We understand how frustrating this would have been and recognise that many of these delays happened when our customers were already at the airport.

"We would like to reassure customers that if they are currently overseas our TUI team will look after them and flights home provided.

"We will continue to update customers with more information and can confirm that if a return flight time has changed we will contact them directly 24 hours before departure.

"We thank our customers for their understanding and continued patience."