Tourists on a tour with Cox & Kings' European Whirl lost all valuables they had kept in C&K bus as per instructions from their guide on the last day

It is widely believed that travelling abroad with a reputed tour operator ensures safety, security and fulfilment of the promises made. However, those on Cox & Kings’ (C&K) European Whirl tour found that their Roman Holiday will be memorable for the wrong reasons. In a shocking incident, passengers allege that their valuables were stolen from their hand luggage right from the bus engaged by the tour operator.

The bad news doesn’t end with being robbed. Instead of helping them file a complaint with the local authorities, they were advised to return to India and file a complaint with Cox & Kings (C&K), which denies any responsibility and points to some opaque fine print in a brochure that was given to the tourists before commencement of the tour.
 
Here is what happened. YN Bhattacharya, a senior banker and his family were booked on C&K's “European Whirl” tour. The 11 night-10day package cost was Rs1.28 lakh per person. On the last day, the passengers having checked out of their hotels were on the last hours of their tour at Rome, before heading for the airport.  Mr Bhattacharya says, the tour manager Marina Coutino repeatedly advised all passengers to carry all valuables and items purchased in person, in backpacks or side bags, to avoid pilferage at the airport and also advised them to claim VAT refund. Accordingly, each passenger had these with them in the bus (on which they had travelled all the way from London), during their last hours of shopping and sight-seeing of the tour.
 
"On the way to airport, the bus was parked on the road Via Portuense outside a shopping mall and we were advised by Ms Marina Coutino to leave all the belongings in the bus and spend time in the mall till 17:00 hours. No one was allowed to stay in the bus. She also advised that no baggage would be permitted in the mall", says Mr Bhattacharya.

Everyone vacated the bus and entered the mall for lunch and shopping. After couple of hours, the tour manager contacted some of us and informed that baggage inside the bus was missing and everyone should check their belongings in the bus immediately. We immediately rushed to the bus and found that everything was missing from the bus except a hand purse, which had the travel tag on it. Even jackets worn and food packets were not spared".

According to Mr Bhattacharya, almost all the 32 members in the bus on way to airport lost their valuables and one member, Mr Chatterjee even lost his passport and air tickets and was stranded at Rome. Me and my family suffered a loss of around Rs2 lakh, apart from loss of peace and suffering mental agony with sleepless nights.

Moneylife spoke to Mr GS Kutty, who told us he lost his iPhone, laptop and a Blackberry and other valuable items worth over Rs2 lakh. We are in the process of calling others.

The tourists were in for a bigger shock on returning to India. C&K washed its hands off the entire episode. When Moneylife called C&K to ask for its comments, the spokesperson emailed us denying that its tour guide was in anyway responsible for the theft. He said, “We regret that such an unfortunate incident did take place. In the terms and conditions (Page 98) of our brochure we do mention that passengers should not leave behind any property in the coach while disembarking. The company would not be responsible or liable in case of loss of such property under any circumstances. It may be noted that the tour manager Ms Coutino assisted the passengers in filing the FIR at the local police station and a copy of which was provided to the clients".

But Mr Bhattacharya has a very different version. He alleges that the tour manager was in a hurry to take the passengers to the airport and advised them to take up the matter with Cox & Kings on reaching India. She only took them to the police station when the passengers insisted on it. His complaint says, “She (the tour guide) was compelled to take us to the nearest police station in order to lodge a First Information Report (FIR) for lost items. We were not allowed to go inside the police station but were handed over a limited ‘Questura di Roma’ form to fill in and hand over to her. We were not even given adequate time to fill up the forms for all four members. The partially filled forms were handed over to the tour manager for transferring the same to police station. Acknowledgment of only three forms were received out of the four submitted by us which was immediately brought to her notice but she declined to approach the police station to collect the remaining acknowledgement form, which she was to handover to us. This was around 17:00 hours and we were only five miles away from the airport when our flight was at 22:00 hours. This makes it evident that she had enough time to take care of documentation from the police station on the loss of valuables which were in exclusive custody of Cox & Kings, but she did not perform".
 
In fact, giving the brush off they have received, Mr Bhattacharya wonders whether the theft was an inside job in collusion with the driver and the guide, especially since he was not even given an insurance claim form when he asked for it at C&K’s Vashi office at Mumbai.

Specifically, he cites the following actions questionable actions on the part of the tour operator.  
1. Specific advice of the tour manager to carry all the valuables and items purchased in their handbags, backpacks. This facilitated pilferage of all items collectively from inside the bus.
2. Specific advice of the tour manager to leave all valuable belongings in the bus and to vacate the bus for about five hours to go shopping. Nobody was allowed to stay back in the bus.
3. We were not allowed to keep the luggage in the locker room of the hotel as she declined to pick up the luggage later from hotel on way to airport, although it was hardly five miles away.
4. The bus was parked on the road away from the shopping mall in spite of parking space available inside the mall complex.
5. The bus was parked outside the range of security surveillance of the shopping mall, monitored by cameras and CCTVs.
6. There was no tampering on the door of the highly technologically advanced Mercedes-Benz bus, which was fitted with security door alarms. Thus, raises doubts about pilferage being an inside job.
7. The tour operator was reluctant to approach the police station for filing the FIR. After almost three hours of the theft, she could be persuaded to take us to the police station.
8. She neither allowed sufficient time to lodge the complaint nor permitted anyone to leave the bus to meet the police officials.
9. The tour operator did not hand over the complaint acknowledgement from the police station for Sayanti Bhattacharya although she had filled the complaint form.
10. Although the bus was parked outside the police station, no police personnel inspected the bus.
11. Although there was plenty of time available to file a detailed complaint (about five to six hours until flight time) she was in hurry to push us to the airport and didn’t want the travellers interacting with the local police.
12. On reaching airport, she was not traceable anymore.
 
The question then is, don’t tour operators get any insurance for the tours? That is a separate story. Watch this space.