In rather unfortunate circumstances, my partner tested positive for COVID at the cruise terminal in Barbados. We were meant to sail with Royal Caribbean on the 30/01/22 on board Grandeur of the Seas.

On our day of boarding we arrived at the port terminal for our allotted time and completed our rapid antigen COVID tests as expected. Unfortunately my partner, tested positive, but I tested negative. A further 2 passengers we were travelling with also tested negative. We appreciate this is just an unfortunate event, out of Royal Caribbean’s control, but our complaint follows what happened after the test result came back.

Upon staff obtaining my partners positive result, he was removed from the waiting area with no explanation of what was happening, and was asked to wait in a sectioned off area of the port terminal. I was left by myself and not told what was going on, my partner was not able to relay any information over to me for a considerable amount of time.

Some 20 minutes or so later I was also brought over to the sectioned off area, along with the 2 other passengers we were travelling with. In this area there were 2 more passengers, which 1 of whom also had a positive test result. For the 6 of us that were now present there, there were 4 old chairs to share. There was a tray of old dirty water in the corner covered in insects and the area was teaming with ants, not to mention it seemed this area was also used to store broken trolleys and broken equipment in a run down state.

An individual who we were all led to believe was a doctor came in and performed PCR tests on us all, to which my partner and I had to pay $1600 for. It was over 2 hours of waiting in this sectioned off area, unable to see out of it, until any other member of staff came to see if we would like a drink. 2 hours of us sharing chairs and sitting on the floor, we feel that it was a total lack of duty of care and attention.

We proceeded to ask if we could use the toilet facility’s, this took over an hour to get an answer. Totally unacceptable. We were marched 1 by 1 past the waiting area to the toilet in a humiliating fashion, in front of many many other passengers.

It was well over a further hour before we were offered another drink, all of us feeling overheated and dehydrated, now around 4 hours into waiting in this area, still with no clue of what was happening and no members of staff giving us any further information when asked.

Another long uncomfortable wait and we were spoken to finally and given further instructions, we as a group had been waiting there for almost 6 and a half hours. In this time, received 2 small half filled cups of water and waited over an hour to use a toilet, no other offer of any assistance, no food, nothing to help cool us down. My partner was suffering from a severe migraine and we were all aching and tired from the terribly uncomfortable and stressful ordeal.

We were treated as if we didn’t matter one bit, forgotten about, in an area that I would class as a dump. It is as if we were garbage!

My partners positive COVID test result we can live with and accept, the treatment we received afterwards we truly can’t.