P&O Cruises Ventura

I bet the news desks could barely conceal their delight when they began receiving stories from disgruntled passengers on board P&O Cruises Ventura Christmas cruise. The headline in the Sunday Times was 'Ocean cruise ends in almighty brawl'. Reading between the lines though it sounds more like there were a few rowdy passengers (mainly kids) with no notion of how to behave whether on dry land or at sea. No doubt at the time they caused unpleasant scenes but I bet that the P&O staff have seen it all before and were more than capable of dealing with it - the ultimate sanction being simply to put disruptive passengers ashore which is exactly what happened here.

It seems a bit of a non story to me. The gist of it was that this particular cruise had been heavily discounted and therefore attracted what the Sunday Times describe as 'chavs'. This is quite a big assumption which I am sure must have caused considerable offence to those passengers who are perfectly well behaved but simply know a bargain when they see one!

Irrespective of price, cruising has always been considered an aspirational holiday that appeals to all sectors of the market - just as you can get 'undesirable' types in 5 star luxury resorts, so you can on a cruise ship too. The notion that cruising is only for the upper classes died out long ago.

We recently filmed on P&O Cruises Arcadia - this is a child free ship, so rowdy youths are never going to be an issue. That said, on board there was certainly a complete mix of age groups and social backgrounds. The type of people on any given holiday will of course have a big impact on your enjoyment. For that reason we try and include feedback and comments from people we meet on location so you can judge for yourself.

Of course there are never any guarantees - obnoxious people travel just like anyone else! The point though is that on a large cruise ship, just as in a large resort, it is pretty easy to avoid people. From my experience, what tends to happen is that different 'types' and age groups tend to gravitate towards different activities and styles of venue on board and for the most part, everyone is happy.

What do you think? Have you been on a P&O cruise? Does cheap holiday = 'chavs holiday'?