P&O Cruises takes out adverts to make clear it is not related to disgraced P&O Ferries

Elly Blake31 March 2022

P&O Cruises has taken out adverts to make clear it is not linked to disgraced P&O Ferries.

P&O Ferries sacked 800 staff and replaced them with agency workers on March 17 without consulting workers’ unions.

The highly controversial move has been widely criticised after it emerged the agency workers would be paid £5.50 an hour, £3.40 below the UK average wage.

In a bid to distance itself from the ferry company, P&O Cruises has resorted to taking out full-page adverts in several national newspapers, as well a short film used on social media and an advert on YouTube.

It decided to launch the advertising campaign after backlash from customers who assumed it was linked to ferry company.

The advert shows a tweet from an anonymous Twitter user, calling for the cruise line to be boycotted.

The advert taken out in newspapers
Screenshot

It then reads: “We’ve received a lot of messages like the one above during the past week.

“Some people have thought that this relates to P&O Cruises. But it doesn’t.

“Our names may both begin with P&O, but that’s where the similarity ends.

“We are separate organisations and have been for 20 years.”

P&O Cruises is owned by leisure travel firm Carnival Corporation, while P&O Ferries is owned by shipping and logistics business DP World.

The cruise operator’s brand has taken a hit since P&O Ferries announced the shock decision to sack its staff two weeks ago.

According to a YouGov BrandIndex tool, the cruise brand’s overall index score has dropped 18.8 points since March 17, when the scandal broke.

On March 14, three days before the mass sackings, P&O Cruises claimed a positive index score of 6.4. By March 27, it was down to -12.4.

A P&O Cruises spokesperson said: “We wanted to clarify any possible confusion in the mind of the public and media.

“We are P&O Cruises and we are part of the world’s largest leisure travel organisation which is Carnival Corporation & plc and we have been for 20 years.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in