A RETIRED couple have won a payout after their trip to Tenerife turned into a ‘holiday from hell’.

Grandparents Charlie and Joan Berry endured a three year battle through the courts after a luxury holiday turned sour.

They were put in a room next to a sewage treatment scheme, moved to a room near building work and then at the end of the holiday their hotel-arranged airport transfer was late, meaning they missed their flight and had to pay for a new one.

At Burnley County Court the couple were awarded £1,463.44 compensation.

Kester Dean, manager at Rossendale CAB, who supported the couple in their legal row, said: “Too often big companies walk all over people. Mr Berry has shown it doesn’t have to be that way.”

The couple, of The Moorlands, Weir, had booked a two-week holiday with Thomas Cook costing nearly £2,000 at five-star hotel Arona Gran in Los Cristianos; a hotel they had visited successfully several times before.

But when they arrived in April 2009, the tour operator had neglected to tell them the hotel was undergoing extensive refurbishment.

Mr Berry said: “Outside our ground floor bedroom they had installed a machine to dispose of all the human waste products.

“It was 40 degrees and the stench was so bad it made my wife Joan physically sick. We demanded to be moved but the hotel charged us £252 to do so and the new room was adjacent to the noisy renovations.”

Their nightmare continued at the airport on the way home when Charlie, 71, and Joan, 65, along with eight other passengers, were refused permission to board the plane.

Charlie, a former landlord of The Sprintman in Rawtenstall, said: “We were all in plenty of time to check in for the flight and were just told that a captain can refuse anyone a place on the plane without giving a reason.”

The couple had to pay a further £220 for a flight home.