Brittany Ferries' Guernsey bookings went down for a week after an IBM data centre fire

Brittany Ferries' Guernsey reservation system went down on a Thursday in May 2026 after a fire at a data centre in Amsterdam, and was fixed seven days later, the BBC reported on 15 May 2026. The data centre was an IBM facility, and Carus supplies Brittany Ferries' IT services.

Grant Miller, chairman and owner of Preston Holidays, an entirely ferry-based tour company, said his team could not make or confirm bookings during a busy period for June to September travel. He said the firm had lost more than £20,000 in bookings and wanted compensation, a contingency plan and better communication; the last update he received was on the Monday.

Brittany Ferries apologised, said discussions were taking place to avoid a recurrence, and said it had kept the States of Guernsey informed. Carus said that after every major incident there would be a follow-up with recommendations it would implement.

Seven days without bookings; Preston Holidays reported losing over £20,000 and asked for compensation.

The reservation system depended on one data centre in Amsterdam, which was hit by a fire.

Guernsey bookings stopped for a week, and a tour operator said there was no way to book manually 'like there used to be'.

Preston Holidays said Brittany Ferries had not updated it since Monday, so partners could not tell customers when service would return.

Preston Holidays called for a more robust back-up system or a manual booking route for future outages.

A single data-centre site is a single point of failure for revenue. A manual booking route can keep a ferry business selling when the system is down.

Brittany Ferries and Carus both said they would review the incident and implement recommendations. The BBC reported that Guernsey's States had been contacted for comment; it does not report compensation or a final cost.