Some of the 300 passengers who refused to leave Costa Victoria of Costa Crociere for 17 hours on Thursday in Hong Kong have blamed tour company Miramar Travel for escalating the row by accusing travellers of greed and of “hijacking” the ship, the South China Morning Post reports on its website.

The passengers staged a protest on the vessel at the end of a five-day cruise, demanding more compensation for the cancellation of a visit to Vietnam’s Halong Bay. They delayed the journey of 2,000 passengers booked on a cruise to Malaysia which had been due to depart on Thursday afternoon.

The stand-off escalated after a fiery meeting on Wednesday with a Miramar representative, passenger Peter Cheung, 57, said. “The representative said something like ‘you guys are just causing a stir for money’,” said Cheung, who was among the last group of passengers to leave the boat at around 10.30pm. “One traveller was so angry hearing that comment he took out a pile of US dollars and threw them at the rep.”

After telling passengers the company was offering no compensation in addition to the HK$340 offered by the cruise liner, the Miramar representative failed to deal with the situation.

“The rep was quite immature… he didn’t even say sorry,” Cheung said. The mood deteriorated further on Thursday when Costa staff refused to provide water and Miramar’s general manager Alex Lee Chun-ting told a radio programme that passengers had “hijacked” the ship.

“Even an educated person would become irrational after hours without water,” Cheung said, adding one man was so angry he threatened to jump off the boat. Passengers only received drinks after the Travel Industry Council intervened on Thursday afternoon.

Things would have turned out differently if senior Miramar managers had started discussions with disgruntled tourists early in the morning, another passenger Windy Kwok Pui-fong said. “I can’t believe the crisis management of such a big agency could be so poor,” she said.

Miramar manager Lee, who met with 20 passengers around midnight, refused to comment on the behaviour of his staff. On Thursday he suggested that the passenger who had thrown money had shown poor manners. Lawmaker Ann Chiang Lai-wan, who had been on the cruise, rejected suggestions that passengers had behaved like “bullies”. Refusing to leave the boat was the only bargaining power they had, she told a radio show on Friday, the report said.