A father died from Legionnaires disease just days after returning from holiday in Spain.

Shop assistant Simon Turner, 45, and his family unknowingly stayed at a hotel which had seven outbreaks of the disease in nine years, an inquest heard.

His wife Karen went down with flu-like symptoms as they came back by coach from the Florida Park Hotel in Santa Susanna on the Costa Brava in October 2007.

She recovered, but Mr Turner became ill on November 3 after arriving back at their home in Shannon Close, Telscombe Cliffs, near Brighton.

He went to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, where doctors thought his headache and other symptoms might be meningitis.

He was given a lumbar puncture and brain scan but was allowed home on November 5 after telling doctors he felt better.

The father-of-two collapsed and died at home three days later, an inquest at Eastbourne heard yesterday.

Dr Jeremy Tibble, a consultant at the hospital, said Mr Turner had no respiratory symptoms to suggest he had Legionnaires disease and as a result tests for it were not carried out.

East Sussex Coroner Alan Craze asked: “Looking back you clearly got it wrong. How did that come about?”

Dr Tibble replied: “There was nothing at all at the stage I saw him to suggest that he had got underlying pneumonia.

“It is always upsetting to us as physicians to see young people dying on discharge from hospital in this way.

“I feel very sad for his family. Any loss of life for a young person and his family is tragic.

“However we do learn from these cases which are very rare.”

Mrs Turner said in a statement that she and her husband had both used the shower in their room at the Florida Park Hotel as well as its jacuzzi and swimming pool.

She said they had also stayed at a hotel in Dijon, France, during an overnight stop on the Crusader Holidays coach trip to Spain.

The inquest heard that several cases of Legionnaire's disease had also been reported in Dijon.

Mr Craze recorded a verdict of death by natural causes from pneumonia brought on by Legionnaires disease.

He added: “I want to urge all tour operators to be on their guard to the dangers of Legionnaire's disease.

“They should take steps to understand the regulatory system in each country which vary considerably.

“I wonder if Crusader Holidays knew or had any means of knowing, of the earlier cases of Legionnaires disease at the Florida Park Hotel.

“However rare it may be, for people going on ever more exotic holidays who are going to run showers or use whirlpools, the wise thing to do is to run them for a period of time before they use them.

“That seems to be the way in which Legionnaires is caught and I am not sure how much the public is aware of that.”

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Turner's brother Paul, said: “I can't understand why they didn't give him a routine urine test which would have shown this up before they sent him home.

“They are doing it now as a matter of routine since his death.

“He should not have been sent home. If they had kept him in and done those tests he would have been alive now.”

Legionnaires' disease is a type of pneumonia. About half the cases of Legionnaires' disease are caught abroad.

No one from Crusader Holidays or the Royal Sussex County Hospital was able to comment last night.