Change of Itinerary

It can be frustrating when on occasion a client books a cruise only to have the itinerary change. All cruise lines state in their terms and conditions that this can happen and it can be out of their control. This is annoying especially for a customer who has picked this particular cruise to visit a certain destination. It’s not always simple to cancel the cruise, and most cruise lines say the customer is not within their rights to cancel resulting in the passengers having to travel anyway. This has happened recently to a client of mine who booked to go to the Far East and Australia only for the cruise line to withdraw the main port of call they were looking forward to. This information was given to them before they flew out, and they weren’t best pleased.Worst of all whilst they are on board  (and they are away currently) the cruise line has changed the itinerary again. Instead of ten ports of call they are now only going to five. The reason behind this is the ship needs to go in for urgent maintenance. This should have been taken out of service and a new ship put in replacement. It’s understandable if it is an emergency but I’m not sure it was. I haven’t had all the facts. A lot of the passengers have travelled thousands of miles to have in some cases a once in a life time trip. On an Australian News Channel there is live footage of passengers rioting on board the Norwegian  Star. My customer on board has emailed to say the atmosphere is in his words ‘ugly’. I feel for them as this is not how you want to spend a holiday you have been looking forward to. It has been reported, still to be confirmed that Norwegian cruise Line have offered a 100% future cruise certificate, so basically a free cruise and $500 per person on board spend. If this is true then its quite an offer and I can imagine it will cost the company thousands. In some situations no amount of money can alleviate the problem, but it can soften the blow.

Has this happened to you?

Would you be happy to take the compensation and book again with that cruise line?

It will be interesting to hear peoples views.

Emily