Should Mini Cruises Be Scrapped?

So the last quarter of the year for cruise lines, sees the inclusion of numerous mini, or taster, or short break cruises.

Call them what you will, but they generally follow a similar pattern.

Ranging between two and four nights, they tend to start in Southampton and take a slow sail over to Bruges, Amsterdam, Le Harve, or generally somewhere just across the Channel that will have something of interest on land for guests to see.

However, having now done a number of these cruises, and also having a mass of feedback in recent years from my own clients, I believe that anything less than 5 night cruises should be completely scrapped.

Why you ask?

These ‘Taster Cruises’ as many of the cruise lines bill them, are a complete contradiction in terms. Granted they give you a taste of what being on a cruise ship is like. But in no way do they represent the experience of a longer cruise.

Nowadays these Taster Cruises are billed and viewed by many a customer as ‘Booze Cruises’, an excuse for us Brits to jump on board a floating hotel and get drunk for a long weekend!

The staff seem to have become savvy to this, and reports I’ve had from a few recent conversations with returning customers, is that the service, food, and general experience of their cruise was well below par and has not reflected the overall quality of whichever brand they have been on.

A real shock came to me this week when I had several guests come back from the Queen Mary 2, a ship I have done a mini cruise on myself a couple of years back, and had an amazing experience I might add.

Now this is Cunard we are talking about…….. One of the oldest and most reputable cruise lines in history. Five Star traditional cruising at it’s best right?

Wrong….

Several regular clients of mine returned to say they had not had a good experience of the brand at all. Comments such as, inedible, cold, appalling, slow, disinterested, and poor, were all words used to describe their cruise.

What is going on Cunard?

As an agent that is verbally making recommendations to your “World Famous QM2”, I expect to be able to book my clients on board with great confidence that they will come back to me with nothing less than glowing feedback. TO be fair, I was shocked at this feedback because as I mentioned, my experience of the QM2 was brilliant, hence me recommending it so highly. Now I feel like an idiot for doing so. I would appear two years is a long time and it’s clearly gone downhill since I sailed on her.

But going back to my original point, as I don’t wish to single any cruise lines out here, should these short cruises be scrapped in favour of longer ones?

Ultimately if the cruise line are not delivering a fair and accurate representation of their brands, why bother running them. My client said that he will never cruise with Cunard again after that, and by the sounds of it, they weren’t the only ones! So Cunard here have shot themselves in the foot.

I’d be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on this interesting topic, so I look forward to your thoughts and opinions!

Am I right, or am I wrong? Have you had an amazing or terrible experience on a mini cruise? Do you work for a cruise line and can explain why standards seem lower on them?

As always thanks for reading, and until next time………….