More Cruises to Egypt Cancelled
The British Foreign office is still at this time advising against travel to most of Egypt, the only parts that people are currently allowed to travel to at this time are Red Sea coastal resorts such as Sharm-el-Sheikh as these are un-affected, you can see what I mean by clicking THIS LINK and viewing the map.
Unfortunately cruises are getting affected by this and are being forced to cancel port calls or cruises to that region.
MSC has recently pulled the Armonia from their Red Sea itinerary program that was due to sail from November 2013 to April 2014. This does seem like a way off for this decision to be made. I had clients of mine effected by this decision who had already booked their own flights and hotels. I am disappointed that MSC were promoting their new itinerary’s before informing myself or my clients about the cancelled cruises.
Other cruise line’s effected by this are Princess Cruises and Seabourn cruises.
Pacific Princess’ port call to Alexandria on August 1-2 has been cancelled, and replaced with calls at Santorini and Corfu.
Dawn Princess’ port calls to Safaga on August 7, Alexandria on August 10, and Sharm El Sheikh on September 14 have been cancelled, and instead the ship will call at the ports of Ashdod (for Jerusalem,) Israel and Crete (Aghios Nikolaos,) Greece.
Seabourn Legend was due to make a number of port calls in Egypt in October — Alexandria (11), Hurghada (24), Sharm El Sheikh (26) and Safaga, for Luxor (27 & 28) — all of which have been canceled.
Seabourn Odyssey is canceling port calls to Hurghada on October 18 and Safaga on Oct 20 & 21. Seabourn has not announced which alternative ports the ships will call at.
Seabourn’s decision to cancel a stop in Sharm El Sheikh is especially significant as U.S. State Department and Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice do not include Sharm El Sheikh or the other Red Sea resorts in their travel advisories, as the area remains unaffected by the issues affecting the rest of the country.
Thomson has cancelled calls at Alexandria and Port Said on Thomson Celebration, replacing them with Aghios Nikolaos, Crete and Haifa, Israel, earlier this month.
Discover Egypt has also had to cancel Nile cruises.
I do find the situation strange that people are advised it is fine to be on a non affected Red Sea resort, yet dangerous to travel a few miles up the road inland, I don’t know if I would be personally very happy about travelling anywhere in Egypt at the moment.
One Comment on “More Cruises to Egypt Cancelled”
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We’re due to sail on 30th September. Told today that Port Said and Alexandria were no longer on the itinerary.
No refund or option to cancel was offered. Our alternative port is Rhodes.
I don’t want to pay the best part of £1000 to got to Rhodes. I booked a trip to Egypt!
I’m disgusted at the lack of customer service offered by Thomson .
I appreciate the situation isn’t their fault. We only wanted to postpone our trip.
As far as I’m concerned, I booked a trip to Egypt on the “Egypt & The Holy Lands” cruise. As that’s not possible, I wanted a refund or to postpone.
I was told expressly; “It’s in your terms and conditions, we can change up to 3 ports if necessary or appropriate”