What A Nightmare NCL !

What should have been a holiday of a life time for one of my guests has turned in to a drastic nightmare. My guests are sailing on the NCL Star, for a 21 night cruise from Hong Kong to Sydney, they actually boarded on the 16th January.

So out of a 21 night cruise, the ship should off been porting in 10 destinations, this has now been slashed to only 5, which is just unacceptable. No Kimono island, Airlie Beach or Brisbane so including Thailand and one of the stops in Vietnam that 5 ports missing from the original  itinerary.

I received an email from my guests which are on board, explaining that the ship was having technical issues and could not sail at a fast speed and that guests were protesting on board. The captain was nowhere to be seen but all guest was causing a riot in reception and staff were trying to calm the situation down. They were informed at this stage that they were only going to get $300pp on board credit and 50% off a future cruise that had to be used in the next 12 months.

After long discussions NCL have now offered all passengers a credit of $1,000 per stateroom and a 100% future cruise credit of the fare paid for use within the next five years. Guests should not have been put though this ordeal, they have paid a lot of money to experience a cruise of a lifetime and this should off been resolved straight away.

In December the NCL Star had endured some technical issues with Azipod system ( Azipods are engine components that help propel and manoeuvre ships) which basically means the ship cannot sail at a fast speed. As far as I am concerned this was not repaired to the standard it should have been to carry on another cruise for 21 nights. Instead of taking the ship into dry dock and repairing her to full standards NCL decided to bring on contractors to repair the issue whilst the ship was still sailing, again unacceptable.

What are your thoughts on this ?