Help is not close at hand.

Royal Caribbean Cruises has recently announced plans to develop Celebrity Cruises, Azamara Club Cruises and Royal Caribbean as three separate brands in the UK from next year. ‘Developing’ of course goes hand in hand with ‘restructuring’  and as part of the new focus on the separate brands there will also be a number of changes to UK offices of Royal Caribbean International, which they have conceded will result in the potential loss of around 100 jobs.

I know what you’re thinking… can’t be helped, these are tough economic times we live in. This may be true, however following the company restructure all UK enquiries for Royal Caribbean and Azamara Club Cruises, both regarding direct sales and trade enquiries will be handled by a new call centre in Guatemala.

Yes, you did read that correctly, a call centre in Guatemala.

Dominic Paul, vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa across the brands said, ‘We take our customer service incredibly seriously, and in choosing Guatemala we are getting exceptionally high language skills.’

As a first and second language, Spanish is spoken by 93% of the population though not universally among the indigenous population, who choose to speak one of the twenty-one recognised Mayan dialects.

So I’d have to agree with Mr Paul, exceptionally high language skills indeed!

While I’m sure a Guatemalan call centre handling UK enquiries is an economically viable proposition, partly due of course to the loss of potentially 100 jobs in the UK, I wonder if the exceptionally high standards of customer service presently provided in the UK call centres will remain.

So moving forward, is this the new strategy? –  ‘Royal Caribbean, Profits before People’.

Please let me know your thoughts.