terrierjohn

It's a few years since we last went on med hotel holidays, but I seem to remember that most of them had something missing from the stated features in he holiday brochure. The tour rep would just shrug her shoulders and tell you the tennis courts had not been available all summer, or the secluded beech walk had been overgrown for years, to which we shrugged our shoulders and did something else.

Assuming the £2000 for both of you is for 7 days, we normally book 14 night cruises and on P&O we normally pay between £3600-£3900 for a balcony cabin, which is less than you pay.

They can't be processed, because none of the requests we make are ever auctioned, we always have to request them from the cabin steward.

Probably not unless it can be directly attributed to a reduction in bookings.

Have you not come across this before? It was brought in about 5 or 6 years ago, and I think Italy is also applying this as well now. It applies on all drinks while you are in port, not sure about the shops though.

Spanish TVA (VAT).

The pandemic played havoc with airline flight schedules as well as charters, and I don't believe they are back to pre covid operations just yet. So it's no surprise that P&O have still to receive the final data from the charter Airlines.

Normally the questionnaire is for passengers in an adapted cabin, to confirm they do need to be in one. But if your Mum does not use a wheelchair, of her own, then it might be useful to request boarding assistance for which P&O would provide a wheelchair and pusher to help your mum with boarding and disembarkation back in Southampton. In fact it may be very useful for her if you hire a wheelchair for the duration of the cruise. The preferred P&O partner for this is Mobility at sea.

Increasing the sides height would mean it would no longer be an infinity pool though, would it not?

I doubt they would allow him to have the alcohol drinks package, but I imagine he could have the soft drink package, but it would not be free.

We were informed on our recent cruises that the waiters no longer sang happy birtday, however someone indicated this could have been because of mask wearing, so maybe it could now change.

Since worldwide cruise berths are approx half a million, it's understandable that in weak periods all cruise ships will suffer from low bookings.

That last paragraph is somewhat contradictory, although I know it happens. But it just shows that they have not got a satisfactory way of allocating tables. If you have both sharing tables waiting to be filled, and passengers willing to share queueing at the same time, then it's not rocket science to sort it out.

November and early December is notoriously poor for cruise bookings. So in the middle of a cost of living crisis, it's no wonder cruise lines are having to do some heavy discounting.

No need to be afraid, from my observations in the MDRs on formal nights, the younger generation are very willing to embrace the dress codes, and their children seem to love the dressing up experience as well.

I thought he had been tinkling the ivorys for far longer than that.

Why are our media bothered about cruises in Australia?

But wasn't that before swampy?

Can anyone confirm whether the 10% B2B discount applies to all types of fare and not just select?

Different names for the same thing, both are black tie nights.

Whenever there are these sort of changes made by govt or private companies, the new implementation date will always produce winners and losers. It's unfortunate but inevitable and those affected just have to accept it, the alternative only builds up stress and resentment, which is not a very healthy outcome.

There have been some reviews by people who really liked the balcony cabins on deck 8, clearly they are rather like Marmite.

I imagine that most cruise ships only ever sail anywhere near full capacity in school holidays, out of the main holiday periods they will be sailing nearer to their lower berth levels, and that is generally when we sail.

Most hotels have a lobby or coffee shop area where you can sit and relax after vacating your room. So there is no need to worry about being "booted out".

She is not much bigger than Britannia, they are both 44m beam and Iona is 344m long while Britannia is 330m, but Iona's capacity is 5200 as against Britannia's 3650. However she has far more inside and outside space than Britannia and certainly did not feel crowded last month with 4800 passengers on board.