naata

Looking at the poll results so far, it would seem that there is support for more thought to be given by Seabourn to alternative destination experiences when tendering operations are not feasable or safe.

I am not surprised that there have been a number of posts on other threads about this Festive Season cruise where three of the nine port visits were cancelled.

This was our sixth cruise with Seabourn and we had not experienced any port cancellations previously. Other cruisers with more than 300 days with Seabourn advised that it was almost unprecedented for Seabourn to cancel so many ports.

Having arrived at Norfolk Island, we were particularly disappointed with the Captain's decision to leave the area immediately after announcing that tender operations would be too dangerous. After the announcement I abandoned my breakfast to rush to the deck to take photos of the old Kingston settlement before it disappeared out of view. As far as I could see there was no reason to prevent the ship from remaining in the area for half to an hour to allow passengers to view the island through binoculars and take photos.

From my point of view the Captain's responsibility in addition to sailing the ship safely is to optimise the passengers' cruising experience. There were no efforts to partly 'save the day' by providing an alternative island experience such as sailing around the island (at a safe distance of course) and/or conducting binocular viewing activities from the decks.

In my opinion Seabourn needs to do more work to ensure the robustness of its itineraries while providing varied and interesting destinations and develop alternative destination experiences when going ashore is not possible. A hastily prepared program of sea day activities is not enough.

Whilst the 10% discount on a future cruise is appreciated it does not compensate for the destination experiences lost.

They do not always adjust the price lower if the price goes down due to poor sales. My TA had to argue with them to do this last year on a booking we had made early, which then dropped pre-final payment, when the price differential for two of us was $6000 for the same level suite. They acted like they were magnanumously doing us a favor. I told the TA to tell them to appropriately adjust the price on the poorly selling cruise, or we would cancel completely and book with an offering with SS on a similar route, then and in the future due to the sour taste they were leaving.

Have had a similar situation,and was not impressed. We had made the BIG error in booking our flights through Seabourn after a "discounted flights" promotion was made. When we asked for a price correction prior to the final payment we were informed we would not only forfeit our deposit but also the airline flights which we had fully paid for!.

Out TA attempted to gain some traction with SB on 2 occasions, but it was not untill I sent a strongly worded email via our TA that we were offered a class of cabin comensurate with the original fare and some shipboard credit. So the moral is, avoid SB flights as they lock you in to the original cabin cost. This situation appears to have effect in other markets, but it might not be the case in the USA as consumer laws seem to be better there!.