andreas_seadream

Let's find out! 😎

I just gave Sudesh (our VP of hotel operations) a call and asked if he could join me tomorrow live from onboard SeaDream 1. We will be streaming live video and audio and hopefully talk to some of our crew members and/or see the water slide in action. You can watch us live tomorrow on Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Here is a link to the Youtube stream: 

If the time does not work for you, I think it will be recorded (my first live stream even, I still have a learning curve).

Now, to respond more formally to your question: Starlink is a game changer when it comes to the internet onboard. The feedback from guests and crew has been overwhelmingly positive. We still do charge for internet which is really the only negative feedback, but if it helps at all, at least the quality is much better and the price is the same as before. Now, no technology is perfect and cannot guarantee that our live streaming event will work tomorrow. But at least I am confident enough to have this as a public experiment/test 🙂 

Starlink is fairly new and they do not yet have full global coverage. As a result we have backup systems in place (traditional satellite connection and 4G/5G backup). The only place we had to really use our backup systems have been on our transatlantic voyages where we had limited Starlink coverage for a few days. From what I have been told, we will have full coverage on our spring crossings, but if that is not the case we have backup.

On 1/25/2021 at 6:52 AM, Galaxy said:

Andreas,do you think it will be a second Norway only season?

I would love for us to do another season in Norway, but we are not planning on doing so this summer. I wish we had more ships since we could then position one vessel in Norway every summer. The demand is there for sure! 

If we are not allowed to operate in the Med we could potentially operate in Norway of course, but I personally think vaccinations and current lockdowns will make it possible to enjoy southern Europe this summer. It is somewhat ironic that towards the end of a pandemic things are getting way worse and way better at the same time. Millions of people are being vaccinated every day now and yet things are for many of us feeling worse. Worse in reality or because we are tired of living in a world where Covid has been dominating the news 24/7 and our lives for close to a year. I look forward to some time in March when I hope there will be more good than bad news in the world. Fingers crossed! 🙂 

On 1/13/2021 at 4:56 PM, laurelguy said:

And our booking number was 169447...I appreciate it Andreas..

 

My apologies for not checking back in here for a while. I reached out to my team today and I am told that you should have received the funds between 1/19-1/21.

When you initially paid us we used one payment processor for your deposit and another one for your full payment. The reason for this is that we are transitioning to a new company that is much better for us to work with. Amongst other things, they process refunds quickly. We issued a refund for both the deposit and the full payment on the same date. But whereas one of these companies issued you a refund quickly, the other company used many weeks (I am now assuming that the information I have about you now having your full refund is correct - if I am wrong please let me know!). Not only did this company use many weeks, throughout those weeks we had to repeatedly email them and ask them to process the refund. While this of course did not help you for your full amount, at least we are now only processing new payments using this new company. 

And for the record: both companies we are using are good and solid businesses. But one is a very modern company where we can manage refunds using their website or APIs and the other one requires a very manual process in order to issue refunds. During the pandemic the payment processing companies have struggled big time due to an unprecedented high volume of refunds and those companies that are using technology the right way are able to scale in a way that those needing humans to manually refund have not. I do not mean to put blame on them -  we have also been slow at time - but at least we have found a problem in our refund process and made adjustments. 

Other than some issues with our old payment processing company causing some delays, we are now well ahead of the promised 2 week refund window. During the remainder of this pandemic there may be times when we are slower than what I promise here, but if we are slower it should only be for a short amount of time. We are here for the long run and we will be ready to operate again as soon as the time is right.

On 1/10/2021 at 1:58 PM, ctbjr1309 said:

Andreas, thanks for your response.  It doesn't appear to be possible to send you a direct message through this forum.  So, I have sent you the requested information via a different method and look forward to hearing back from you.  I'm glad to hear that SeaDream is catching up on the refund process and look forward to the day when the funds are flowing in the other direction :).

My team got back to me today and your refund has been processed. It may take a few days before you see it. All other refunds that have been slower than normal are also being processed as we speak, ie. over the next few days.

On 1/2/2021 at 2:32 PM, ctbjr1309 said:

Hello, Andreas.  Happy New Year.  Here's hoping for a very different and much improved 2021.  Personally, I'm scheduled for my first dose of COVID vaccine Tuesday.  For the first time in my life I'm excited by the prospect of getting a shot!

 

I'm wondering if you could let us know the current status of refunds for cancelled cruises.  I was scheduled to be on board this week and requested a refund when that voyage was cancelled on November 18 which was 45 days ago.  No credit posted yet to my credit card account so I'm curious to know when to expect it.

 

Many thanks and hope to see you and many members of this forum on board again in 2021!

Happy new year! I apologise for the not responding quicker and for the refund delay. 

Here is what I have found:

We are later with refunds right now than we should be. Under normal "non-covid" operations we issue refunds within 2 weeks. There is sometimes a delay outside of our control with when you see the refund on your statement, but it usually does not add much time. I am being told we are right now at 4-5 weeks, which is 2-3 weeks slower than normal. That is way too slow, so we will speed that up starting next week. I estimate it will take us about a week or two before we are back to "normal" again, meaning refunds are issued within 2 weeks.

In March of last year and for the next few months the world was pretty crazy. That also influenced refunds and we were very slow. Now is a different situation where we have control of the situation. We have the staffing and time to do this correctly. So we really do not have any excuses now and I should have personally kept a closer eye on this.

Now, I do read here that we are even slower than what I can find internally. So if you are past the "4-5 week" mark, I would appreciate if you (or anyone else reading this) a direct message here on cruise critic with your booking number or other information that would make it possible to look up your booking.

12 hours ago, LouChamp said:

while i do agree, as a lawyer i would advise SD not to provide press releases.

Lack of press releases or any form of transparency has nothing to do with legal concerns or desires to not share information. We have done our best to share information, but we have not done a good enough job. If I have enough energy (the past few days have been a bit long), I will have a webinar tomorrow where I will talk about what happened, what went wrong, our future plans etc. 

On 11/3/2020 at 3:45 PM, msears101 said:

Hi Jim,

 

I can specifically answer regarding a false positive on the type of covid test that SeaDream is doing and Barbados requires for entry.  It is VERY rare to get a false positive.  It would be human error to contaminate a sample.  The procedures and protocols used in these scenarios practically prevent it.  There is slightly less than a 1% chance of a false negative, and a nearly 0% chance of a false positive.    If you want more detail I can go into it.    My source is that my wife is a scientist (Primary investigator - leads a research team), at a top tier research university (Called an R1 institution) and she has an RT-PCR+ machine in her lab, that is required for the test.  

 

I can't help on other questions, all good questions. Hopefully, you do not have to worry about a false positive.

Thank you for sharing this! 🙂 We have tried to get the best equipment possible. Earlier this year (in February or March I think) we purchased antibody tests. They were pretty useless, but all we could get a hold of at the time. Then we got the antigen tests which were much better, but not good enough for our purpose. But we now finally have the real PCR tests onboard which is supposed to be the very best. 

In the event that we determine (after several tests) that a guest has covid, they will not be allowed to embark. We will issue a future voyage credit for the guest and their close travel party (family etc.). The guest would then be quarantined in a hotel in Barbados (you can chose a very expensive resort or a relatively cheap but less fancy hotel), but this would be at the guests expense (unless they have insurance that would cover it). In other words, SeaDream, as much as we want to, would not take care of the expenses related to the local quarantine in Barbados, medical costs and flights back home. 

On 11/4/2020 at 10:04 AM, JES4845 said:

It is also disconcerting that so many things remain unsettled when we had been under the impression this had all been worked out with the government on Barbados.

 

We’ve heard second hand that the new UK lockdown could adversely impact those of you coming from there.  True?  Some news articles said travel for foreign holidays is banned.  Had also heard through the grapevine that most of the early voyages were guests from the UK, which made sense given nonstop flights from London to Barbados.

 

Please continue to post so that those of you actually trying to take a voyage in the near term can share and the rest of us can learn from you.  Perhaps we will get more comfortable as actual Barbados voyages occur and any glitches get ironed out.  Safety and good health to all.

 

I hope there are not soo many things that are unsettled. We have a close and strong relationship with the Barbados government and they are very supportive. We had an issue yesterday (a misunderstanding) and the Barbados government turned around the same day and did things for us that were nothing short of outstanding. 

There are travel restrictions in the UK these days and some may end up not travelling. We had a LOT of guests from the UK on the crossing, but for the rest of the season the percentage UK guests is more "normal". Here you can see the crossing and the first few voyages:

We will see what the numbers are when we are actually sailing, but just to let you know that it is not like we only have UK guests onboard. And regardless of various travel restrictions, we are not going to cancel voyages - unless the entire world goes into a lockdown and no one is allowed to travel of course. It would make no sense to sail if there are no guests allowed to travel. But at the end of the day, what is most important for us these days is to operate. Not only for our guests, but also for our crew - and those of us working shoreside as well. And it is very important for the places we visit too. They are so reliant upon income from tourism and they have mostly been without this revenue source for a long time. And we are trying a radical approach, not only in our company but also in the cruise industry, of being super transparent about what we do and what is going on. It takes a lot of time and energy, but I hope it is worth it at the end of the day. 

I encourage you all to share from your (good and bad) experiences and of course to take a look at our friends Ben and Dave on YouTube:

Or if you want our own, slightly more "home made", but very fun videos with Anna you can find them all here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Seadream/playlists

(Click on the "Club Director Anna" playlist - and feel free to subscribe to our channel - we grew from 700 to over 1000 subscribers in the past few weeks!). 

Stay tuned for another webinar, perhaps next week, if this is something you want us to do. 

On 11/4/2020 at 8:32 AM, DaveA said:

I don't seen any change to the quarantine rules. The seven days is just a requirement to monitor your temperature daily from after your 2nd negative test until 7 days or when you leave, whichever is the sooner.

 

What has changed, and will be a problem, is that St Vincent & the Grenadines, where Seadream 1 is scheduled to spend most of her time, has moved from Low Risk to Medium Risk. This means that all passengers will need a further PCR test within 72 hours of arriving back in Barbados at the end of the cruise.

Hi, 

I think it is time that we do a webinar again to provide some updates. A few things have changed since last time, but it should not be substantial. I don't recall what we said on the last webinar, but a while back it was decided that we are doing PCR testing both on embarkation and disembarkation. The reason for doing the PCR test also on disembarkation was that some guests are staying in Barbados and others have reached out to us and asked if this was possible as it was required upon their return home. And the Barbados government also wants the PCR test as it makes them feel safer. So instead of only testing some guests or to try to convince the Barbados government (they are great to work with BTW) that we should not test disembarking guests, we decided to do it for everyone. I am not saying that things won't change, we do live in a world that is very fluid, but we are very confident that we will be able to provide an excellent SeaDream experience for everyone. 

7 hours ago, msears101 said:

We are considering the Dec 12th cruise, and have a hold on a room.   

The main question that I have (and seems to have been asked) is what is recommended procedure to arrive a day or two early  to avoid flight problems and still make the yacht. Currently there are provisions to quarantine hotel until either 7 day OR you receive a second negative test 4-5 days after your first test.  The quarantine hotels will not let you leave until you are clear.  I am afraid of getting stuck at a hotel.

It seems seadream has been working with the barbados gov't.  I am hoping and wishing for an option to arrive a day or two early and quarantine in a hotel, and then be transferred to seadream in one of the barbados run medical taxis that already are operating that normally would  take you to get tested for your second test. I hope that sea dream could work that out, and find away  to get us from a hotel quarantine to the yacht.  So I can effectively finish my quarantine aboard seadream.

 

We are willing to follow any rules, and jump through most hoops - we just want to know about it ahead of time and make sure we understand all the risks.

We have an employee who recently moved to Barbados temporarily. Here is the latest information I received from someone who has just gone through a local quarantine himself:

49 minutes ago, JES4845 said:

Like us, many of you no doubt also received a nicely done blast SeaDream email today touting the winter Barbados voyages.  The odd thing, at least to me, is that neither the email nor the links it takes you to ever mention the various testing requirements and travel restrictions (pre, post and during the voyages).

Thank you for this feedback. We will get more information about this in future emails. We are also working on getting this on our website.

2 minutes ago, Cruise Critic Chris said:

We've asked SeaDream if we can get onboard to report about the new testing requirements and how it works in practice. Will let you know if someone from Cruise Critic goes, and post links to info. 

My apologies for forgetting about this. You are most welcome on one of our initial Caribbean voyages. I just sent you an email.

First of all, thank you again to all of you that joined us a few weeks ago on the webinar. Based on your feedback we have now decided what we are doing this winter. We are going to announce it tomorrow at 2 PM EST during another webinar. Be the first to know and join us again tomorrow:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/4616001119131/WN_OwM5JexxT9qT1bpvWF0_qA

We will try to spend less time presenting and more time for live questions, but we will go over our latest Covid plans and of course share news. Like last time, I have invited Bob Lepisto, Emilio Freeman and Sudesh Kishore to join me.

I hope to see many of you again tomorrow!

Thanks to all of you that joined us last week for our live session. I originally planned on having fewer people join, but then we decided to also send out emails and we had more than 800 people join us live. It was amazing that so many of you joined us! So we will hopefully do more of this in the future, but will perhaps try to have smaller groups so that it becomes more of a meeting where everyone can speak as opposed to a webinar. It was live and the questions we took were from random participants so it was a bit risky, but I think it went fairly well. Here is a link to a recording of the event:

https://seadre.am/32dep33

We have - rightfully so - been criticised this year for not communicating enough and this was an attempt at addressing this. What we do here is not perfect, but my goal here was to at least try something new that we have not done before. I am very open to feedback on how we can get better - and of course of this is something we should do again. 

1 hour ago, cabosal1 said:

I called SD yesterday because I have a floating week that I would love to use. I enquired as to the current itineraries and when they plan to change them and was told that the website itineraries (unchanged) are still those planned and taking reservations.  I was looking at a cruise in late November, which went to the BVI (closed), St. Kitts/Nevis (closed), USVI (closed), etc.  I would need to pay IN FULL now for a trip that I know will not be going where it says it's going.  If the Southern islands (Barbados/Barbados) are going to be the new destination, as has been intimated, why not say so now and avoid accusations of misleading your loyal customers?  Why would someone sign up for trips that are probably changing and soon, too?  Of course, you'll "be entitled to a refund".

(BTW, I was also told that both ships are doing the Caribbean, but who knows, really?) 

Our current decision is actually to do the itineraries listed on our website. If not we would have taken them away. On our call last week we invited many of you a bit behind the scenes on what our current thinking is and that we think operating in Barbados could be a better decision. But it is not yet a decision. Opening up like we did last week is a bit dangerous because it may cause confusion. And having a "live" call was also a bit risky, for instance we were surprised by a guest who asked about a refund that was overdue (I actually misunderstood the guest slightly - and the refund was issued the same day it requested on August 20th, but I wasn't able to get that information quickly enough on the live call to respond right away). I still hope we did the right thing by opening up a bit.

There are many good things happening these days in most of Caribbean. In some ways it is a bit like Norway these days: things are going well, then something happens and we shut down (for instance a city), then we open up again a few weeks later. I actually consider this to be a good thing because it shows how seriously Norway, and in this case, most Caribbean islands take the situation. The other good thing is testing: more and more islands have access to test kits, a better understanding of testing and more plans for how to deal with when bad things happen. Because until there is a vaccine one thing is certain: what WHO has said since early this year about testing, testing and more testing together with quarantining and social distancing is the solution until there is a successful vaccine and a certain population level has become immune. 

Are both ships doing the Caribbean? There is no change there either. If there is a change, we hope to announce it late this week or early next week. The truth is that we are working on many different scenarios, including the ones that are currently decided. These are not easy decisions for sure and believe me; we are working as hard and quick as we can 24/7. We share the frustration that many of you feel these days. Uncertainty and slow decisions are not something any of us want. 

I fully understand that it may sound strange that we are collecting payments on voyages that may potentially not happen. But until we actually make a change - if we do - we need to proceed with the direction decided. I apologise that this may not make sense, but without going into all the inner workings of our booking system and internal routines I just kindly ask for your understanding.

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom webinar. 
When: Sep 3, 2020 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 
Topic: SeaDream - An update for our SeaDream Club Members and extended family

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0B2yvQ1dQvqWuTIEDvrT5w

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

2 hours ago, laurelguy said:

Jim Avery and others..thank you for this. As we watch all the other lines cancel their remaining 2020 cruises I fear the Caribbean winter season will be a no-go. But we're hanging on (so far) to our 12/27 out of Barbados. I really wonder if they'll do the TA's as planned....rough seas all the way around...

You may be right about the Caribbean winter season being a "no-go". Truthfully, we are not quite sure yet ourselves. We know we can operate based on dialogue with the various islands and our medical advisors. Being in operations this summer has been truly invaluable. We don't need to "restart" since we will soon have been sailing for 3 months in Norway. We are ready! Yet, if we had not sailed this summer, I am not sure we would even consider operating this winter. We did have a good Covid prevention system in place before we launched, but we have also been through a "false alarm" (read: we suspected covid onboard and acted as if we had a real situation) and gained experiences that has been extremely valuable. But do you want to travel? If you are on the fence, is there something we can do? Do you feel safe travelling? 

So here is what we are going to to:

We are going to invite any one who wants to join me for a Zoom webinar meeting this week. It will take place on Thursday at 1 PM EST. 

I have asked a few of our team members to join me for a fireside chat with anyone that wants to join:

• Bob Lepisto - President. 19 years with SeaDream.
• Emilio Freeman - Cruise industry veteran and itinerary "guru"
• Sudesh Kishore - SVP of Hotel Operations. 19 years with SeaDream. 

This is a slightly unconventional approach for sure, but we would like to proudly share what we have done this summer, what we have learned, what we think could work this winter season and a few more things. We haven't decided exactly how this will play out  (I just got off a call with the people mentioned above), but we will work on this tomorrow. Please come with suggestions to how we can make this insightful and fun to join!

I will post a link here tomorrow where you can sign up. If it is against Cruise Critic rules to post a link in these forums, you should find a link on our website and social media. We are not going to announce a new yacht on the call (unless you know of a vessel that fits with our brand that is available for a good price). The focus will be on operating in a world where there is Covid in a way that is safe. We are planning on sharing a few insights and behind the scenes information so I think it will be interesting and fun to join! For instance, I will share what took place the first few minutes after we got what we now know what a false positive Covid test on a voyage where I had sent my mom (!).

And then we will see if the Caribbean season is a "no-go". I very much hope it will take place, but we want you all to give us feedback and help us in the decision making.  

I always say that our "product" and the SeaDream experience is really about two things: you (our guests) and our crew. So asking you for some feedback and for you to ask us questions is actually pretty well aligned with what our brand should be. Fingers crossed that this will work well 😉 

Thank you for the update, Naveron. Much appreciated! We are for the most part very quick these days so I hope that the 40 days you are referring to was not too recent. I do apologize, in any case, that it took too long. It has been a crazy year, but at least things are now looking good when it comes to refunds. 

Unfortunately, we need to take a pause in our operations next month. We are going to finish our Norway season, but we decided today not to not sail to the Mediterranean as planned this September. I quickly put together a small blog post here to sum up the summer and share some perspectives:

https://seadream.com/2020/08/24/norway-season-coming-to-and-end-the-road-ahead/

There is a small video that shows some of the health measure we took this summer that some of you will hopefully find interesting. Our focus is now all on making it possible to operate just as safely in the Caribbean as we have done in Norway.

11 minutes ago, Naveron said:

Andreas, thanks for reaching out and I am going to contact my travel agent with this information and find out what is happening.

Great - keep me posted! 🙂

On 8/16/2020 at 10:46 PM, andreas_seadream said:

We are currently refunding in a matter of days. We have currently no records of anyone waiting more than a few weeks, usually for reasons outside of our control (the credit card has been changed, we need bank details etc.). We were slow initially, for sure, and that is not ok. But for the past few months we should have been fairly fast and these days we are back to our normal refund rate which is a matter of days, but in no case more than 1-2 weeks. If you have booked through a travel agent, there may be an additional delay - and unfortunately, if your travel agent has been refunded there is not much we can do. But please contact reservations asap with your information - and if we are in fact 75 days late (or more than 2-3 days for that matter) late - I will fix it immediately. And as an added bonus I will publicly admit the mistake in this forum and apologize if we have made a mistake. We have processed thousands of refund transaction and it is possible that we have made a mistake, although I find it very unlikely. 

 

 

@Naveron I just wanted to follow up and ask if you contacted us about your refund. I am unfortunately not allowed to message you privately in this forum which is what I tried first (probably because I have a verified/official cruise line account and the moderators don't want me to send you marketing materials). In any case, I have checked in with our team every day to see if we have had anyone contacting us about a long overdue refund and we cannot find anything. We have also gone through our records to actively search for a refund that is overdue by more than a few weeks. To the best of my knowledge, we are not this late with any refunds, but if I am wrong it is very important for me that we rectify it right away.

On 8/15/2020 at 9:29 PM, Naveron said:

Still waiting for my refund after 75 days...

We are currently refunding in a matter of days. We have currently no records of anyone waiting more than a few weeks, usually for reasons outside of our control (the credit card has been changed, we need bank details etc.). We were slow initially, for sure, and that is not ok. But for the past few months we should have been fairly fast and these days we are back to our normal refund rate which is a matter of days, but in no case more than 1-2 weeks. If you have booked through a travel agent, there may be an additional delay - and unfortunately, if your travel agent has been refunded there is not much we can do. But please contact reservations asap with your information - and if we are in fact 75 days late (or more than 2-3 days for that matter) late - I will fix it immediately. And as an added bonus I will publicly admit the mistake in this forum and apologize if we have made a mistake. We have processed thousands of refund transaction and it is possible that we have made a mistake, although I find it very unlikely. 

Andreas from SeaDream here. I would like to provide my perspectives on what is being written here:

We have an office in Miami. In the Courvoisier Center on Brickell Key where we have had our offices for the past 14 years. No one has been "given same-day notice to grab what they could". We are not running a "skeleton staff" or at a "20%" staffing level. In fact, we are fully staffed. We are fewer people now than we were when we were going to launch SeaDream Innovation, but we have more employees in the US now than we have been on average for the past 15 years. This is a staffing level we are planning on having during the pandemic - and after the pandemic. Even if we cannot operate our yachts. It is, in fact, the staffing level we are planning until we increase our fleet size (which we are very much interested in doing despite Covid). Some employees are working reduced hours due to unfortunate, but obvious, reasons (it is hard to visit travel agents when there is a pandemic going on) and all employees are working from home. Those of you living in Florida understand why we are not sending people to the office. We already have had employees getting Covid (even during the "home office" period), but we will continue to work from home as long as it is the right thing to do.

The US has been our most important market since day one, and there is no reason why that should change once the pandemic starts to ease. This summer we have had mostly guests from Norway since we moved our ships there, but we expect a typical distribution of where guests come from once the world returns to normal.

PS! We could have done a much better job at communcating during this initial stage of the pandemic and I fully understand that lack of communication from us is the best way to fuel rumors and speculations. Not going to excuse why we have done a bad job, other than to say that we are in the mist of the worst crisis the cruise industry has ever seen. We were prepared to handle a "normal" crisis like a hurricane or an onboard situation, but for the industry to shut down almost overnight, no, we were neither staffed nor prepared for that.

Assuming these dates are accurate :)

Those dates much better :) But please read the entire article you posted about Hadeland (towards the end) and you will see that both companies are doing fine financially and are profitable. Google Translate does makes a slight mistake by translating 89 million Norwegian Kroner into 89 million dollars (at least on my computer).

Hi,

I just wanted to post a quick message here saying that the article mentioned in this thread is several years old. When you look at the article you get today's date instead of the date the article was written. The matter discussed in the article was resolved years ago with a positive outcome.

(I have not forgotten about my promise to respond about the "kids" topics, but I have been busier than expected lately.)

I read the two posts from Andreas on a new thread (Sea Dream website) purporting to be a spokesperson of Sea Dream and Shania Twain's song instantly came to mind: "That dont impress me much" !

 

Really, what twoddle ! Tosh ! Waffle !

It says a whole bunch of nothing.

And how quickly some are to acquiesce !

 

I haven't posted for a while now on this subject as I have given up and reluctantly accept nothing will change.

I no longer have faith in the company (Owner especially) and I will be reducing the risks with no bookings in potential peak kid seasons.

I'm guessing they are July & August in the Med. Does anybody out there concur ? It is everyone for themselves but shared experiences are so valuable. I would appreciate feedback.

Dear goRRRdon,

Thank you for your honest feedback. I think we as a company have not reacted quickly enough to feedback provided by you and others and that is something we have to learn from and improve upon in the future. For this thread to reach 180+ posts before we even responded is not ok. And you are absolutely correct that I have not address the actual issues yet so I can appreciate your analogy to the Shaina Twain song. For the time being I have only acknowledged concerns raised on these forums and that was really the only purpose of my initial posts.

I will try post an update later this week or early next week addressing the actual issues raised. I am not promising that there will be major policy changes or that you or others that you will be happy with what I am saying, all I am trying to do is to be honest and engage in a dialogue and to make sure that your voices are heard by our management (I met with Thomas Carlson, our VP of Hotel Operations today and we went through many of the posts on these forums together just as an example).

I created this note on the SeaDream website to let you know that I am an employee of SeaDream Yacht Club just to get that out of the way: http://www.seadream.com/andreas.html

Best regards,

Andreas Brynestad

SeaDream Yacht Club