Panderie

Thank you Petra for your great report and photos. We are planning to do the same next month (as is cruzmaven) and it's so good to see your experience too.

Just to say that the "glitch" on Celebrity's website seems to be fixed today, and we can now reserve Select Dining for our cruise on the 23rd!

With select dining now being more crowded, and no specialty restaurant reservations available, I would be pretty upset had I booked these cruises without any " official " notice from Celebrity that these disruptions would affect my cruise.

...

But then again, that would have been the proper thing to do....so obviously Celebrity didn't do that.......

We are booked to cruise on Equinox on 23rd February, and have just found out about this issue on Cruise Critic from another couple on our cruise. We have had no communication from Celebrity about this issue, and as such are hoping to assume that all will be as booked once we are onboard. However, having tried to book the Speciality Restaurants, and also to reserve our MDR Select dining with no avail, perhaps we are going to be affected. If I book a hotel and work is due to take place during my stay, I would expect to receive a notification regarding this prior to my booking. I do not expect to discover the information via a 3rd party website on which people like us (ie. those who book a veranda stateroom) are deemed to be "the masses". This is our second "try" at Celebrity. Unfortunately we have already booked a further cruise with this line later this year, so we appear to be stuck with what we have got. We will wait and see, and hope that Celebrity does what is right. I just wish that an official voice would override the speculation on this issue. It is not good for the spirit to go on holiday with doubt and negativity as the backdrop.

Hi Nana541, I'm truly sorry if we've lost you because of this issue. I hope you'll come back to Azamara some day.

 

I wish there were a simple solution. I have seen a flurry of inter-office emails on this topic. Please know it is under discussion.

 

And for all of you who are wishing for a more thorough answer, I asked those above me for better wording to share with you using a specific booking that had a problem using the Open Passage. Perhaps this will serve as one example?

 

"The Azamara Open Passages program is combinable with promotions and programs offered by Azamara Club Cruises, with very few exceptions, such as industry rates and employee rates.

The Open Passages Certificates are also not combinable with certain third party travel agent offers or programs. This specific booking was made by a travel agency using such a program referred to as a Net Rate Program. This program allows a travel agency to create additional value to their clients by creating packaged vacations including other non-cruise components such as air, hotel, transfers, etc., not booked through Azamara Club Cruises.

Bookings made using such programs are not combinable with the Azamara Open Passages or any other discount or program offered by Azamara Club Cruises."

 

 

Perhaps this might serve as one example as you say. But this is not the example in our case, and we are still awaiting a positive and helpful response.

Thanks Deirdre for posting this. After 14 Azamara cruises (and signing up for email numerous times) we still get nothing.

Thank you so much Deirdre, likewise we have both signed up countless times and received nothing - this will make a difference. We had a huge surprise when we received the 2015 brochure: the first EVER!!!

 

Hello Panderie, please see my Post of May 29, 2014 which is #79 on this thread. In this thread I explained the restrictions as written on the Certificate.

 

Dear Bonnie

Please refer back to my post no 82 on this thread where I responded to yours (79). Our email reply from Azamara informed us that we should have received the Open Passage Discount, but they do not know why we did not.

What I think needs to happen is that the discount portion of the certificate should be eliminated altogether. NOTE THIS DISCLAIMER: this is JUST MY OPINION, and I'm not in any position to affect that change. My rationale is that the dollar discount is the portion that causes problems in some markets when some certificate holders try to redeem them.

 

We have waited over a month for an official explanation for the Open Passage problems, both on this forum and by email with Azamara.

Bonnie's opinion seems to accord in spirit with the current official Azamara position on the Open Passage Certificate, and thus it apears that we have been mis-sold the Open Passage, as the specified discount (in £ sterling NOT dollars) is clearly stated in our OP documentation according to the level of stateroom booked.

Especially unhappy reading all the recent negative posts about Azamara, and hearing less than favourable reports from friends recently returned. We do hope that our cruise in August does not become our last on this line.

Hello All,

 

There has been much discussion and debate regarding the Open Passages certificates. When you refer to the terms and conditions printed on the Open Passages certificate you will note these restrictions.

 

- A Open Passage booking may not be combinable with more than two other Onboard Credits and dollars off promotions.

 

- Converting an Open Passage account to select restricted fares is prohibited.

 

- The Azamara Open Passages account cannot be used for cruises chartered by third parties and may not be used for certain customized group programs.

 

- The Azamara Open Passages account balance is not redeemable for cash.

 

- Certain restrictions apply.

 

If you are having issues redeeming your Open Passages certificate perhaps your travel agent is working with one of these restricted programs.

Bonnie

I am assuming that as I opened this discussion, you are addressing this to me? In our case this appears not to be so. I have been in contact with Le Club Voyage as you suggested with all details of our booking, and as I previously reported on this discussion, the email I received in response clarified that we should have received the Open Passage discount:

"Thank you for your email

The open passage discount was combinable with the two promotions (Free

Air & Cruise Only GTY promotions.) Unfortunately, the free air promotion

has already finished. I am not sure why you were told that you will only get a GBP -75.00 discount."

And that's it! If you read back to my earlier posting, you will see that I tried to book this cruise using the Open Passage with three different travel agents who were informed by Azamara that it was not combinable, so I finally gave up and booked it without using the certificate. And even though in retrospect we should have had the Open Passage applied, in retrospect we have not.

I was very interested to hear of the "open passage" debate and yes I agree we have also experienced problems with a well known UK TA who was unable to accept this due to an already discounted price.

Firstly just to bring you up to date, my DW & I have completed 7 cruises with Azamara with a future 4 booked and without exception we have used the open passage certificate (obviously not the first cruise). The only agent that refused to accept this certificate is the one own by RCL - crazy!! Shop around or direct, it can work but you have to check and recheck.

Our problem appears to stem not from the 3 different travel agents we attempted to use the Open Passage with, but the refusal of Azamara when telephoned by them to combine the Open Passage at the time of booking with a Free Air offer. Subsequently Azamara say that the Open Passage could have been used but have not allowed its retrospective use as the Free Air offer is no longer available, so we would have to pay more to rebook.

I am pleased to report that after E Mail discussions with customer services regarding the on board sale and subsequent "attempt to use" an open passage certificate/certificattes this has now been resolved to our satisfaction.

Pleased to hear that you have resolved the issue. We would be very interested to know what Azamara have done to sort out this for you. We have had no resolution ourselves, even more frustrating as our experience led me to introduce this topic on CC and I had hoped at least for an explanation! Still awaiting Bonnie's promised response on this too.

I see on the Guatemala concerns thread that another CC member eventually had their Open Passage discount applied retrospectively. It might be beneficial to Azamara's public image to treat all customers equally. We will be taking a print out of the email correspondence regarding this matter on our cruise to show to the excellent staff onboard Quest. I think they will be shocked.

So they didn't apply your OPC to your recently booked cruise retrospectively?

No they did not.

In their final email they said this:

"For future references, please make sure you keep records of who you speak to so that we can see which agents may need a disciplinary process, a warning or to be updated regarding promotional terms & conditions."

We are also experiencing similar problems with the UK operation whilst trying to resolve what appears to be a simple issue with the open passage certificates, once resolved we will provide more details

After numerous return of emails we have got this far:

The cruise we have booked and paid for did qualify for the Open Passage discount, although we were told by 3 different travel agents it did not.

Azamara do not know why they could not apply the Open Passage to our booking.

Azamara look forward to us booking another cruise with them in the future using our Open Passage Certificate(!?).

To ensure that it is applied, in future we should ring the premium rate number and ask for a specific named operator.

Was it £150 well spent?? Am I happy?

I sent off my Open Passage e-mail (as suggested by Bonnie) five days ago and have not yet had a reply. Furthermore, I booked an Azamara cruise for this July seven days ago through my TA but we have not yet had back written confirmation or any of the flight details. It used to take two days!

I have now had a reply from Azamara, not that it has cleared up the problem, however. (The email address given by Bonnie is for the US office - my email had been forwarded onto the UK office.) All I can say at the moment (as I guess I cannot post the email from Azamara on this board) is that the response did not clear any part of my query, as for some reason they assumed that I had not attempted to use the Open Passage Certificate. I have emailed back in hope of a clearer explanation. Smoke and Mirrors come to mind. But whatever the truth behind it all, I don't think it should be for the customer to search for the solution to the problem.

I sent the e-mail, let's see what happens.

I sent our email on the 13th, no response yet, not even an acknowledgement.

We booked our recent Quest cruise using an Open Passage booking with no problem at all. We booked through our usual UK TA on Azamara's "Double upgrade, free flights deal" our open passage booking gave us a further £200 discount, on top of that we got a good deal from the travel agent.

 

It would appear that there are some lazy (or greedy) travel agents who can't be bothered to do the small amount of extra work involved.

Interesting! So you were able to use the Open Passage with two offers! Consistency would be nice! We attempted to book with 3 different travel agents, one local, two national, who all phoned Azamara, then got back to us. Unless they are all fibbing, the Open Passage was not usable for more than £75 pp discount on the August cruise with Balcony Cabin we have booked (unless we paid more than the free flights price). When we tried to book the Thailand and Vietnam Cruise last year direct with Azamara, we were told the Open Passage was worth £75 and did not count towards the deposit (not what we had been led to understand). So the story is the same each time. I would have tried to discuss this again with Azamara, but having spent one whole day in booking this cruise, I didn't want to waste more time (and money on the premium rate phone call to Guatemala). In contrast, last week I booked our February cruise with Celebrity which just took me a few minutes, plus I got a price promise too!

I have used two Open Passage bookings recently to get reductions of over £200 pp from highly discounted published prices. I used my favourite TA who commented that the price was remarkably low! The certificates say that "up to two other bookings can receive the same cruise fare discount ....".

 

The first time I booked I was able to take two friends at the same price. When I booked the second cruise today I was told that this offer has been withdrawn and the promise is not being kept, even though my certificate was issued on 12 Oct 2013.

 

If our friends wish to join us again, I will ask for a supervisor to see if this can be resolved. Obviously, future certificates will be affected.

Interesting to hear that you have been able to use the Open Passage to get a reduction on a heavily discounted cruise. To be able to use our Open Passage we would have had to pay £1,200 more than we did by simply not using it, and booking the going rate, as the cruise had a "Free Flights" offer, and the Open Passage was apparently not applicable with the offer. We still paid over £4,000, so not a heavily discounted rate, but still a considerable saving over what we would have paid using Azamara's Open Passage. We had also thought of taking friends if we had used the certificate, now, as you say that they have also withdrawn that offer, the certificate is further devalued. The booking experience to sail on our favourite ship has not been great.

This is the first I've heard of this problem too.

I've just done a bit of research and see that Bill wrote a blog post in September 2013 about this program:

http://www.azamaraclubcruises.com/connect-share/blog/azamatter-of-fact-a-savvy-shoppers-user-guide/

According to this, the Open Passage is combinable and is not subject to any black-outs. Bill wrote "It’s offered on every published voyage on both vessels." And it does not say anything about being capacity-controlled.

So let me contact both offices (US & UK) to make sure it's being honored by the Reservation Staff as stated.

Thank you Bonnie for checking on this. We will look forward to having it clarified.

Perhaps as part of reaching out to UK guests, this is an area the MD could investigate and give a definitive answer on, educating the UK travel agents enroute if required - he's already got to go back round re the "all inclusive text" anyway so I see an Agents training communication shaping up here

I'm sure that would be beneficial to all, and a reassurance to many.

Hi,

Am onboard Quest as I type.

Cruise sales desk closed at 1300,but will show this thread to them tomorrow & ask for there response.

Sue

Shamansue, I have just noticed that you are on our roll call for our cruise. Vatican to Istanbul! What a coincidence, look forward to meeting you onboard.

Hi,

Am onboard Quest as I type.

Cruise sales desk closed at 1300,but will show this thread to them tomorrow & ask for there response.

Sue

Thank you. It will be interesting to hear more. We have our very good friends onboard with you at the moment - if you meet a lovely couple from Hay on Wye on the Welsh border, say hello from Val and Paul back home. Enjoy your cruise!!

Hi Panderie,

 

I presume you are from the UK ? What you've described, is surprising, as I've not heard of such treatment here in the US.

 

Just curious... isn't there an Onboard Credit associated with the Open Passage, and might it be worth paying a little more, to obtain the OBC ?

 

I hope Bonnie responds to this, or perhaps some of our dear UK friends, as inquiring minds want to know why a different price would be quoted when using a Passages certificate. Doesn't make any sense to me.

Hi Andy

Yes, we are from the UK. We haven't come across any mention of OBC associated with the Open Passage. Be interested to hear more about it.

My husband and I bought an Open Passage in 2012 whilst onboard Journey: it appeared to be a "no brainer" at the time. Last year we attempted to use it to book a cruise with Azamara, and immediately we mentioned the Open Passage, the cruise price went up with our TA. So we abandoned the idea of cruising with Azamara last year and instead booked a cruise with another operator. We have just booked another 10 night Azamara cruise (balcony). Our first choice of TA put the price up dramatically when we mentioned the Open Passage to a level above that being advertised everywhere else. We then went to another TA who informed us they were able only to offer us £75 off the price quoted. So we have booked without using the Open Passage. I fear we will never use the coupon unless we pay over the odds!