Princess cancels next two Sapphire Princess sailings

[Coral]

1 minute ago, AF-1 said:

Coral,  I believe any company that has business on foreign soil; that has a severe issue and public relations issues; like live news; has to send the CEO;   anyone less than the CEO would be a slap in the face to the passengers on that ship.  

I agree. I think she could have stayed there a bit longer. I think that would have seemed more "meaningful".

Edited February 12, 2020 by Coral

[Jnsplace1]

 I don't think this is much different than the cancellation being done by various airline companies.  Many of them have canceled the remainder of Feb flights, and are assessing March.   I'm sure all sorts of businesses are doing frequent risk analysis.  I cannot imagine the cost and pain on all sides affected by this.

[dns65]

3 minutes ago, Jnsplace1 said:

 I don't think this is much different than the cancellation being done by various airline companies.  Many of them have canceled the remainder of Feb flights, and are assessing March.   I'm sure all sorts of businesses are doing frequent risk analysis.  I cannot imagine the cost and pain on all sides affected by this.

 

They cancelled with less than 24 hours notice.  People already flew to Singapore to board the ship, were checked into their hotels ready to wake up the next morning, have breakfast and head to the port. 
 

The risk isn't going to change in 2 weeks, there are 6 clusters of outbreaks in Singapore and they do not involve people who have been to China.  This is people to people outbreaks.   It's not going to disappear March 1st. 

[Jnsplace1]

I'm not going to add to the anxiety already present, but I will say it's not much difference with folks that had flight through American and Delta.  I am not saying it's a perfect; I do agree "it sucks".   

Honestly, if I had a vacation (or other such travel) heading to anywhere near those hot spots, I would tread cautiously and knowingly make decisions with risk in mind.

 

 

[luckyinpa]

there's a new insurance forum on here and they just reminded me that CFAR must be canceled 2 days before the cruise to be payable. so definitely no last minute decisions there. 

[TrixieBel]

We are on the 1st March sailing and I was just thinking this through in terms of what one outcome could be if the cruise company keeps our cruise going... This is the outcome that we and our travel companions are hoping for... 😬

- there’s coronavirus spreading in England and pretty much every other country now and the death rate is still 2% or lower, with 98% (or more) of people surviving
- the people will all get off the Sapphire today and it will sit empty until 1st March. This gives time for the ship to be completely sanitised and to sit clean until that date.
- we get on to a VERY clean / sanitised ship on 1 March and have a great time.

[pink845]

Wow, that is quite a bummer. Cancelling within 24 hours of the cruise on Sapphire.  Again, a good reason to have trip interruption insurance.  The cost of a new flight home would be covered by trip interruption.  In effect, your supplier, Princess cruises is preventing you from sailing as they have cancelled the cruise.  Your trip has hence been interrupted.  That is for those of you who have flown to your port of departure.    My policy pays $2000 per person for airfare to get me back home.    I am pretty sure I could get a flight back for that amount of money and $1500 per person for hotel charges and incidentals waiting for that flight to happen. Have you ever been to Singapore.  A night stay at the Conrad Hilton is upwards of $300 US per night. 

 

The  letter someone posted showing what Princess plans to cover goes on to state that Princess will cover airline change fees.  That is perfect for people who did not purchase insurance and reasonable expenses on a case by case basis.   These are the risks of travel in these trying days.  I would suggest anyone who has cruises booked for the coming six months anywhere make sure they have insurance.  Said insurance price is certainly going to rise sky high very soon so better get it in place ASAP.  Also, get ready for some insurance companies to exclude trip interruption and cancellation due to ships cancelling journeys due to Coronavirus.    

[ingatestonian]

17 minutes ago, TrixieBel said:

there’s coronavirus spreading in England and pretty much every other country now and the death rate is still 2% or lower, with 98% (or more) of people surviving
- the people will all get off the Sapphire today and it will sit empty until 1st March. This gives time for the ship to be completely sanitised and to sit clean until that date.
- we get on to a VERY clean / sanitised ship on 1 March and have a great time

 

Well that would be a good outcome for the 1 March sailing.

 

You say that the virus is spreading in England. Well as the 9th case was confirmed this evening that's true but to put into perspective it has been two weeks since the first case. So that's 9 cases in 14 days which doesn't suggest spreading wildly.

[strachan01]

An absolute joke from Princess! We are over in singapore and have had one email which went to my junk mail. Our TA has had very little information other than they won't cover the flights to and from singapore, only the price change to get us home. Truly truly farciacal from a company already in the media spotlight. Given the timing it seems as though they waited for people to voluntarily cancel to save costs! We phoned every day last week as we had our doubts but were told the cruise would go ahead. I received the email at 1600 intoo my junk mail, way less than 24 hours notice. 

[dns65]

50 minutes ago, TrixieBel said:

We are on the 1st March sailing and I was just thinking this through in terms of what one outcome could be if the cruise company keeps our cruise going... This is the outcome that we and our travel companions are hoping for... 😬

- there’s coronavirus spreading in England and pretty much every other country now and the death rate is still 2% or lower, with 98% (or more) of people surviving
- the people will all get off the Sapphire today and it will sit empty until 1st March. This gives time for the ship to be completely sanitised and to sit clean until that date.
- we get on to a VERY clean / sanitised ship on 1 March and have a great time.

 

Princess are not stating why this cruise and the next one are being cancelled.  It's probably one of two things. 

 

- There are 5 clusters of Coronavirus outbreaks in Singapore at the present.  It is spreading thru the public independent of people going to China therefore the numbers will most likely continue to increase for several weeks.  This may be a pre-emptive strike before Singapore becomes a "no go" zone like cities in China and Hong Kong  

 

- Rumours online were that ports do not want cruise ships visiting when originating in cities with Coronavirus outbreaks as evidenced by what is going on with the Westerdam. 

 

By next week, the situation in Singapore could explode, there was someone working in a bank just diagnosed so maybe we'll see a jump in cases for Singapore.  Ship could arrive back into a city that has flights cut off or severely restricted

I hope you get your best case scenario that you have outlined but I think it's going to be a while before the situation in Asia outside of China stabilizes

Edited February 12, 2020 by dns65

[dns65]

4 minutes ago, strachan01 said:

An absolute joke from Princess! We are over in singapore and have had one email which went to my junk mail. Our TA has had very little information other than they won't cover the flights to and from singapore, only the price change to get us home. Truly truly farciacal from a company already in the media spotlight. Given the timing it seems as though they waited for people to voluntarily cancel to save costs! We phoned every day last week as we had our doubts but were told the cruise would go ahead. I received the email at 1600 intoo my junk mail, way less than 24 hours notice. 

 

They are handling this very poorly.  It's profit before passengers from the looks of it, sad to say.... 

[lhall85917]

We were booked on the cruise leaving on the 13th and waited until the last minute (Sunday night with a 7am Monday flight) to cancel. It really was irresponsible for Princess to wait this long to cancel, especially when many people were coming from the states on very long flights. Our original plan was to just cancel air, then hold on for the cruise until today but our TA said since flights were booked with Princess we couldn’t do it that way.

I have only seen a couple of posts from those on our cruise, but it seems like they are being reimbursed for the cruise and will get FCCs. We received 50% FCC at the time; however, we are asking them to consider additional reimbursement due to the late notice. 

[stracpat]

For those saying oh but insurance... ours doesn't cover epidemics - not the first thing you think of checking for! So we felt we had no option to cancel before as we would lose thousands! So many people are losing out.... still don't know what we are getting apart from the cruise itself but our travel agent is going to work on it and will certainly kick off when we get home! Will be claiming for our call costs too to get this mess sorted, £1.80 a minute to receive, yikes!

[oldfashioncruiser]

It is my understanding that many ports are telling the cruise industry that they will not allow them to come into their port.   

[Daniel A]

4 hours ago, dns65 said:

 

They really are not handling this well.  You would think that with the Diamond Princess in the news, they'd be hyper-sensitive to further erosion of their reputation and would be on top of things and dealing with matters proactively vs this totally reactive response. 

I agree. Princess should just put a stop to this worldwide health crises and reimburse anybody who was affected.  Who reimburses Princess?

[Daniel A]

1 hour ago, stracpat said:

For those saying oh but insurance... ours doesn't cover epidemics - not the first thing you think of checking for! So we felt we had no option to cancel before as we would lose thousands!

It's not an epidemic!  It is only an outbreak.  Why use inflammatory language to rile up people who have already been riled up by excessive media coverage?  It is one ship out of 20 that Princess has that was quarantined.  Carnival owns about 110 ships.  Where is the hysteria about all these other ships being quarantined?

 

Calm down already...

[azbirdmom]

Princess has updated the notices section to include these cancellations "...out of an abundance of caution...".  https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/itinerary-modifications-cancellations.html

[strachan01]

2 hours ago, Daniel A said:

It's not an epidemic!  It is only an outbreak.  Why use inflammatory language to rile up people who have already been riled up by excessive media coverage?  It is one ship out of 20 that Princess has that was quarantined.  Carnival owns about 110 ships.  Where is the hysteria about all these other ships being quarantined?

 

Calm down already...

It is an epidemic. It's been classed as one by WHO. Know what you're talking about before you start posting. 

[stracpat]

3 hours ago, Daniel A said:

It's not an epidemic!  It is only an outbreak.  Why use inflammatory language to rile up people who have already been riled up by excessive media coverage?  It is one ship out of 20 that Princess has that was quarantined.  Carnival owns about 110 ships.  Where is the hysteria about all these other ships being quarantined?

 

Calm down already...

 

No need to jump on me! I had read in British media that it has been classed as an epidemic now, not a pandemic.

I am hardly hysterical, we came to Singapore!

[stracpat]

1 hour ago, azbirdmom said:

Princess has updated the notices section to include these cancellations "...out of an abundance of caution...".  https://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/notices/itinerary-modifications-cancellations.html

 Until June all cancelled! Yikes! Must be repositioning!

[leck57]

2 minutes ago, stracpat said:

 Until June all cancelled! Yikes! Must be repositioning!

 

Not correct. The next two Sapphire Princess cruises are cancelled as well as all Sapphire cruises out of Shanghai up to June. In between Feb and early June there are a number of cruises out of Singapore, at this stage.

[stracpat]

5 minutes ago, leck57 said:

 

Not correct. The next two Sapphire Princess cruises are cancelled as well as all Sapphire cruises out of Shanghai up to June. In between Feb and early June there are a number of cruises out of Singapore, at this stage.

 

Yeh I re read and saw there is April and May from Tokyo too... wonder what they do these next couple of cruises though? 

[dns65]

4 minutes ago, leck57 said:

 

Not correct. The next two Sapphire Princess cruises are cancelled as well as all Sapphire cruises out of Shanghai up to June. In between Feb and early June there are a number of cruises out of Singapore, at this stage.

 

Lots still up in the air.  I am supposed to board May 10th in Hong Kong but Princess can't tell me if I will be boarding there or if it will be moved to another location.  And who knows if they won't cancel the remaining cruises like NCL and Celebrity.   This is my criticism with this, they don't seem to really have a plan.  It's all reactive  

[Ombud]

6 hours ago, strachan01 said:

An absolute joke from Princess! We are over in singapore and have had one email which went to my junk mail. Our TA has had very little information other than they won't cover the flights to and from singapore, only the price change to get us home. Truly truly farciacal from a company already in the media spotlight. Given the timing it seems as though they waited for people to voluntarily cancel to save costs! We phoned every day last week as we had our doubts but were told the cruise would go ahead. I received the email at 1600 intoo my junk mail, way less than 24 hours notice. 

Please read what Princess has posted on the website. Inconvenient but not dire 

 

Information on the details regarding automatic refunds to the original form of payment has been provided to guests and/or their travel advisor, along with information on how Princess Cruises will reimburse unexpected expenses, such as air change fees. Reimbursement of reasonable out-of-pocket expenses will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Because the cruises were cancelled close to the departure dates, guests will also receive a future cruise credit. ...

[Ombud]

8 hours ago, dns65 said:

They cancelled with less than 24 hours notice.  People already flew to Singapore to board the ship, were checked into their hotels ready to wake up the next morning, have breakfast and head to the port. 
 

The risk isn't going to change in 2 weeks, there are 6 clusters of outbreaks in Singapore and they do not involve people who have been to China.  This is people to people outbreaks.   It's not going to disappear March 1st. 

Review website. Cancellations go up to:

> Diamond March 12th

> Sapphire June 11th

For those who've already arrived near embarkation point Princess will

> reimburse cruise fare to method paid (cc or gift card) & issue FCC = amt spent on cancelled cruise

> cover unreimbursed airfare, hotels, reasonable expenses