Ponant Posts Major Schedule Update September - December 2020

[AussieBoyTX]

Ponant has posted a major schedule update for the rest of this year (and into 2021 for some cruises).

 

Major changes I noticed:

 

 - Caribbean and Central American cruises on Dumont d'Urville & Champlain cancelled

 - French Polynesian cruises continue on Paul Gauguin & Soleal

 - Earlier Argentine cruises under review 

 - Seychelles still on schedule operated by Champlain. Ponant says they are discussing with Seychelles government

 

https://fr.calameo.com/read/000132423cf461dcaf716?authid=BIZNrwBnxZY5&fbclid=IwAR3rbqUhzDlQCmgPPNqFR7XPgxyQNMA3yoB8CiTr_rOIHdgLr1mt8lyU0AE

Edited September 10, 2020 by AussieBoyTX

[schnapperin]

They are still planning the Antarctica season 😬 

 

And it seems they either stopped offering some of the french only cruises or they aren‘t allowed anymore with the new daily high cases in France

Edited September 10, 2020 by schnapperin

[jpalbny]

Thanks for the post and the link! I was just about 100% sure that our November 23 cruise, Singapore to Darwin, would be canceled. So sure, in fact, that we had not purchased airfare. But good to get confirmation.

[Host Jazzbeau]

Any idea when Ponant will update their website with this info?

[jpalbny]

5 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Any idea when Ponant will update their website with this info?

 

Jazz, they hadn't even told our TA yet. I sent her the link above and she called them to confirm the cancelation. Said that they would send official confirmation next week along with FCCs.

 

It's not just 120% FCC. It's two FCCs. One is 100% of the deposit. Other is 20% of full fare. Maybe they did that because we had not yet PIF? I guess that math works out.

Edited September 12, 2020 by jpalbny

[Tahitianbigkahuna]

7 hours ago, jpalbny said:

 

Jazz, they hadn't even told our TA yet. I sent her the link above and she called them to confirm the cancelation. Said that they would send official confirmation next week along with FCCs.

 

It's not just 120% FCC. It's two FCCs. One is 100% of the deposit. Other is 20% of full fare. Maybe they did that because we had not yet PIF? I guess that math works out.

 

You have a nice gallery  ... enjoyed peeking around

[AussieBoyTX]

13 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Any idea when Ponant will update their website with this info?

Ponant have not proven to be good at keeping their site current. They were still listing September cruises that we knew were cancelled back in June as of late August.

[Condocat]

Some of this information re: Australian ports for year end 2020 is especially disconcerting.  I was selfishly looking ahead for news related to a 2021 Ponant cruise in Australia, but I am completely shocked to think this company believes they can bring their clients in and out of this  country for their cruises, 2-3 months from now. 

 

The US State Dept. has declared Australia at a Level 3: "reconsider travel".  Travel between provinces is limited and if allowed, is enforced by 14 day quarantines which applies to foreign travelers as well and at your expense.

 

Being an optimistic, conditions may improve in the next 60 days... currently United and Delta is flying to Australia from LA and SF.   Sadly, Qantas stated it will not be back up in the air to the US until July 2021 at the earliest.

 

This will be my first cruise with Ponant, so far I'm not being impressed.

 

 

 

[parischris]

On 9/15/2020 at 4:09 AM, Condocat said:

Some of this information re: Australian ports for year end 2020 is especially disconcerting.  I was selfishly looking ahead for news related to a 2021 Ponant cruise in Australia, but I am completely shocked to think this company believes they can bring their clients in and out of this  country for their cruises, 2-3 months from now. 

 

The US State Dept. has declared Australia at a Level 3: "reconsider travel".  Travel between provinces is limited and if allowed, is enforced by 14 day quarantines which applies to foreign travelers as well and at your expense.

 

Being an optimistic, conditions may improve in the next 60 days... currently United and Delta is flying to Australia from LA and SF.   Sadly, Qantas stated it will not be back up in the air to the US until July 2021 at the earliest.

 

This will be my first cruise with Ponant, so far I'm not being impressed.

 

 

 

The cruise list for Australia/New Zealand is geared for locals, in the same way that Ponant have tried to kick start cruising for locals in France and Polynesia. Small cruise lines are really the only ones that have chance of resuming operations in A/NZ  catering for A/NZ residents. 

 

The Antarctic cruises are another story - I can't imagine that travelling into Argentina won't involve a quarantine period.

[Host Jazzbeau]

I'm continually amazed by the drastic differences in the way different countries are treating tourism.  My New Zealand cruise on Ponant at the end of January seems totally unlikely.  But I got an email from a land tour company yesterday telling me that Galapagos is completely open to US tourists for land tours!

[Host Jazzbeau]

I removed my post above because the information is now outdated.  The link in post #1 now goes to the latest version of the Ponant document (rev. Sep. 16, 2020)

[seven1113]

On ‎9‎/‎15‎/‎2020 at 8:26 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

I'm continually amazed by the drastic differences in the way different countries are treating tourism.  My New Zealand cruise on Ponant at the end of January seems totally unlikely.  But I got an email from a land tour company yesterday telling me that Galapagos is completely open to US tourists for land tours!

Hello. I am also booked with Ponant on the Bellot, End of January to New Zealand on Back to back with the wild south of New Zealand trip. Do you think there is any way New Zealand is going to let in Americans to do these cruises?  I am holding QANTAS FLIGHTS AS WELL, , wonder when they will let me know I cannot fly with them. Any news would be very helpful. Thank you.

[Host Jazzbeau]

1 hour ago, seven1113 said:

Hello. I am also booked with Ponant on the Bellot, End of January to New Zealand on Back to back with the wild south of New Zealand trip. Do you think there is any way New Zealand is going to let in Americans to do these cruises?  I am holding QANTAS FLIGHTS AS WELL, , wonder when they will let me know I cannot fly with them. Any news would be very helpful. Thank you.

 

See the thread in this forum about Ponant itinerary changes:

 

Le Bellot is no longer going to Australia/New Zealand.  The December cruises are now switched to Laperouse, and my expectation is that the January+ cruises will also change from Le Bellot to Laperouse.  Thankfully both ships are identical, so this shouldn't change your cabin assignment or any other features you were looking forward to.  [Note that the Ponant website still hasn't been updated, but they did update the document linked to above.  I have my travel agent trying to get them to verify the ship change, and clarify the meaning of 'confirmed' status for the Dec. 29 sailing – confirmed meaning authorized by New Zealand, or merely planned by Ponant?]

 

Sounds like we're on the same cruise (Jan. 30-Feb. 8, Dunedin to Auckland).  We were scheduled for this itinerary in March 2020 (cancelled due to Covid); since Ponant wouldn't refund our money we moved to this sailing and used the 20% bonus to upgrade to a Deluxe Suite.

 

But will any of these cruises will actually happen? – I'm not putting money on it.  We already had our Air New Zealand return flight cancelled and moved to a day later because they no longer offer flights AKL–LAX on a daily basis.

[seven1113]

I have heard nothing and my travel agent has not told me anything. I was supposed to be on and Antarctica trip for 15 days in November 2020, which is not going, after Ponant booked me on b2b and cancelled one half of it because a Chinese group booked and wanted the whole ship,,, well that did not work either I did not get 20 percent of anything. I do not like the company policy, they refused to give me my money back, and a paper FCC is just that, a piece of paper. Useless. So, I signed up on the Bellot for b2b , the cruise we are both on and the new Zealand wild tour on the Bellot after this one. I do  not want to go on another ship. I do not want to go because it is too dangerous with all the infection around the world!! I want my money back, really, and when things calm down, maybe I will want to go somewhere again. What a mess, we are all in a horrible, tragically sad mess.

[parischris]

On 9/16/2020 at 10:07 AM, parischris said:

The cruise list for Australia/New Zealand is geared for locals, in the same way that Ponant have tried to kick start cruising for locals in France and Polynesia. Small cruise lines are really the only ones that have chance of resuming operations in A/NZ  catering for A/NZ residents. 

 

The Antarctic cruises are another story - I can't imagine that travelling into Argentina won't involve a quarantine period.

 Excerpt from https://cruisepassenger.com.au/australian-cruising-set-to-resume-in-weeks/?fbclid=IwAR3xSzyAtPAixH6j5Q-3McI6z-Bpdb5L9G7CBT27kqmWHp7X2Mq8W9ekd94.

 

Ponant and Coral Expeditions are gearing up for local markets in Australia and New Zealand:

 

"Ms Bratton told New Zealand based drive-time news program Checkpoint that she hopes to create a travel bubble in New Zealand where two of Ponant’s luxurious expedition vessels would be able to sail using one or two quarantine options.

The ships will sail from December 2020 through till March 2021.

“One is either you can be at sea for 28 days, taking your time from a point – let’s say Singapore through to New Zealand with just the crew onboard,” she said.

“The other one is that you could come into an anchorage, say to Auckland, and be anchored for 14 days with no guests on board, just the crew, and undertake the quarantine there.”

Ms Bratton said on average, about 100 crew members are needed on each ship. One vessel will have the capacity for 150 guests and the other, 200 guests.

She also said they hope to use the 150-passenger vessel for 80-plus days of expedition cruises, in and around New Zealand’s coast. The ship will not pick passengers up, nor will it pick up passengers from other countries unless a travel bubble with other nations was established by then.

“We’ve got such proven operations there with the subantarctic but also regional New Zealand cruising. And when we had a look, over 100,000 Kiwis cruise annually, [but] not a lot of them get the opportunity to cruise their own coast or indeed to take an expedition and the reason being most of the time when we’re in New Zealand we’re chartered by North American companies, so we see this as a tremendous opportunity for us to create product, number one for Kiwis, and if we’re able to then for Aussies,” she said."

[minz56]

The NZ government has indicated that its borders may not open to international travellers until 1 January 2022 (yes, 2022). Hopefully that is a worst case scenario, but I would be very cautious about making any plans to come to NZ in 2021.

[AussieBoyTX]

Updated again as of October 6. I didn’t try to cross reference the changes.

[AussieBoyTX]

I remain confused. Ponant is convinced they can do Seychelles, I guess. France and UK are now on the Seychelles accepted country list with isolation so I guess that’s feasible. 
 

Dumomt d’Urville shows up in Martinique on December 23. The Tahiti schedule may be more fleshed out. 
 

The website still doesn’t match — it shows some Caribbean cruises on Bougainville S20 that aren’t mentioned in this doc. plus all of the numerous cancellations have t been removed. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

The website has been very strange lately.  If you search by month, you get a completely different list of cruises than if you search by ship.

[AussieBoyTX]

They have added a new set of ship names I suppose to deal with their changing schedules and the limitations of their website: Soleal 2, Belot 2 and Boreal 2 join all the S20 ships. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

57 minutes ago, AussieBoyTX said:

They have added a new set of ship names I suppose to deal with their changing schedules and the limitations of their website: Soleal 2, Belot 2 and Boreal 2 join all the S20 ships. 

 

Thanks.  Obviously still a work in progress.  Le Bellot 2 is now shown doing a series of Nice-Nice loops from Oct. 18 to Nov 8.  Then Le Bellot picks up with its originally scheduled cruises starting Jan. 12 in Dunedin, NZ.  So there is time to get the ship from Nice to New Zealand, if NZ opens to cruising.

 

But they aren't showing a Laperouse 2 on the website, so they haven't confirmed the 'new' cruises on the schedule update link of Dec. 11 from Noumea to Auckland or Dec. 29 from Auckland to Dunedin [the latter having originally been sold as a sailing on Le Bellot].

 

BTW, how did you get the link to the schedule changes document?  There doesn't seem to be any firewall or password, but you have to know the exact URL to find it.

[AussieBoyTX]

12 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

BTW, how did you get the link to the schedule changes document?  There doesn't seem to be any firewall or password, but you have to know the exact URL to find it.

 

Yeah, everyday is a new adventure with Ponant.

 

The link is on the French-langauge site here: https://www.ponant.com/blog/covid-19/

 

I don't think you'll see it in any language selection other than FR-France

 

I have set my home country on Ponant.com to France and find that the contents don't exactly match the other language sites.

Edited October 11, 2020 by AussieBoyTX

[Host Jazzbeau]

After clearing cookies, I got Chrome [my least favorite browser, but best for translating] set up with www.ponant and FR.  Now I can easily switch back and forth.

[AussieBoyTX]

FWIW, we were advised that "The Seychelles & Aldabra Atoll" December 16-28 has been cancelled. I don't know if that is the entire Seychelles season that Ponant was working on, or just this cruise.

[Host Jazzbeau]

If you hear anything about the New Zealand season, please post it here.  Thanks!