Seabourn is pushing group travel and charters

[Hlitner]

9 hours ago, Utopia1 said:

I've noticed the large groups are usually on 7-14 day segments. 

I found that multi generational families are seldom a problem.  

 

The problem is that even long cruises are made-up of shorter segments.  For example, we had booked back to back to back 14 day cruises (42 days) as a single booking.  Months after booked, we were notified that the middle 14 day cruise had been cancelled, due to a group charter.  As a result, we had to cancel the entire trip.  Seabourn offered us a 10% future cruise credit, but since SB had already increased their prices, booking another cruise actually cost us a lot more money.  Even our cruise agent (who has over 30 years experience and is used to dealing with high end lines) was surprised at the small amount of compensation, which did not even make us whole.

 

The Group that chartered our cruise is a large US-based corporation that has also previously chartered SB voyages.  Since the cancelled cruise was nearly sold out (a year in advance) there are obviously hundreds of unhappy customers.  The bottom line is that SB seems to have no problem screwing regular customers to accept charters.  What to do?  Obviously, we have lost our trust in SB and will likely avoid booking any cruises more than a few months in advance.  The only saving grace, with our forced cancellation, was that SB did it 1 year in advance, so we had not purchased any air.  

 

Hank

 

 

[Vineyard View]

10% cancellation credit is a drop in the bucket to the fare increases that occurred since last year, and then again this March. We are booked on a 12 day in April. I am hoping we are not going to be up against large groups on that voyage.  It would truly put me off cruising Seabourn if that becomes a prevalent theme. 

[Utopia1]

How far in advance does Seabourn cancel segments due to a charter?   I am booked on MANY back to backs for many months and the thought of being cancelled in the midst is alarming.

 

 

 

[Hlitner]

18 minutes ago, Utopia1 said:

How far in advance does Seabourn cancel segments due to a charter?   I am booked on MANY back to backs for many months and the thought of being cancelled in the midst is alarming.

 

 

 

That is the question, isn' t it!  In our case, they cancelled just about 12 months in advance, which does avoid any airline issues.  We have heard of cancellations within 330 days, which means folks who have already purchased air may be out of luck.  Some cruise lines will offer to reimburse airline change fees, but that assumes one is in a situation where they can take advantage of a change.  

 

It does seem like several cruise lines, not just Seabourn, now play fast and easy with cancellations and major itinerary changes.  We cruised, extensively, for over forty years and never had any cancelations or major changes.  But in the past decade, it has been an increasing problem.  Consider our upcoming SB cruise which is now round trip from Dubrovnik.  When we booked that cruise, it was from Istanbul to Dubrovnik.  Then, without explanation, SB changed the itinerary, changed the embarkation port from Istanbul to Dubrovnik, and eliminated two other ports in Turkey.  To this day, SB has never explained why they made the change nor did they offer any compensation.  Our only options were to keep the booking or cancel.

 

We have also had major changes on Oceania cruises.  The new Explora Journeys cruise line has also made a habit out of major itinerary changes (such as cancelling an entire season of Alaskan cruises) without any explanation.   At the very least, we think the cruise lines owe explanations to their customers, but that is not the norm.

 

Hank

[Utopia1]

Seabourn cancelled the last 35 days of the 2024 world cruise.  We learned about the cancellation while on the cruise (it was due to crisis in the Red Sea)

Seabourn was very fair and handled this situation exceptionally well.

I can only hope that this fair and caring treatment continues in the future.