Another departure

[uktog]

It is now public knowledge via her professional profile Heike Berdos has resigned from Explora and gone to Silverseas. That is a huge loss for Explora - she totally understood what the hotel operation of a higher end cruise ship should be. 

[gymfreak]

51 minutes ago, uktog said:

Heike Berdos has resigned from Explora and gone to Silverseas.

Oh wow,

we have our first Silversea cruise next February 🙏

[PaulMCO]

Yes got a LinkedIn notification this morning — she will be Hotel Director on Silversea.  The service was definitely better when she was onboard. And issues were quickly addressed.  
 

I think Explora was always a temporary step until she could get back to RCCL (which jettisoned her past cruise line). 

[Hlitner]

We would suspect that part of her decision has to do with the micro-managment from Geneva;  When a pizza cook tells me that he cannot (or will not) put some pepperoni on a pizza because "it has not been authorized by the home office" it is easy to understand that impossible situation faced by Heike and other experienced management who understand the difference between a hotel/resort and a cruise ship.

 

Funny irony is that when we had a choice between EJ and Silversea, for an upcoming 2-week Caribbean cruise, it only took a few moments to decide to book with SS.  As we had previously posted, our experience with EJ ran head-on into several instances where EJ management was more interested in "orders from above" and proving they are different from other cruise lines then pleasing the customer.  The EJ philosophy seems to be "the Geneva folks come first and the customers either love it or too darn bad."

 

The sooner that those Geneva folks accept that they are simply a luxury cruise line (rather than a land-based resort) and that the passengers come first, the sooner they will morph into one of the best luxury lines in the world.  At the moment, they seem far from that goal.

 

Hank

[uktog]

So well said!  
You can’t run an appropriate operation at sea without delegation and trust. To me it said you might be one of the respected operators at sea, yes you have the onboard title of general manager but we do not trust you with any decisions. I’m sure it got Heike down that she knew the simple fixes but wasn’t listened to by the remote suits