Cruise News

Things are going from bad to worse - and good again - for the passengers who paid anything from $100,000 to $380,000 for their world cruise on the ultra-luxury Regent Seven Seas Voyager. One of the ship's two propulsion pods was damaged when it tangled in fishing lines on leaving Singapore, and the ship has been limping along ever since, missing out a number of scheduled ports of call. First it was hoped that repairs could be carried out at Cochin, in India, and when that proved impossible, the plan was for engineers to do the work in Dubai. Now [...]

The Italian government has already booked MSC's cruise ship Fantasia to put up the world leaders attending the G8 summit in July, and now they are looking for more ships to accommodate some of the 25,000 mandarins, aides and media attending the event. Anxious to avoid the demonstrations and civil unrest which broke out in London today ahead of the G20 meeting, they had arranged to hold their summit on the sparsely populated islands of La Maddalena, off the coast of Sardinia. Organisers have set a deadline of April 7 for ship operators to come forward, but a similar request [...]

Thomas Cook have announced they are to take the holiday rep concept to the seas after research into what people want from a cruise. It has teamed up with Norwegian Cruise Lines to offer holidaymakers what they claim is a new package holiday experience at sea. On selected 2009 European departures, Thomas Cook reps will be onboard the Norwegian Gem, Jewel and Jade to greet customers, book excursions, and even - they say - to source emergency suntan. All flights and transfers will be booked by Thomas Cook and customers will check-in through a dedicated area. Describing it as a [...]

The public forums on CruiseCritic came in for some criticism recently when it was revealed that Royal Caribbean had been providing perks to some of its regular passengers to encourage them to provide positive comment about its ships. Other cruise lines cried "foul" because they and the users of CruiseCritic expect the views and reviews on the message boards to be impartial. As indeed did the people running CruiseCritic, which is owned by internet travel conglomerate TripAdvisor. But I have discovered a British cruise line making rather better use of the forums, which are frequently packed with people asking questions [...]

Interesting to see how the latest problems afflicting P&O’s Aurora are being dealt with as they spread across the Internet and in the Press. The Daily Echo, in Aurora’s home port of Southampton, reported on Saturday that angry passengers had staged a revolt after the ship had called at just two ports in 22 days, following the repairs which necessitated an extended stay in Auckland, New Zealand. There was confusion in the story as to the ship’s whereabouts – it was said to be in Honolulu, when by Saturday it had already left San Francisco, where many of the passengers [...]

More news of Regent's Seven Seas Voyager, which I reported earlier this week damaged a propulsion pod which got tangled in fishing nets after leaving Singapore during its 115-night world cruise. Attempts to repair the problem when the luxury vessel called at Cochin, in southern India, were unsuccessful. Planned calls at Mumbai and Abu Dhabi have now been cancelled, and the ship is limping at reduced speed direct to Dubai, where engineers hope to complete the work. Arrival in Dubai is expected to be on Monday or Tuesday, and the line is currently calculating what compensation will be offered to [...]

As cruise ships get bigger, so the facilities on shore to handle thousands of passengers embarking and disembarking have had to grow too. Southampton, voted favourite turnover port in the world at last week's cruise convention in Miami, is about to unveil its new £19 million Ocean Terminal on May 9 with the arrival of P&O's Oceana. For the first time in many years, members of the public will have access to a viewing gallery to get close to the giant cruise ships and to wave farewell to friends and family. On the other side of the Atlantic, at Port [...]