Cruise Lines

Yet another fuel surcharge story, I'm afraid, but read on because this time it's good news.

Travelmole reports that Peter Deilmann has promised there will be no fuel surcharge in 2009 and Viking River Cruises UK managing director Wendy Atkin-Smith tells me Viking has not imposed any fuel supplements this year or next, although she admits they might have to bring in a charge for 2009 later down the line.

Our past passengers are very loyal so we have brought out nest year's brochure two months earlier than usual so they can book 2009. There are no fuel surcharges now, but I can't promise that won't change.

It's also good to see that Deilmann is including one excursion per cruise in the price. I know they will argue that allowing passengers to buy the excursions they want instead of including them all in the price keeps costs down and means people don't feel they are paying for days out they don't want, but I'm afraid I don't buy it.

Viking includes daily excursions in the price and I have never heard anyone moan that they are paying for things they don't want - in fact they are all there, at the door, eager to go on the trips, which gives the boats a feeling of camaraderie.

Yet funnily, when I asked Torstein Hagen, Mr Viking himself, why they don't include drinks in the cruise price - even just wine at dinner - guess what? He said it's because passengers don't want to pay for drinks they don't want.

I guess I can just about see the logic. But the other journo at the table nodding wisely in agreement? What is the profession coming to?

A report in Travel Weekly US suggests the chill wind of the economic downturn is starting to blow around the cruise lines.

Johanna Jainchill's report talks of downsizing staff and budget cuts at Royal Caribbean in response to rising fuel costs and says sources say the line wants to trim the payroll by 10%.

RCCL's vice-president of corporate communications Lynn Martenstein admitted they are under pressure to control costs.

Like most companies today, we are redoubling our efforts to find savings, but we have not announced any specific actions.

Hot on the heels of news that Susan Hooper, managing director EMEA, is resigning one can't help putting two and two together and coming up with, well,  four.

I feel a definite reorganisation in the air.

But luckily it's one we can all applaud in these days of being green, in words if not deeds.

The line has won an award from CiAI in Italy, which translates into National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Aluminium Packaging, for collecting tons of empty cans, waste foil and aluminium packaging - 10,000 kg of the stuff between May and December 2007.

CiAI usually reserves its awards for councils, but decided MSC qualified because its ships are floating towns. Actually that doesn't sound so good, does it? I can see the term being picked up with glee by environmentalists determined that cruising is the worst thing since, well, sliced bread.

I see Celebrity Cruises, that bastion of cruise tradition, is cutting back on formal nights for nine, 10 and 11-night cruises starting August 1. A sign of the more casual times, even for lines that like to think their passengers are quality, discerning types.

They'll be telling us they are trialing an open-dining system next. I can't wait.

The International Herald Tribune reports that Royal Caribbean International president and chief executive Adam Goldstein was in Singapore to announce plans to base a ship in Singapore starting autumn 2009.

The line dipped a toe into Asian waters this year, so I guess this decision is proof that the experiment was successful. Either that or they just can't think what to do with all the cruise ships they keep building.

Let's face it, the Caribbean might be popular, but when the giant Oasis of the Seas hits the region in December 2009, it's going to soak up an awful lot of passengers - 5,400 on each cruise if all goes according to plan - so Royal's other ships have to fill somewhere else.

And why not Asia? Star Cruises is there year-round, Costa Cruises bases a ship there for part of the year and Princess Cruises has a big selection of exotic cruises there in winter, but generally it's somewhere the big lines only dip in and out of on their way around the world.

On Carnival Splendor last weekend, I heard Carnival Cruise Lines president and chief executive Gerry Cahill rule Asia out as an option, so seems Royal might have it all it's own way - for a while at least. Smart move.

Carnival Splendor cruise director and fellow blogger John Heald's entry from yesterday does not cover the UK travel industry in glory.

Once you can get past his new-found love for Splendor's godmother Myleene Klass, his dislike of Chekhov and the theatre, he tells his readers about the open bar card Carnival gave all its non-paying guests.

This means that all the beverages were free.............and this means three awful long nights for the poor bar staff. While some of the agents treated the card with respect by ordering just one drink at a time others looked upon it as though they had just been given use of Bill Gates' Black American Express card for 3 days and therefore ................they were going to get absolutely hammered ...................and they did.

I saw things the last three nights that made me so not proud to be British as the Brit Travel industry let loose. I actually ventured into the dance club last night just to see the DJ and discovered Dante's hell. People were ordering three drinks at a time or more and the once polite country I knew and loved so much seemed to have given birth to young people who had not been taught words like "please" and "thank you" and "No, I have had enough to drink, I am going to bed............alone."

Just what the trade needs when it is trying to convince the world - or British travellers at least - that they know their cruising stuff and can make intelligent and sensible recommendations to help customers choose a cruise. Wonder if they realise that the stuff they are supposed to know isn't how quickly you can get served at the bar.

Sad words in view of an earlier blog this morning in praise of the trade.

I'm pleased to say Heald does go on to say most agents were well behaved and ends with a story of how over-indulging on Le House Wine hen in his 20s got him locked up in France for a night. It's very funny, so stick with the blog - and let's hope his readers remember that, and not the agents' antics, as they tune out.

Catharine Hamm, a staffer on the Los Angeles Times, has a very tortuous style but finally manages to get around to answering a reader's travel dilemma. And it's a good response.

To book through a travel agent or not, that is the question.

Quoting Jay Rein, chief executive and president of US on-line travel agency Travelworm.com, she concludes that booking your cruise through an agent not only means you get the best choice of which line to choose, but also the best deals, whether that be upgrades of perks.

Hamm concludes:

If I set sail again, I'll use an agent, whether it's clicks or bricks, because, frankly, he or she (or it) will offer to help. And when was the last time anybody else in the travel industry bothered to do that?

Isn't it great to find someone on your side?

As my regular blog readers will have seen, I was at Tilbury last week to see Marco Polo, now sailing under charter to Transocean Tours and sub-charter to Cruise and Maritime Services through the summer. Click on the video, created courtesy of Travel Weekly, to see and hear more.

Thanks to Mike at Gill's Cruise for spotting the story about the Dorset couple hit with a fuel surcharge bill of £892 by Voyages of Discovery.

Multiply that up over the 700 or so passengers that Discovery holds and we are talking a nice little earner for Voyages.

No wonder they call the black stuff "liquid gold".

My heart went out to the Royal Navy's Christian Rumming, the man chosen to shin 60 feet up the side of Carnival Splendor during Thursday's naming ceremony in Dover. In a pair of flippers.

And all because the lady loved, well, English sparkling wine.

In honour of the fact the ship was being named in the UK, Carnival shunned smashing the usual bottle of good-luck bubbly and chose instead a home-grown sparkling wine, cruise director John Heald explained during the ceremony.

Nothing to do with the the fact the thinner glass made it easier for Christian to smash when he finally got to the top of his rope, of course, although the event organisers didn't want a repeat of the naming of P&O Cruises' Ventura, when two Royal Marines went over the side of the ship (yes, it does sound very similar doesn't it?) to smash the bubbly and reports came back that one bottle didn't break.

The lady in question, by the way, was Splendor's godmother Myleene Klass, singer, classical pianist, model and I'm a Celebrity star (oh dear, and she was starting to sound really talented), who managed to do the naming honours while holding down her skimpy red dress, which was flapping nicely in the wind.

"That only worked for Marilyn," she quipped as she shouldered her responsibilities well and promised to send Splendor a birthday card every year.