Carnival Triumph Crisis Drags On

A travel agent with 20 passengers on the Carnival Triumph said Thursday conditions were so bad that her clients likely “would be willing to swim to shore the second they see land.”

The agent said she was unhappy with Carnival’s handling of the situation, but other agents were more forgiving.

Carnival has cancelled 14 voyages of the Carnival Triumph, including all departures from Feb. 11 to April 13.
 
Limping into port
After suffering an engine fire on Sunday, the Carnival Triumph was expected to reach port Thursday in Mobile, Ala., following five days of deteriorating conditions onboard. An additional tugboat reached the ship Wednesday night to further assist the towing efforts.

The 3,143 guests and 1,086 crew members onboard battled unsanitary public areas and serious food shortages.

“We know it has been a longer journey back than we anticipated at the beginning of the week under very challenging circumstances,” said Carnival Cruise Lines president and CEO Gerry Cahill in a statement. “We are very sorry for what our guests have had to endure.”

Carnival has dispatched about 200 people to support guests onsite in Mobile and is covering all travel and incidental costs.

Media frenzy
Consumer press coverage of passenger woes has been extensive and damning.

“The media does go crazy,” said Jim Antista, president of The Cruiseman in Springfield, Mo.

“Yesterday on the USA Today website, there was an article where one passenger said, ‘Things are getting worse by the minute’ [and]  another said, ‘Things are improving rapidly.’ Guess which one they put in the headline?”

Antista predicted a “downturn” in Carnival bookings for a while.

Unhappy agent
Amy Crocker, CTA, the agent with clients on the Triumph, said that Carnival “has not done enough for the stranded passengers.”

“I think they should have done more to get these passengers off the ship. They could have cancelled another short cruise and sent that ship to rescue the stranded passengers,” said Crocker of Travel Experts, a Virtuoso agency in Raleigh, N.C.

Guests onboard the Triumph will receive additional compensation of $500 each from Carnival, in addition to a full reimbursement of their fare and onboard spending.

Crocker had yet to speak with her clients onboard the Triumph, as phone contact was limited. She did, however, talk with a relative of a client who had spoken to a family member on the vessel.

Crocker said she expects Carnival’s efforts to be seen by many cruise rookies as too little, too late.

“I’m sure there are passengers that will never cruise [again], and $500 doesn’t seem like very much money when passengers have been off work for additional days and have had less-than-adequate living conditions for a very long time,” said Crocker.

Clients are forgiving
Not all agents were as unhappy with Carnival or as negative about the expected impact of this week’s events.

“Our location has noticed that most cruise passengers do not hold a grudge of a cruise line for what would be considered a terribly unfortunate event,” said Ralph Santisteban, owner of Ralph Santisteban & Associates in Miami. The agency did not have any clients onboard the Triumph.

Refund & commission policies
Agent commissions for passengers booked on the cancelled cruises will be protected, Carnival said. Those booked on the cancelled sailings will be refunded their full cruise fare, non-refundable transportation costs, pre-paid shore excursions, gratuities and government fees and taxes. Discounts on future cruises will also be available, including 25% off on a three-to-five day crew and 15% off a six-to-seven day cruise.

“For agents who have clients booked on future Triumph sailings, there will be a significant amount of work cancelling and rebooking customers,” said Santisteban. “For those agents have many eggs in this basket, patience will be a virtue.”

Antista, who had two clients booked on cancelled Triumph sailings, said he had already booked one on a Carnival sailing out of New Orleans. “They protected my commission on the first one [the cancelled cruise], so I’m getting commission on both.”

Antista said he was satisfied with Carnival’s offering of a refund and discount to affected passengers. “I don’t know what else they could do.”

Big news in Texas
A Texas agent said the crisis was big news locally, but that the news media had not explained the situation accurately.

“Not all the TV folks have gotten it right, but whenever anything happens on a ship it’s very big news in Texas,” said Lynn Catalina of CruiseOne in Universal City. “It’s like the Costa Concordia story; since it’s still in progress, it’s still in the news.”

“Millions of people take cruises every year and there is no news about those,” said Catalina. “But you get one ship in distress, and it’s like it’s happening on all ships.”

See earlier story: Carnival Triumph Adrift After Engine Fire http://www.travelmarketreport.com/articles/Carnival-Triumph-Adrift-After-Engine-Fire