Also my client enjoyed the arts and crafts classes on board too. P&O used to employ a person to help with these classes, again this is not so. P&O will now train up their cruise staff and buy in the tools used in these classes.
Are P&O feeling 'the pinch' ? There are many reduced deals about at the moment including a 12 night sailing on Aurora on 17th November going to Mediterranean starting at £499 per person (£41.50 per person per night) does this mean they are struggling to get passengers on board?
Have you been on a recent P&O sailing? Did you try to find certain enrichment programme's only to find out they are not available any more?
P&O Arcadia....recently returned from East Med & Black Sea cruise and P&O are certainly cutting back in all departments. Poor speakers with dull subjects, no shuttle buses, 90% of daytime programme is trying to sell you something etc. No wonder they're struggling to sell cruises when you can get a second rate service elsewhere for far less.
ReplyDeleteI too was on the Arcadia Black Sea cruise and would add, both speakers had been on previous P&O cruises we had been on and were extremely boring both in subject and presentation ( One was even flown in from the U.S.A to annoy us ). Our main gripes were leaving port at 3:30pm in order to travel at 12 knots to the next port in order to save fuel and the ex. red coat entertainment team, I use the term entertainment, loosely .Fish, chips and mushy peas on the evening dinner menu needs no explanation. P&O have definitely lost the plot.
ReplyDeleteIt’s always interesting to see different perspectives of the same cruise. We thoroughly enjoyed the Arcadia Black Sea cruise. The variety of entertainment both day and night was excellent. No holiday spoiling complaints about the ship or crew. In fact we have found out of the 8 cruise lines we have been fortunate enough to cruise on P&O cruises are invariably very good.
ReplyDeleteMy main issues are with P&O's headquarters. Their pricing policy is very poor with no obvious attempt to "get it right first time". Whoever paid a vantage fare should have felt ripped off. The number of passengers complaining about it who said they would never book vantage fares again was enormous. Even getaway passengers had room for complaint. This appears to be severely damaging P&O’s business and vantage fares should be eliminated now. As an example inside cabin vantage fare was £2729. The getaway fares went £2299, £1799, £1499, £1299, £1349, £1399, £1299. We believe there was some true last minute availability at £999 though we never saw it. Balcony cabins were advertised at £1499 against a vantage fare of around £3800. Currently it pays to book late if you can. P&O please set a fair price for the market conditions in the first place. The aggrieved passengers did not in the main let it spoil this cruise. It made them streetwise for future cruises.
Time in ports is getting ridiculously short. This saves substantial port fees and fuel costs. However it does nothing to encourage people to cruise. Taking into account the safety margin of getting back to the ship on time and the fact everyone can't get off the ship at the same time means that doing your own thing is very limited. Effectively we had 5 and half hours in Lisbon when 8 hours should have been possible. There were similar time constraints in other ports. Is this being done to try and force people onto ships tours? 8 till 6 should be the target time in major ports. Overnights in some more if possible please.
Final issue - improve value of tour costs. We always worked on the principal that 2 on their own could do a tour by taxi for the same cost as the ships tour. Obviously 4 sharing the taxi halved the cost. Now on certain tours 2 can do it on their own for less than half the price the ship charges. This is not fair pricing even acknowledging that there should be a premium for the convenience of ships tours.
In summary P&O cruise ships and crews are great. The Company's tremendous customer loyalty is being severely tested. In these economically challenging time when discretionary disposable incomes are being continually restricted because of continual rises in the cost of essentials P&O should be ensuring that customers do not feel short changed and or ripped off. We will always have minor gripes about a particular entertainer, parts of a meal etc. These do not spoil a holiday. The major issues highlighted here can make people think about who they book with and when they book - if there is a next time.
We want P&O to sustain its success. In our experience there is no such thing as a bad cruise.