The Gold Standard Luxury Travel Forum

I looked at HAL’s site, this is a direct copy of it. I’ll be charitable and allow that maybe this was a necessary expedient for quickly getting the important Polar reservation system in place and maybe refinements will become possible later. Both sites were partly down Saturday night which I imagine was to do with getting Seabourn into the reservation system.

You can look at HAL’s site to see how the details are going to work out:
-HAL writes the length of the cruise in the title, as soon as someone can go through 500-600 titles we’ll be caught up in this area.
-likewise the incomplete maps are just being worked on, look up Quest Sep 07, 2012 for an example of what’s coming.
-the “call us” under category for the early cruises is because they are wait listed. Look at later trips and the prices will appear.
-the “request a quote” on the itinerary page is because the online reservation system isn’t up. Once it is the “request a quote” button will become a “continue” button. That’s where the prices for all the other categories will appear and the booking begins.
-The complete cruise program has not been approved yet, that’s why there are no trips for the Quest after Dec 2012. Agency sites have prematurely suggested that she’ll cross the Pacific and circle Australia but that’s not cast in stone.
-the individual segment cruise have been priced but someone is laboriously working through the prices for the combination cruises. They’ll show up randomly in the next month.
-shore excursions have always been a work in progress, This steps through 1. the early typical list 2. having a supplier commitment for a region which allows the prices to be posted at the start of a season 3. the one off cruises that don’t get settled until 90 days out.
-those excursion reservations that now have time conflicts have probably been shunted aside for human intervention.

Don’t take the relative neutrality of my statements here as an endorsation, I too have grave concerns about the corporate attitude being displayed through the site’s details, I hope it is just an unwitting result.

Bill

I actually quite like the new website.......of course its not perfect yet, but what is? I thought the old one was very, well almost what Granny could do herself with a WYSIWYG program! The new one certainly looks more professional. I am really amused at the three pages of "whinging" (whining) on the Seabourn CC site. I am hoping that a lot of them will "get sick of trying to navigate the new site, so will book another luxury cruiseline" (as stated a couple of times) ......that will get rid of the ones that I dont like on the Seabourn ships! I am sure the crew would be very happy for a few of them to move on too!

Longago’s HAL examples:
1-not needed at Seabourn
2-don’t use
3-old system has done that for years
4-same as old & new Seabourn
5-as you say, not applicable
6-always been available
Let’s see that’s 0 out of 6. Want to go for best 2 out of 3?

Okay enough parrying, I’m afraid your post doesn’t make me feel better. The shorex change is an poor way to announce a change in business policy and only an poor programmer couldn’t get around the technical issue. All it needs is a post-it saying that at the check out page a 100% discount will be applied and the charges will be collected via one’s on board account.

Having experienced tours cancelled for lack of sales I can’t see where there can have been any losses, beyond somebody’s inflated hopes, and neither is a cause for prepayments. More generally how is a 48hr cancellation of home reserved tours any more risky than a 48hr cancellation of tours reserved at boarding? The only difference I see is if people are not as thinking about the tours 3 months ahead as they are on board. In that case let’s get back to why does one offer early reservations at all? To get a better feel for demand and thus do better planning? Fine but if there’s a risk who should pay for the market intelligence gained? If it’s just a convenience to a portion of the customers then they should pay for the abuse. But it should not then allow early sell outs to penalize those who wait to be certain as part of booking responsibly and so do their reservation on board. Maybe just a small percentage fee for cancellation of web reservations would be more accurate, more accurate at predicting true demand too.

Then there is the problem of where to send refunds, I think it is already obvious that the idea of sending them to the on board account will effectively result in a forfeiture of most of the prepaid funds (or last day binge drinking of the premium wines LOL). And the forfeiture applies for tours cancelled by the ship too. Oh yes, that was a reason to pay the higher prices of ship’s tours wasn’t it, the higher price includes insuring the tours against the operator cancellation costs that result from missed port calls. Nope, the refunds have to go back to the credit card.

If this “bright idea” of web shorex reservations isn’t working out so well then maybe we should just go back to the system that did work and didn’t short change anyone. There are so many “new” ideas these days that in reality are half baked. Sometimes being better means resisting features popularized by the medium operators.

Sorry Eric, Seabourn’s losing the class act and without it they’re not a luxury line. I pray Mr Meadows will rise above this. Web posters are certainly a minority of the customers but don’t you think the businessmen in the silent majority remember when they have been penny pinched by a supplier, remember when they go to buy again?

Bill

There are some positive changes with the new website & some changes in functionality and policy that are steps in the wrong direction. It’s not a big deal for me & for now, it won’t affect any of my decisions about future cruises on Seabourn or their standing as my first choice cruise line, but it is not an example of the high quality standards I expect. For me, pre-cruise activities are a part of the overall cruise experience & the website is one small part of the pre-cruise experience. While I don’t think the sky is falling, I for one, am not impressed with the quality of Eric’s/ longago’s excuses for Seabourn. If I received bad service & was told don’t worry, we have plans in place for crew training so this is just a temporary transition issue or if I received a bad meal & was told don’t worry, next month we will have a new chef, I would be even less impressed with the excuse. My old bosses never said to me, “Now that I hear the quality of your excuse, that clears up the issue of your less than stellar performance.”

I think a more exact version of your last paragraph’s analogy would be if your landlord changed his billing system and it incidentally announced that your office rent is now prepayable 6 months in advance and that should you terminate your lease with proper notice, that last 6 months beyond the vacate date won’t be refunded, you’ll have to spend it in the mall. Those two “catches” don’t sound like anything that tweaking a website will fix.

Bill