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Editor: Daniel A. Hoffman, MCC  

This newsletter contains current news and information on the "Cruise" industry. It will also contain the "Views" of the editor on different issues within the industry. The editor owns and operates a cruise oriented travel agency located in South Central Pennsylvania. This newsletter will serve several purposes, including but not limited to, keeping you up to date on current events in the industry, offering views and opinions of the newsletter staff as well as views submitted by readers, providing information about cruise offerings and specials as well as cruise related products.

In This Issue

Non Smokers Lose Paradise
Alaska Gets Greedy
Photos from HAL Oosterdam

PLUS
-Cruise Specials-
-NCL Pride of America Update-
- Q & A -

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On the other hand, smokers now get to see "Paradise"! That's the Carnival Paradise. The world's first and longest lived smoke free ship is about to change her ways.

Placed into service over five years the Paradise was designed from day one to be completely smoke free. This even included the full construction phase of the ship. No workers were allowed to smoke anywhere on or near the ship even while it was under construction.

The ship sailed from Miami since 1998 and will continue until September of this year at which time it will be repositioned to Long Beach, CA where it will serve up three and four night Baja itineraries.

Ironically, during the recent December Travel Trade/Cruise-a-Thon held in Ft. Lauderdale for travel professionals that was attended by myself, my wife Gayle, Judy (of Off The Track Facts), and even Capt. Lou himself for portions, this issue was raised by an agent at a cruise line forum. Carnival was questioned about adding any additional smoke free ships to their lineup. After they said they had no immediate plans to do so, other cruise line officials were asked and they all said they had no intention of limiting the marketability of any ship by making it smoke free. It is interesting to me that Vicki Freed, a very high ranking Carnival Cruise Line official, "failed" to mention the fact that not only did they have no immediate plans to add another smoke free ship, but that they were planning to eliminate the "one" that they currently had!

Cruise travel agents had mixed views about the smoke free issue. Many said they loved it and had a lot of passenger requests for Carnival Paradise for that reason as well as many non smokers who repeated on the same ship due to the "fresh clean smell" of the ship.

Other cruise agents said it made the ship very hard to book, especially with group bookings, because within a group of any size you almost always have at least one or two smokers. So in many cases, groups would book another ship since they did not want to alienate any of their members.

Carnival says that with the new location and the itinerary the Paradise is handling, it would not be possible to limit it to non smoking since no other Carnival ship will be serving the same itinerary to allow smokers the option of booking another ship. In Miami this was not a problem since there are several ships, including several Carnival ships that served the same itinerary.

The Paradise being repositioned to CA is just part of a large chess-like game that sees ships being reassigned around the globe, and particularly around the North American ports.

As to simply making another ship a non smoking ship in Miami, Carnival says that is not possible for two reasons. One is that several of the other ships are much larger than the Paradise and would possibly not have enough demand to keep all berths filled. The second and more important issue is that the Paradise was not a "non smoking" ship, it was truly a "smoke free" ship. As described earlier, it was planned from day one and no smoke was ever allowed inside the ship, not even during construction. For this reason, many say the interior of the Paradise, for being over five years old, is more like a one year old ship. No smells lingering in carpeting, wall coverings, draperies, etc. To simply convert another ship would not fill the void of the Paradise. It should also be noted, that while doubted at the very beginning, Carnival stood by their very strict policy of absolutely no smoke on board. Crew members were terminated and removed from the ship immediately if caught smoking anywhere, even crew quarters were off limits. More surprising was Carnival's commitment to the policy that had several paying passengers removed abruptly in the middle of cruise itineraries for any violation of the policy, including smoking on outside decks or on private verandas.

So, if you are so inclined to take a cruise aboard a truly "smoke free" cruise ship, book quickly as the remaining cruises until September 5th are filling up fast. If you are interested you can drop us an email about available cruises aboard the Paradise.

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Alaska Gets Greedy

A bill met with considerable opposition last year and was voted down, but has raised it's ugly head again this year.

Representative Carl Gatto originally introduced a bill that would levy a $100 per person head tax on all cruise passengers visiting the state.

He stated since the cruise lines pay no state income taxes on their profits, this tax would help the state toward covering their $400 million budget deficit. Over 776,000 passengers cruised to Alaska last year.

Representative Gatto apparently failed basic economics training, or has none, since a tax of any size, let alone a ridiculous amount like he proposed, would decrease the number of passengers and even more so, would reduce the amount of money passengers spend while ashore. Spending less ashore would then hurt local businesses who in turn would then pay less in wages and taxes!

Luckily, a lot of people have better business sense than the representative. Each time the bill was discussed, it met with vehement opposition, not only from the cruise industry itself, but from various members of Alaska's government, tourism officials, and small business owners in Alaska.

However, since the bill was introduced again this year, let's just hope the smarter people again prevail over the likes of Representative Carl Gatto and his other simple minded friends!

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Photos from Onboard Ship Inspection
Holland America Line
Oosterdam
(Brand New Ship)

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NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE
PRIDE OF AMERICA
UPDATE

As reported here several weeks ago, Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America which is under construction in Germany suffered major damage and partially sank in the shipyard as a result of a major storm.

Since the Pride of America was due to enter service in May, Norwegian has been scrambling in an attempt to handle booking arrangements.

As most of you know, the Pride of America was going to be the first U.S. Flagged ship put into service in many years. Then later this year, the Norwegian Sky was going to be renovated and reflagged under NCL America branding.

Norwegian has announced that Norwegian Sky which was going to begin U.S. Flagged service in October as the Pride of Aloha will go in for multimillion dollar remodeling starting on May 17th. It will then assume the original Pride of America schedule starting in mid June and be ready for the July 4th inaugural Hawaii cruise as planned. She will then handle the 7 day inter-island Hawaii cruises.

During this time the Norwegian Sky was supposed to be providing Alaska cruises out of Seattle until September. Parent company to NCL, Star Cruises, has announced it will move the SuperStar Leo to Alaska to cover the planned itinerary of the Sky. Norwegian regulars will quickly recognize the Leo as a step sister to the Norwegian Dawn and Norwegian Star vessels. Slightly smaller in size, but same general design and layout as those very popular NCL ships.

The biggest problem in making this change is converting the bookings on the Pride of America to the newly remodeled Pride of Aloha. The Aloha ship has fewer balcony cabins than the America would have had. NCL is handling rebooking in the order cabins were booked, not by sailing date, in order to assure the fairest possible change over. If an equal or better cabin can not be provided on the Aloha, a full refund will be given.

The change over from the Sky to the Leo in Alaska is going much smoother since the Leo has more balcony cabins and more outside cabins than the Sky had. All passengers affected by this change over are receiving a $25 per person on board credit.

No announcement has yet been made as to the new date the Pride of America can be expected. NCL does say that they owe thanks to several individuals in congress who worked with them in allowing the reversal of the ships. This was important because the reflagging of the Sky to a U.S. Flagged ship was part of a package deal arranged which obviously included a brand new ship in service first under U.S. Flag. So much work and planning had gone into the much talked about inter-island Hawaii service, including hiring of several thousand US ship positions, over 1,000 which have already been hired, not to mention the massive amount of work done by Hawaii companies in planning for the July 4th start of service. This service is so anticipated by Hawaii that it was in the best interest of all involved to allow the change to take place.

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Q & A

Question: I am a widow and would like to take a cruise. All the prices I see are listed as per person double occupancy. What would it cost me?

Thanks, Jack S..

Answer: That depends Jack. How do you like that for an answer! Actually, it really does. The cruise lines base their projections on 2 passengers per cabin and price everything based on that assumption. Some cruise lines offer "Single Guarantee" rates on certain cruises at certain times. Usually not during high volume booking times. If they think they can sell all the cabins with 2 people in them, they will not lower the price for a single person. Some cruise lines offer a 125% or 150% single rate. Meaning you pay 125% or 150% of the PP D/O rate listed. This is one case where you really need to use a cruise agent. They know and can find out about specials offered for single rates. If you are flexible on your travel and let them know to be on the lookout, they can get you some good single specials.

Hope this helps.

If anyone has a question dealing with any aspect of the cruise industry or cruise market, do not hesitate to drop us an email and we will get you an answer.

Send questions to:
Editor@Cruise-n-Views.com

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