Pre cruise hotels and other

Dear Larry. Firstly I'd like to say how impressed we are with Azamara. 6 cruises done and no plans to change. We really enjoyed the President's cruise last year with the fantastic evening at the Tuscan castle.

An area which we think needs to be brought in line with the standard of the cruise experience is the included hotel stay in the UK package. In Copenhagen nice hotel but 20 mins from city, in Barcelona great location but 3* at best. We are taking the Black Sea cruise in July and the Istanbul hotel has quite a few poor reviews-noisy, in need of remodelling, poor air con etc. This is not a hotel we would ever book for ourselves.

2 more things-I think the staterooms would benefit from refreshing and so an update on the plan would be great- and the lack of pricing on the UK website for six months is quite diiffcullt to understand for a business with
resources of RCCI. Thanks very much.

[quote name='tabatha1']

An area which we think needs to be brought in line with the standard of the cruise experience is the included hotel stay in the UK package. In Copenhagen nice hotel but 20 mins from city, in Barcelona great location but 3* at best. We are taking the Black Sea cruise in July and the Istanbul hotel has quite a few poor reviews-noisy, in need of remodelling, poor air con etc. This is not a hotel we would ever book for ourselves. [/QUOTE]

I would second that based on pre-cruise Venice experience. We have been assured that this will be improved but I would like to see some evidence of that & understand future plans - especially when the hotel is included in the airfare (ex-UK arrangements).

I agree with the previous two post. We were booked for a pre-cruise hotel in Buenos Aires. After reading various reviews, the hotel definitely is not up to standards for a pre cruise package on a luxury cruise line. I just cancelled the hotel and had to book another one on my own for a Feb. 15 th arrival. This also made us arrange for our own transportation to the ship.

I also think it would be great - if you book a pre-cruise package to have available a few shore excursions in that city.

Thank you for making yourself available for an open forum.

Hi,
What plans do you have to bring the pre-cruise experience up to the standard of the onboard experience? We are currently booked onto a cruise that appears to have us booked into an airport hotel outbound on the first night and offers a day room at an airport hotel on the last day of our holiday when we would like to be sight-seeing. This doesn't seem to be "destination immersion". The land-side experience appears to have deteriorated since our last cruise with Azamara (June 2011).
Many thanks
Kerry