A Second Class Expedition Experience

My wife and I (both from Australia) have just completed a 5 week expedition cruise on-board Le Soleal. The cruise started in Greenland and sailed through the North West Passage to Nome, in Alaska, and then continued on to Petropavlovsk in Russia.

This ship is well built, very comfortable and ideal for this type of expedition cruising. The standard of the hotel section of the ship was excellent, in fact as good as you could expect on any ship. Staff were friendly and eager to please at all times, that is except for the Chef, but more on that later. To Ponant's credit everything on the ship was kept spotlessly clean by the crew.

Although we both really enjoyed the cruise and had a great experience, I unfortunately have to rate our overall cruise experience, as “A Second Class Experience”. Only French passengers were given “A First Class experience”.

With so little effort on Ponant's part, it could have been a more equal and much better experience, for all passengers.

You may well ask, why?

There were a number of reasons but the two that stand out were firstly, the poor quality of spoken and written English on-board and secondly, the preferential treatment given to all French passengers.

I understand that it is “Company Policy”, on their ships, to make all announcements in French before any other language, regardless of the mix of French to non French passengers. The only exception to this is when the ship is fully chartered by another company.

During the first sector (the first 3 weeks) of our cruise the mix was almost 50/50. While on the second sector the mix was about 80/20.

Initially, all the announcements were in French first, followed by English. Of course this meant listening to long periods of French before English was spoken. After awhile they did change some of the announcements to have shorter periods of French followed by English, then a bit more French etc, etc,. They must have had complaints from non French passengers. Never the less it was an improvement even though it was not always that way. Interestingly, the French version of any announcement was almost always twice as long as the English version. Over the years I've watched many French films with sub-titles and have never noticed much difference in length between French and English, so we obviously did not always receive the full context of the message.

For non expedition cruising this language barrier would probably not be a major issue. However, for expedition cruising it is important that all passengers fully understand all messages and announcements that are being conveyed. These are essential not only for safety, but also for the information about the wild life and the region the ship is sailing through. Passengers should not have to be asking each other “what was meant by that announcement”? or waiting for the English translation, by which time all the French passengers had rushed out the door. We eventually find out the reason for the rush was because there was either something important to see outside or you were required to queue-up to put your name down for a tour or something else. We quickly learnt that when the French left the room you should follow and ask questions later.

It was interesting that all the French staff from the Captain down, who could speak English, struggled at times to find the correct words when trying to convey a message. Quite often they had to ask someone else for the correct English words.

And then of course it's the French accent when they do speak in English. This is quite pleasant to listen to for short periods of time but it becomes very tiring during long and important messages and lectures, when trying to concentrate on the content and at the same time continually having to mentally insert the missing words and correct the ones that were wrong. This difficulty in interpreting lead to many discussions among non French passengers. Perhaps a way of overcoming this would be to employ an English tutor on each ship for 12 months.

As for spelling and grammar, that was also very poor. In this day and age with software that has word correction there is just no excuse for that to occur. Maybe it is a French way of saying we just do not care about English!!!!!!

Rightly or wrongly English is the default language of the developed world, so if a company like Ponant wishes to tap into English speaking economies, then it needs to make sure that it's employees are fluent in that language.

Based on the “English Only” brochures being produced by Ponant it is certainly targeting the English speaking world. It is interest to note that none of these brochures mention the fact that French is the dominant on-board language. I would have thought this, by implication in some countries, that may be false advertising. !!!!!!??????

Zodiac trips, which generally occurred daily or twice daily, were another interesting issue. We were all colour grouped into supposedly language groups. This would mean that the zodiac driver and or expedition team member would only have to speak one language. This should have worked but rarely did, simply because it was not controlled properly. As you are probably aware many French can understand English and when it was more favourable for them to join an English speaking group they did. That may have been just OK, but when on the Zodiac, the driver would ask if there were any non English on-board, and you guessed it,!!!! we had to listen to both languages again. Great system for the French!!!!!!!!

Boarding Zodiac's at times was unpleasant, because smoking was permitted on the deck area where sometimes up to 50 or 60 people were queued, waiting to board. When the tour director was approached about this, the reply was “ nothing could be done”.

As the cruise progressed there was an effort by some staff to better cater for non French passengers, but it still remained way below what I believe would be acceptable for non French passengers. Generally everything from Zodiac trips to lecture times were planned (may be it was a fluke) to favour French passengers. Even the daily programme which was shown on cabin TV, was on screen for twice as long for the French version. The English version had so many grammar and spelling mistakes it became an on-board joke.

Many non French passengers shared these views, and a number of those will not travel with Ponant again. In fact I did a quick calculation and more than 5% of the passengers on-board said to me that they would not be taking another trip with Ponant. That is not good in anyone's language.

Will it change with the new owners of Ponant?

As it turned out the new owners were on-board for the second leg of our cruise. From what I observed, I would not hold my breath for a change of attitude any time soon.

If the company is not prepared to change, may I suggest that they do not waste money on printing English only brochures, because it could come back to bite them without stating what non French passengers are expecting for the fare.

I did mention how good the hotel staff were. However there was one exception to this, the Chef, who disliked having to cook meat, poultry or fish to the liking of non French people. You see, the French like to eat their meat almost raw and they think everyone else should too. After about two or three weeks we almost got this sorted out. Generally the food was good without being excellent. The bread was something special. If only we could make bread like it.

From all this you would expect that I have a dislike for the French, not at all!!

In fact we have travelled in France a number of times and been fortunate to see a lot of that great country. During these travels we've never experienced this negative attitude towards foreigners. We've always had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed the people and scenery.

However I am aware that the British and French do not see eye to eye, and that can cause friction from time to time but that has not been a problem for us in the past.

It's strange but I have this feeling that some of the key staff on Le Soleal have the same dislike for English.

During the cruise I emailed Ponant's head office with several other issues that were not addressed on-board. I had a very prompt acknowledgement of my email with a promise of a full reply within three weeks. However this has not eventuated. What a pity that they did not see fit to reply as promised. Maybe their attitude was “best to ignore it and it will go away”. Had they answered my concerns I may not have had to spend time telling you of our experience on-board Le Soleal.

Do all Ponant's other ships have the same issues? I can not say, but the chances are pretty high that they do, after all it is probably “Company Policy”.

Will we travel on Ponant again?

We expect to be treated equal to every other passenger, so without changes, probably not. This is a shame because I think the Company has a huge potential right across the globe and they are in fact doing many thing just right.

Thank you for your review. I have been looking at Ponant as a possible cruise choice due to their interesting itineraries.

I do know that Tauck charters them and it would be valuable if any of the Tauck/Ponant cruisers could comment on the "English" situation for their charters.

Your review is helpful when doing my due diligence on cruise choice.

We did go on Le Boreal to Antarctica in 2012-2013 and had a wonderful experience.

On that trip the ship was fully charted by Abercrombie & Kent.

English was the only language on-board and all the expedition team and tour director, who were also employed by A&K, were very fluent in English even though their native tongue was not necessarily English.

This made a huge difference to our enjoyment of the expedition.

On-board Le Soleal there was one British naturalists who was excellent at explaining the things that were missed in translation. She continually went out of her way to assist many passenger. However she was spread very thin looking after most of the non French passengers.

Putting one or two English speaking naturalist on-board for non French passengers is not a solution. That puts so much more pressure on those naturalist to explain what should have been explained properly in the first place. I known it is also very frustrating for them as well.

As I've said earlier it would be so easy for Ponant to get this aspect right but they do need the “will” to do so. I'm not convinced that they have that “will”, at the moment. Maybe if it affect their bottom, they may just find that “Will”.

I'm sure Tauck would probably do what A & K do and provide good naturalist who are fluent in English.

I would be interested to hear if that is the case.

Do all Ponant's other ships have the same issues? I can not say, but the chances are pretty high that they do, after all it is probably “Company Policy”.

 

 

You sure do come across as a failed Francophile. ;)

We were on L'Austral and I can assure you that the crew on that ship made a great effort to accommodate English speaking passengers. We were the minority. Some of the French passengers were annoying but certainly not all of them.

I speak both languages and never noticed that the French were given more information than the English, but we had language issues as you describe them. Three times, English speaking passengers immediately went to the excursion desk and to the cruise director and complained. It worked! First complaint: the excursion cost was reimbursed; the second time the lone French couple was transferred to the French bus, no French for them on the English bus although the guide was French, and the third time, a particular local guide never came back to 'our' bus. There was no fourth time on our b2b.

However, I think that the excursion desk needs to anticipate such issues and try to counteract before they occur. The young lady I spoke to had good ideas that her boss did not follow through. One reason was that no passengers could book tours online before boarding which led to a rush at the then overwhelmed excursion desk. And yes, forming a line is an Anglo custom.

The cruise director and the hotel director were bilingual and always available. Our cruise director's name was Kamal. He switched languages after each sentence!

Now to the itinerary. I am so happy to hear about the north west passage. I don't think anyone else does it. How was it? Scenery, wildlife, weather, ice floats?

I now remember how the crew on the Celebrity ship in the Galapagos handled loading the pangas. One naturalist was standing at the stairs and let nobody go down who was not authorized to board the particular panga. He opened and closed the rope barrier. For example snorkelers first. He counted everybody. Then the pangas were loaded with regular sightseers. Count again. Then a last panga for passengers who did not want to land on the island.

The difference is that all naturalists were experienced, had done this and traveled on this ship hundreds of times. Ponant could this with the languages.

Hmmm...this may change things and hopefully positive. Just saw this announcement this a.m.

"French luxury cruise operator Ponant, founded in 1988 by Jean-Emmanuel Sauvée and a dozen merchant navy officers, has been acquired by Artemis, the holding company of French billionaire François Pinault and his family."

This is a post I wrote about Ponant on one of the other CC boards when someone asked if anyone had cruised with them:

"My parents in law. Both French. Hated it. Food was awful, service was poor, the organisation onboard appeared shambolic and they felt that the non-French guests were not quite treated the same as the French guests. (Make of that what you will.)

Should add to put in context, they have 500+ nights with Silversea, and many with both Crystal and Regent.

Those are considered luxury lines, they didn't feel they had a luxury experience on Ponant. And it killed their pig to have to admit it, because they're strongly partisan about all things French ;)"

Sorry about the copy and paste but CC isn't allowing me to quote in reply, for some reason.

As for the purchase in July of this year by Pinault, the business pages in France have suggested that the purchase was made in order to keep the line under French ownership and control. So, I wouldn't hold my breathe waiting for cultural changes!

Yesterday I had a phone call from the Australian office of Ponant. They were certainly concerned and apologetic on behalf of the Head Office in Marseille, for that office not responding to my earlier concerns which I had sent to them by email. Many of the points raised in that first email were not addressed on the phone, so it would be nice to think that they will be, in a formal response.

Never the less the Sydney office has been very good in the past, so it was good that they took the time to phone. They certainly indicated that the Company does intend to be more proactive throughout the World, so English will be an important part of that push.

From my understanding, their ships will always be dual language, which is fine by me.

However I will be extremely interested to see what changes, if any, are carried out to make sure expedition cruising, in particular is well balanced for all passengers.

As well, if they are serious about taking on the world, then the English language needs to be given a lot more attention.

 

They certainly indicated that the Company does intend to be more proactive throughout the World, so English will be an important part of that push.

 

 

From my understanding, their ships will always be dual language, which is fine by me.

 

 

And hopefully the non-Francophones won't be treated any differently by the crew.

I'll be interested to see how the company develops under new ownership.

We were booked on Le Soleal this time last year, for an Antarctic trip. The cruise was cancelled 24hrs before departure (and after we had arrived in Ushuaia!). Long story short, we were accomodated on Silverseas,but 12 months later, friends we made during the switch around are STILL waiting for expenses to be reimbursed by Ponant..they were promised at the time Ponant would pay for expenses such as flight changes etc...but they are now having to take legal action against Ponant.