Kayena Kevin

Some maybe all travel agents here have cancellation fees written into their terms. We have not yet talked to our agent (long weekend here) so do not know yet what will happen.

Hello all. Well Azamara have finally accepted that the cruise must be cancelled. To all who were booked to go through the Red Sea I am sorry i will not meet you. Now, as for the options Azamara are offering after cancelling, I am less than eimpressed. Firstly choose another cruise of 27 days or less with some minor benefits - guess whart there are no cruises of 27 days so we are asked to choose a shorter cruise with no compensation. Secondly accept a 130 % Credit. But what happens to the credits, additional services etc that were part of our original booking? Thirdly reach out to our travel agen for further options. Well there is an issue with full refunds - those refunds will come minus the commission of our agent. Frankly in identical circumstances other companies have chosen to reimburse agents as well as providing a full refund to customers.Come on Azamara, we want to cruise with you agaqin but this is a poor response, especially given the delay in making the decision. Easy to offer support for airfares lost what about the cost of visas and hotels?

Agree, no point debating this, countries set the vaccination requirements and if we want to go to their country we have to be vaccinated. The only variable that really matters is when Azamara will make a decision - once we have that information we can all make informed decisions to cancel or agree to an alternative itinerary. I for one would be very interested in a longer cruise from Singapore to Athens via east, south and west Africa.

You would think that, if Azamara made a prompt decision to reroute both the ships scheduled for a Red Sea transit and take a longer route around Africa, there would be time to organise vaccinations and visas. There would even be time for vaccinations to be done on board between Singapore and southern Africa?

have a great trip Ethel! There is no reason to suggest that your cruise would be changed in any way.

Option A - peace erupts in Gaza and the cruise goes ahead as planned - seriously unlikely and even if it does go ahead the ports of interest in the Red Sea will probably be removed from the itinerary and most customers would want to cancel and many crew would expect danger money for Red Sea transit (already being paid to some merchant seamen) Option B - cancel cruise and steam around Africa (can they get from Singapore to Athens in 26 days stopping only for refuelling?) with no passengers and skeleton crew. Most likely option. Delaying this decision is going to seriously inconvenience passengers and further damage the Azamara Brand Option C - make some changes to the cruises prior to the Spice Voyage cruise on May 3 so that the ship arrives in Singapore 15 days earlier. This would mean they would have 41 days to go via Africa and could break that down into two cruises (the first ending in Capetown) with a good number of ports. Highly unlikely option as it would disrupt several cruises perhaps causing more customer dissatisfaction BUT it would avoid a 26 day period with no revenue. It goes without saying that an option such as this would need to be announced asap to give current and alternative passengers time to adjust plans. Azamara will keep "monitoring the situation" and announce a decision "as soon as they have made one". Meanwhile passengers are becoming more annoyed, and their options more limited. It must be worse for those booked on the other Azamara ship which is due to transit the Red Sea a fortnight earlier.

Booked on the May 3 Singapore to Athens cruise. I sent Azamara an email seeking clarity about what options they were considering given the fact that most other cruise lines have made the decision to change itineraries and avoid the Red Sea. I received a reply today, standard response, closely monitoring situation will inform customers if there is any itinerary change. Disappointing response, as a passenger I have to book connecting flights, manage insurance, organize visas etc and I am running out of time to do these things. I have enjoyed my three cruises on Azamara very much but their lack of decisiveness in this situation is annoying, The sooner they accept that the Red Sea is not likely to be a safe place for a cruise ship in May the more likely they are to find an alternative itinerary which will appeal to the maximum number of passengers

The rebels in Yemen have now stated that US, British and Israeli ships are "banned" in the Red Sea. Recent attacks demonstrate they still have the capacity to damage ships. The conflict in Gaza seems likely to continue for some time. Clearly this is a really difficult time for cruise ship companies but the longer they delay what seems to be an inevatible decision to re route around Africa the less options they and their passengers will have.

Agree, totally minor inconvenience for us compared to the suffering in the middle east. I think Oceania has made the right call and importantly they have made it early enough for people to make decisions and minimise cancellation costs. Hopefully Azamara can do something similar soon.

Hi, just a standard email to passengers on the May 2 voyage saying they were closwly monitoring the situation etc

Did not find today's communication from Azamara to be very useful. Whilst I can understand their desire to try to stick to the current itinerary, today's attacks make this even more unlikely. Let us be honest, it would be totally irresponsible to choose to take a cruise ship through the Red Sea at the moment. Passengers need to know more than 2 months in advance if the cruise is to be cancelled, rerouted via Africa or abbreviated. We have flights, visas, accommodation etc that will be extremely expensive to reorganise at late notice. Most other cruise lines have made the call.

We (a group of 6) are also booked on this cruise. Petra and Egypt are the main attractions so a direct transit from Dubai to Athens would be unacceptable to us. We would really like Azamara to make an early call on this as connecting flights, pre/post cruise accommodation, visas and excursions need to be organised in the next month. On another matter I have not been able to find out anything about the on board program for sea days. Given the large (and possibly larger) number of sea days a lecture program, bridge lessons, language courses, art programs would all interest us.