Riocca

I believe the limit is under 25,000 GT and 180 mts length, so not many ships these days, even the super luxury lines ships are getting bigger and bigger. River cruisers are still docking there of course.

We have a few bookings that include the Essential Package and on the new website under Add Ons there’s a price to upgrade to the other packages. Our pricing is in UK£’s but it appears to just be the difference in purchase price. There’s no indication that you could use OBC to pay for it in advance but that could just be part of the current OBC problem. As regards just the drinks package we’ve always been charged $7 per person per day with no discounts on Onward.

We have a b2b in October with two booking numbers, one from the old system the other on the new system, we’ve been waiting for the OBC to be added. Today the first cruise is showing a new coupon for OBC without any value but the second cruise shows nothing as yet. On another thread it was said that the new system allows for voyages to be combined so possibly the system is undergoing some changes.

Did an online dummy booking and although there was no value attached there were 2 OBC coupons showing that had to be the suites credit. I’m sure once the system migration is completed and everything is running properly we will start to see Azamara go their own way with the benefits on offer including those attached to loyalty. Some we will probably like others maybe not as much but it’s going to be interesting either way.

Onward has been running the new onboard system since May last year as it was never part of the RC fleet. In March in the disembarkation information they were offering airport transfers that could be paid for using OBC.

It’s been removed from the cabin description but is still showing under Suite amenities:

July 2024 are still part of the “Early Booking Bonus” promotion which includes a 20% saving and an Essential Package which includes Premium Drinks package for 2, One internet package and $300 OBC.

Of course both Chioggia and Fusina are in the Metropolitan City of Venice, following the decision to ban cruise ships from the historic islands of Venice it’s become a difficult proposition for cruise passengers. As for Fusina in December 2022 it was announced that a small cruise terminal will be built there but that’s probably sometime in the future so currently it’s a restricted area with passengers having to check in at the Porto Marittimo. So for those overnighting in Fusina unless there’s a port shuttle provided at least to the ferry terminal the Azamara option may be the only way to visit Venice. Talking the other day to friends who are regular Venice visitors there is still a concern about all large ships entering the lagoon to access the commercial port causing water movement that’s affecting the delicate fabric of the old city. So there’s a plan to move all the commercial activities including cruise ships even further away from Venice so large ships won’t enter the lagoon at all. This would presumably even affect the ship building industry so would take some major investment so I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime.

Can’t recall the exact name of the tour but it was the only cider making tour offered in Gijon Spain. Over the years we’ve done quite a few ships tours and private tours the percentage of problems we’ve experienced with ships tours is way higher than the private tours. Talking it through with the tours manager on Onward their biggest problem is that since covid a large number of the better guides have left the industry, those replacing them often are not of the same quality and don’t have the experience. I also think that when you do private tours the guides are often the company owners who are reliant on good reviews and recommendations for future business. However ships tours are contracted to bigger operators who remain anonymous, profit is the name of the game so they may take on guides with less knowledge. As the ship, which will be sailing away after the tour, fronts the tours they don’t worry so much about content and quality. Remember there isn’t a large number of companies that can provide tours in the volume ships require. Probably the best cruise line for tours is Tui/Marella as they often have their own tours infrastructure in the areas the visit.

Good idea in theory but on most shore excursions the passengers impressions will vary, normally we avoid ships excursions as they’re usually overpriced and tour guides do seem to be variable in quality. Last year we were on an Azamara excursion that could only be described as farcical, a cider tour in Spain, the tour company forgot to tell the cider producer we were coming so the factory was closed when we arrived. Tour guide winged it until the factory guide arrived, unfortunately she spoke no English and the guide couldn’t translate the technical stuff. We come from the part of England where cider production is part of the culture so we tried to help as some of the information being given was comical. We did get a cider tasting and a lunch that was very tasty but very little followed what was expected of the tour. On returning to the ship we highlighted the problems to the tours team but we were the only ones to do so as most others had no idea how bad the information they’d been given was.

I’m sure they could think of 101 reasonable excuses why they couldn’t complete the data transfer but that’s all speculation.

RCCG weren’t that interested in Azamara when they were part of the group so now they are probably an irritation, I expect they see most of Azamara’s customers as a target for Celebrity and those who cruise in higher grades as potential Silversea customers. Azamara’s owners may have some clout in the city but Azamara are now a very small cruise line, at full occupancy all 4 ships only carry as many passengers as one Celebrity ship.

Agreed, but we’ve already heard from other contributors on here that they are not being cooperative. No doubt that the transfer of that data was part of the original agreement but RC are holding all the aces here. I’m annoyed that an Azamara cruise that started well after the first transfer date was not sent to Azamara as a future booking but retained and is now showing as a past Celebrity Cruise on their website. Of course it may be that the agreed cutoff date was after the transfer date but I can’t think of a good reason for that.

Spoke to Azamara about the adding of past cruises and points and they are waiting for Royal Caribbean to release the data and didn’t at that point have a date. Subsequently I’ve seen a Facebook post saying that it’s expected by the end of July. Unfortunately it’s something Azamara seems to have no control over and are reliant on RC who of course have no incentive to help Azamara.

Definitely USB A, but as the subject has been mentioned I thought it’s worth saying we’ve had a couple of cruises on different ships where one of the USB ports was faulty. With devices demanding more and more power it’s easy to overload these ports, there’s also a high possibility of faulty connectors or leads short circuiting the power supply.

Their’s are outbound Rome return Venice both LHR with BA Club Europe plus transfers for just under £2000 which they were happy with.

Friends of ours booked this morning with Azamara U.K. complete with business class flights and transfers with no problem at all.

Would it be only if you kept the same cabin? As I say we have a b2b in October but have to change cabins and there’s been no mention about this and I’ve spoken to a few agents recently regarding the bookings.

I don’t understand the combining of two cruises into one booking I’ve never heard of Azamara doing this before and it’s certainly not our experience with our own October b2b bookings. In fact they’ve always been adamant that any b2b bookings are separate and OBC could not be carried over from one cruise to the next. If your bookings were made on the old system Azamara will have issued booking confirmations showing the value of the OBC, unfortunately the new system just shows coupons with no value but Azamara’s agent will be able to see the value of the coupons. Either way your agent should have copies of the booking confirmations, we book direct but the confirmations are issued immediately the booking is made usually while I’m still on the phone so I can check the details.

I’m not talking about quality of data that can be addressed and on our accounts has been it’s missing data that is our problem. There’s no way Azamara can address missing data unless someone, in this case the customer, tells them it’s missing.

Now I would like to be controversial for a while and ask what is Royal Caribbean’s contribution to the problems we’re having? Having sorted out my Azamara account I’m facing only two problems and I can’t help but think this is due to Royal Caribbean being uncooperative. My first problem is that the final balance, which is due today, for our October cruise is incorrect. Reason for the error is that Azamara have only received version 4 of the booking confirmation which was dated 2nd September 2021 and my booking correctly reflects this confirmation. However in December 2022 we applied som FCC’s to this booking and I have version 6 of the booking confirmation showing this which I’ve supplied to Azamara and they will be updating their system but it’s in a queue waiting to be done. But my question is why have RC not supplied this information to Azamara during the transition, it was done on the 6th December 2022 so must have formed part of the data package for that cruise. Second problem is that I’ve not received points for a cruise that started after the data transfer, however that cruise is still showing, incidentally as a Celebrity Cruise, on my Celebrity Account. In my opinion that cruise as it started 5 days after the conclusion date of the migration should have been passed to Azamara as a future cruise and not now showing as a past Celebrity cruise. Incidentally when I asked Azamara when the data for past cruises was expected they basically don’t know, so that would appear to be firmly in Royal Caribbean’s court.

Once the bugs are ironed out it’s not that difficult, ours were sorted out at the beginning of June and it’s been working fine since, looking at our accounts and reports from others I’ve a fair idea how the transition was handled. I’ll try and explain what I think happened with our accounts making an educated guess what was happening in the background. This may help others solve their problems. When the website first went live I logged both accounts in following Azamara’s instructions, when I logged into Azamara.com our loyalty points and levels were correct and all future cruises were there, balances were almost correct. I could go into the bookings which took me to Seaware.Azamara.com but details on the cruise and invoice details didn’t make sense. However if I logged into Seaware.Azamara.com via the booking portal our loyalty points were zero and level incorrect with no future cruises showing. My thought is that when you first logged into the Azamara website a new loyalty number was generated, this would make sense as it would be required for new customers. Meanwhile the database imported from RC was linked to the information available on Azamara.com, the aim no doubt was to link the two accounts using the email address which is unique. So if anyone initiated login on Azamara using a different email address from the one used on the old system this would present a problem. Moving on when the 3 free nights promotion came out at the end of May we added a booking for October making b2b with our existing October booking. Being brave I attempted to do this on the website and eventually managed to put a cabin on hold as I failed to change the allocated cabin. Following day I was able to phone and complete the booking changing the cabin for one I was happy with the invoice was emailed while I was still on the phone and I didn’t spot that the loyalty numbers were the incorrect ones. So now if I logged into Azamara.com I could see all my other cruises but not the new one, if I logged into Seaware.Azamara.com I could only see the new booking. A few days later I phoned Azamara again to change the loyalty numbers immediately the new booking disappeared from Seaware.Azamara.com and appeared on Azamara.com. So the two systems were being driven by loyalty number but possibly not linked. Following week the whole system went down possibly for a couple of hours when it returned Azamara.com was showing the incorrect loyalty numbers, levels and no future cruises but Seaware.Azamara.com had the correct loyalty numbers level and all the future cruises, strange! I thought it might right itself but after a while I started looking at the Seaware account and opened the Club Programs box there was not only my correct account information but the temporary account was listed as well, C actually had two new incorrect numbers. I filled in the online forms asking for the incorrect account numbers to be deleted and two days later they disappeared, and both Azamara.com and Seaware.Azamara.com were showing the same correct information. Since that day the two accounts work seamlessly, if I log into Azamara.com then go to the booking engine I’m logged in to that system as well. Information in all bar one of my booking shows correct invoice information and payment dates, packages and OBC are showing only thing is that OBC is showing as coupons not value but the number of coupons is correct for every booking. As are booked AzAmazing Evenings, internet and drinks packages. I’ve looked at many aspects of system and there’s so much more information available than was available on the old one, once the OBC problem is resolved it’s going to be very easy to manage a booking. One thing I have noticed is that the information is displayed differently on different systems even on my iPad it’s different in portrait from landscape which isn’t helping people communicate the information they are seeing.

Might be worth calling Azamara’s new U.K. call centre on 0344 493 4016 although the staff have only been in place a few months and obviously won’t be able to provide an instant answer they’re very good at taking ownership of problems and getting it to the right people in Wichita. Open 10am to 6.30pm answering times have been reasonably good, I phoned Wednesday and didn’t have any wait time at all.

We book direct and on the old system we received multiple payment reminders often starting a month before the due date. Now on the new system we have a cruise with final payment due tomorrow and haven’t received any reminders. When we booked through an agent we never received any reminders from Azamara, although being in the U.K. the way agents work is different.

This is exactly what I experienced, originally in Azamara.com I had the correct information but in the Seaware account it was a different number and incorrect loyalty level. When they copied the correct information into the Seaware account everything looked ok but as with your account the temporary number was still there, then Azamara.com although it showed all of my future cruises correctly picked up the temporary number and level. I asked Azamara to delete the temporary number this was done within a week and everything was resolved and has functioned well since.