Overbooked cruise and turned away at port

I've seen quite a few threads about overbooked cruises and it appears it's common practice. However, it seems from most people's experiences, you get some kind of notification a week or two out from the cruise that it's overbooked and the cruise company gives you the option to still take the cruise or be offered an upgrade on a future cruise. It's your choice whether you hang on to the booking or you happily get bumped for an upgraded room.

Has anyone had the experience of only finding out when they arrive at the port that there just isn't a room for you?

This happened to us recently, and the while there is compensation, there really was no option to get on the boat at all. As a first time cruiser, this was quite a disappointing experience. Just wondering how often this happens that there is no notice whatsoever. So you already take your leave from work, book your pet into the hotel, arrange housesitting, pack you bags, fly in from another country, only to find you can't board that ship.

Hi M,

I've been a CC member for some years, and this is the first time I have heard of such a thing.

What Line, where, when?

Ira

We have done 30+ cruises on multiple cruise lines and have never heard of this!

What cruise line were you booked on that you got to the port to be denied boarding?

I haven' t seen any threads on this subject; can you share links to the threads you have seen on overbooked cruises.

I've seen quite a few threads about overbooked cruises and it appears it's common practice. However, it seems from most people's experiences, you get some kind of notification a week or two out from the cruise that it's overbooked and the cruise company gives you the option to still take the cruise or be offered an upgrade on a future cruise. It's your choice whether you hang on to the booking or you happily get bumped for an upgraded room.

 

Has anyone had the experience of only finding out when they arrive at the port that there just isn't a room for you?

 

This happened to us recently, and the while there is compensation, there really was no option to get on the boat at all. As a first time cruiser, this was quite a disappointing experience. Just wondering how often this happens that there is no notice whatsoever. So you already take your leave from work, book your pet into the hotel, arrange housesitting, pack you bags, fly in from another country, only to find you can't board that ship.

Welcome to CC. What ship, itinerary and sail date?

I've never had anything like that happen to me or anyone I know. Were you booked in a guarantee? I never book guarantees and can't see how this could possibly happen if you had a room assigned to you. Would be a simple solution to not run into something like this.

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Would never happen on an X Ship. They have rooms in reserve for contingencies and with a fully paid fare this would not happen.

While I've heard of them being overbooked, they make offers in advance - just the reverse of when on sale to increase bookings - to get people to cancel.

I've never heard of it getting to the point where anyone is denied boarding as they make offers in advance so that enough people cancel. Since that's known and they can control it, I don't see how it would get to the point of turning someone away due to overbooking.

The cruise was with Celebrity on one of their Australia / New Zealand sailings.

Yes it was a guarantee room.

A search on Cruise Critic for "overbooked cruise" comes up with a few threads.

Thanks for everyone's replies so far. Interesting to hear from a few very experienced cruisers that this is not heard of before. Maybe we really were very unlucky!

The cruise was with Celebrity on one of their Australia / New Zealand sailings.

 

 

 

Yes it was a guarantee room.

 

 

 

A search on Cruise Critic for "overbooked cruise" comes up with a few threads.

 

 

 

Thanks for everyone's replies so far. Interesting to hear from a few very experienced cruisers that this is not heard of before. Maybe we really were very unlucky!

I feel like I may have heard posts of this before, but I definitely wouldn't call it common. Not like airlines where nearly every flight is overbooked. It would be much more likely that they'd upgrade you to a suite rather than turn you away (and that's uncommon). Can't imagine the fallout if you had booked airfare and taken time off work for them to turn around and say 'sorry, can you come back next week'.

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Don - sorry if I appeared to be a troll. Promise you I am not. I am new to cruising and am doing research online about overbooked cruises and came across Cruise Critic.

I was also being wary about posting too many details as I don't want to appear to be defaming the cruise company. As disappointed as I am, I do know mistakes happen. I'm curious to find out if this happens frequently and what people's experiences are after something like this happens.

Someone mentioned this would never happened on an X cruise as they have contingencies ...well it has happened! I asked numerous times if there was anything they can do to get us on the ship...would have taken a lower cabin class, etc. I was just told they have done everything to try to get us on the ship but could not.

This should be useful for everyone to read

http://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=340

Would never happen on an X Ship. They have rooms in reserve for contingencies and with a fully paid fare this would not happen.

We fully paid our fare at the time of booking.

This should be useful for everyone to read

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=340

Thanks for this. Very informative. It does seem most people get some of advanced warning and be presented with an option to still take the cruise.

I have had several guarantee cabins and always knew before I left home if I was booked !

To show up in Australia and not being able to board is unbelievable ! There must be more to the story.

I am on an Australian cruise in January. I would not be happy if I had paid for

airfare and not be on the cruise.

eaglewar

Thanks for this. Very informative. It does seem most people get some of advanced warning and be presented with an option to still take the cruise.

Your situation seems a combination of number 3 (overbooking) and number 4 (unusual Cruise Ship error). So sorry that you had this happen.

I'm hoping that you got some REALLY good compensation!

I have had several guarantee cabins and always knew before I left home if I was booked !

To show up in Australia and not being able to board is unbelievable ! There must be more to the story.

I am on an Australian cruise in January. I would not be happy if I had paid for

airfare and not be on the cruise.

 

eaglewar

Thanks for your reply. When you say before you left home, you always knew that you were 'booked', what do you mean by that? Do you get assigned an actual room number before the cruise departs?

When we fully paid for the cruise and received a Celebrity booking number that allowed us to login to their site to register for excursions, beverage packages, dining packages, etc, I just assumed that was our guarantee of the booking. We didn't get a room number before we left. Should this have been sent to us before departure?

When we arrived, we noticed another couple that also didn't have a room number and their bags had to be tagged "GTY" like ours. They seemed to have got on the ship fine.

I have had several guarantee cabins and always knew before I left home if I was booked !

To show up in Australia and not being able to board is unbelievable ! There must be more to the story.

I am on an Australian cruise in January. I would not be happy if I had paid for

airfare and not be on the cruise.

 

eaglewar

If you read through the article I linked, you'll see this:

"Another situation where cruise lines may overbook at a higher-than-average rate is for long voyages to far-flung destinations like Asia, Australia & New Zealand, and Africa. Our insider explains: "If you have someone who cancels one of these longer, more exotic, more expensive cruises just before the final payment date, it's much harder to rebook the space at only 90 or 120 days before the sail date." That's because most people plan these types of cruises much farther in advance; it's hard to find affordable flights and plan to be away for a month at the last minute. Therefore, the cruise lines tend to overbook these sailings to ensure the ships can sail full, even if a few travelers cancel at the last minute. But, if no one backs out, the cruise line is left with an oversell situation. "The longer, more exotic and more expensive the cruise, the greater the bar has to be raised to entice people into a buy-out." Just to reiterate, these and other overbooking "bumps" (buy-outs) are always voluntary."

This should be useful for everyone to read

 

 

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=340

This is about a charter. We all know that is common practice and usually happens several months out, affects a large number of passengers, and compensation is usually offered. I didn't hear that in what OP posted. I read it as a normal cruise where very few (and possibly only him) found themselves being bumped to celebrity selling more cabins than they had open. But yes, a charter could certainly explain being bumped but then many people would be complaining and that should not be happening a couple weeks before sailing.

OP, did they offer any explanation about why and what remedies were offered? They should at the minimum move you to a new booking at the same price, offer some obc or future cruise credit for the trouble, and pay your airline change fees to move your flights to the new sailing.

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This is about a charter. We all know that is common practice and usually happens several months out, affects a large number of passengers, and compensation is usually offered. I didn't hear that in what OP posted. I read it as a normal cruise where very few (and possibly only him) found themselves being bumped to celebrity selling more cabins than they had open. But yes, a charter could certainly explain being bumped but then many people would be complaining and that should not be happening a couple weeks before sailing.

 

OP, did they offer any explanation about why and what remedies were offered? They should at the minimum move you to a new booking at the same price, offer some obc or future cruise credit for the trouble, and pay your airline change fees to move your flights to the new sailing.

 

 

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If you read the entire article, you will see four examples. Charter is only one of them.

I can speak with some experience on this. I used to work for a tour operator who owned their own fleet of river cruise and small ships. In my 14 years of working for the company I can only recall of one situation where a passenger showed up to the boat and was turned away. This was an overbooking situation where the passenger was involuntarily bumped. They were notified 4 or 5 days prior to departure and were irate (understandably so). While they were removed from the rooming list of the ship there was a miss with the air department and their tickets were not cancelled. The passengers figured this out and decided to use the tickets and fly to the cruise. When they showed up at the ship the staff on-site were shocked and still had no space for them and turned them away. They threatened lawsuits, etc. I never heard whatever happened after that.

Needless to say this was an extremely rare situation. Cruiselines have a whole series of processes in place to clear overbookings. For a couple years I worked in the department that had to call passengers and give them incentives to move or sometimes force people off the departure involuntarily if no one took offers (big fun!!). Later I worked in the Revenue Management department that added and controlled the overbooking inventory. We would be reading and reviewing reports on a daily basis to monitor the overbookings and coordinating with the team that had to call the passengers. Our cut off was up to 4 days prior to departure that we could leave one overbooked cabin on most cruises. Often you got a cancellation that would clear the space on its own and then it might just mean cleaning things up with an upgrade. All the cruiselines operate in a similar way.

So there is a whole method to the madness. And it's what keeps the cruiselines very profitable. Every cruise departure at my company had an occupancy goal that was tied into the overall budgeting and revenue goals for every tour. Once you hit that occupancy, usually 98% then every passenger you booked above that was pure profit. We were a smaller company so that meant 10's of thousands of dollars in profit potential per departure. With a cruiseline like Celebrity it could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit or maybe even millions.

If you read the entire article, you will see four examples. Charter is only one of them.

Sorry, mobile cruise critic decided to break the article up with ads, thought the ad was the end.

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Sorry, mobile cruise critic decided to break the article up with ads, thought the ad was the end.

 

 

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Heh. There are a lot of embedded ads. When I first read it, I thought the "When the Moon Turns Blue" header was some sort of ad :D

OP, did they offer any explanation about why and what remedies were offered? They should at the minimum move you to a new booking at the same price, offer some obc or future cruise credit for the trouble, and pay your airline change fees to move your flights to the new sailing.

The explanation was pretty much a "computer booking error". They selected the people to turn away based on chronological order of the booking. I don't know how many got turned away but we were told 'several'. We booked a bit over a month before the cruise so I guess we were one of the last ones to book so one of the first to get dumped.

I probably should have asked more questions. But the news was pretty devastating at the time (this was a celebratory cruise) and we didn't have the mindset to ask a lots of questions and negotiate options. It was pretty much move forward and make plans to go home.

If it wasn't for the fact the cruise was a celebration and I had more flexibility at work, I would have copped this much better. But this was going to be the only time I could have off work for a long time so rebooking another cruise is going to take planning and rearranging of commitments.

As an additional note, what Celebrity offered for compensation I think is reasonable and some would say generous. I would be seeing the compensation a lot more positively if their communication would have been better and my personal and work circumstances were more flexible.

I can speak with some experience on this.

Wonderman - thanks for your response. What you said does make sense. At the end of the day, the cruiseline doesn't want to see an empty room as that is lost profit.