Disappointed related to Shore Excursions

[California Native]

Wow pickypicky, that is the first that anyone has mentioned an email offer direct from Azamara that states the promotion is through March 2012. What a mess Azamara has created. Are there even any European sailings from January 2012 through March 2012? You need to scan and post that offer with the dates (make a copy and remove your email address of course). I am sure there is someone here who can give you directions on how to do this.

 

Or, maybe someone else here has the email offer sent on June 25, 2010?

 

 

I can help with that, if pickyx2 needs assitance

Also, there are NO Europe 2012 sailings before April, so its basically for the Europe 2011 season...

You might remember I started a thread (not sure if it still exists) asking Bill point blank when Europe 2012 specials would be offered because we HAD a 2012 Europe Booking and I wanted to take advantage of any specials so our budget would allow us to do a B2B and give AZ more revenue and he basically said that it wouldnt be for quite awhile.

I was all over the AZ website, facebook etc etc every single day until we left on March 22nd for our land trip.

Just watching for any announcement of Europe 2012 specials..nothing.

and then of course we all know what happened when I was sitting in Seville sipping Sangrias (besides getting buzzed) :D

[pickypicky]

Okay, I have scanned the three page e-mail. I am a computer idiot, so someone will have to tell me what to do next. I think this is an exercise in futility. It may be that AZ made a typo (2012 instead of 2011) and that they should have made it right with a few passengers, and moved on.

[Bill Leiber]

Hello again,

 

I’m to blame for creating the confusion about whether or not 2012 would be included in the original “Azamara Land Discovery 50% Savings Promotion." It occurred when I responded to a UK request to list the promotional programs that are offered in the UK market. I just reviewed my source document and found that it incorrectly included “through 2012.” Therefore, I included that information in my December 23, 2010 post to the Azamara UK followers and I apologize for this mistake.

 

Fortunately, on my February 13, 2011 post I used the same information that was to be included on our website that stated that “guests are eligible to receive the 50% savings promotion on the available inventory of Land Discoveries in 2011 available from April 17 through December 27, 2011 on the Journey, and April 12 through December 23, 2011 on the Quest. “ Also, that information corresponds to the details about the Land Discovery Savings program that appears in the North American 2011 Destination Guide. There is no mention of 2012 in either of these information sources. I pride myself on my attention to detail and I think I might have used an earlier “draft” for my source document that might not have been reviewed and approved. I'm not as "detailed" as I thought. I am very sorry for the frustration and disappointment that I know I have caused to many of you who expected that 2012 would be included.

 

In that February 13, 2011 post I also stated that the “Azamara Land Discovery 50% Savings Promotion” will expire on March 31, 2011 and will no longer be available for purchase. This information is shown on the Shore Excursion tab of our website…” I believe there might be some confusion with the expiration date of the promotion (March 31, 2011) and with the “time-limit” that online bookings for Land Discoveries savings program had to be made no later than 4 days prior to sailing date for eligibility.

 

I realize that In December 2010, I was still on my learning curve (60 plus days) and that today I’m pretty sure that if I were to have seen 2012 in that document that a “red-flag” would have gone up. I now know that it would be highly unlikely that our 2012 shore excursion program would be in place. As I’ve learned, our shore excursions usually are not entered into the Azamara reservation system until about four months prior to the voyage operation in order to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the detailed information. That explains why some of you who were booked on eligible 2011 voyages that were not operating in Europe, were not able to find shore excursions in Asia and South America.

 

I will get back to you with when I have more information to share with you.

Thank you for your patience.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

[zennor]

Here is my latest reply from Azamara UK

 

I are sorry to hear that you have not been able to book the shore excursions within the relevant timescale.

The original email you received in January from us confirming there was no deadline to book the tours with a discount was correct at that time. Please note that all offers and promotions will have terms and conditions which are subject to change. In early February all touch points, such as the website and our staff were updated with a deadline for the tours to be booked by to get 50% off.

Unfortunately as the 50% discount has now ended all systems will reflect the standard price for the tours. I apologise for the inconvenience caused by this issue and hope that you have a lovely cruise onboard the Azamara Quest.

 

I don't have the time or inclination to spend any more time arguing with them. Fortunately I have already booked 2 excursions & we shan't now be booking any more. As has been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't involve a huge amount of money for us but as our first experience of Azamara, it has certainly left a bad taste...

[tgg]

Here is my latest reply from Azamara UK

 

I are sorry to hear that you have not been able to book the shore excursions within the relevant timescale. The original email you received in January from us confirming there was no deadline to book the tours with a discount was correct at that time. Please note that all offers and promotions will have terms and conditions which are subject to change. In early February all touch points, such as the website and our staff were updated with a deadline for the tours to be booked by to get 50% off.

 

I don't have the time or inclination to spend any more time arguing with them. Fortunately I have already booked 2 excursions & we shan't now be booking any more. As has been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't involve a huge amount of money for us but as our first experience of Azamara, it has certainly left a bad taste...

 

DEAR AZAMARA,

 

If you change the terms and conditions of an offer, you have the OBLIGATION to let already-booked passengers know about the change. This is SO basic. Do you expect passengers to spend hours on your web site to see if things HAVE changed? You are alienating current and potential customers.

 

The onboard staff and crew are working their tails off to assure that passengers have a wonderful experience. Should all their hard work be for naught because shoreside can't get its act together? You screwed up. Now stand up and make it right for people.

[California Native]

DEAR AZAMARA,

 

If you change the terms and conditions of an offer, you have the OBLIGATION to let already-booked passengers know about the change. This is SO basic. Do you expect passengers to spend hours on your web site to see if things HAVE changed? You are alienating current and potential customers.

 

The onboard staff and crew are working their tails off to assure that passengers have a wonderful experience. Should all their hard work be for naught because shoreside can't get its act together? You screwed up. Now stand up and make it right for people.

 

Totally agree with this.

and if I was an onboard crew member, I would feel VERY BETRAYED by the behavior of AZ shoreside.

[Cruise Junky]

Here is my latest reply from Azamara UK

 

 

 

I don't have the time or inclination to spend any more time arguing with them. Fortunately I have already booked 2 excursions & we shan't now be booking any more. As has been mentioned elsewhere this doesn't involve a huge amount of money for us but as our first experience of Azamara, it has certainly left a bad taste...

 

I can't even respond to that and keep it civil. I think I'm done looking at any more Azamara Itineraries.

[ikelmay]

IMHO I would have considered one of the 'touch points' for communicating a change to terms and conditions would have been the Azamara confiirmed passenger database. It wouldn't have been too difficult surely to have sent out a quick "hi you're booked with us and we are changing the T&C's for our tour offers" It's not like we are talking about a fleet of Oasis sized vessels full of people to deal with.

[Susan-M]

Please note that all offers and promotions will have terms and conditions which are subject to change.

 

In other words, "We make the rules up as we go along and are willing to give out as many lame excuses as we need to, in order to not have to make good on our promises."

[pickypicky]

Well put tgg.

[Jade13]

IMHO I would have considered one of the 'touch points' for communicating a change to terms and conditions would have been the Azamara confiirmed passenger database. It wouldn't have been too difficult surely to have sent out a quick "hi you're booked with us and we are changing the T&C's for our tour offers" It's not like we are talking about a fleet of Oasis sized vessels full of people to deal with.

 

I have a theory that the marketing department (ie. communications department) does not like to communicate directly with customers. If you can't deal with people, get out of the service industry.

 

Some people on this board were told by reservations that they needed to contact senior management if they did not like the answer they were given. I would like to know the name of the person they were told to email/contact, and exactly who responded. I bet it was not the same person.

[Jade13]

From Azamara UK, you have got to be kidding.

 

"In early February all touch points, such as the website and our staff were updated with a deadline for the tours to be booked by to get 50% off. Unfortunately as the 50% discount has now ended all systems will reflect the standard price for the tours."

 

So, the website and staff are updated, but the customers are not contacted?

 

The UK Reservations team is being micro-managed. They can manually take someones credit card and charge them 50% of the listed price.

[luvmytigs]

Hello Susan-M and all of you:

 

I’m sorry for not responding to you sooner in this conversation about your deep disappointment about how we communicated the expiration of our “Azamara Land Discovery 50% Savings Promotion on March 31, 2011.”

 

In some of my earlier posts on other forums, I shared with you my preference to avoid posting information in a piece-meal fashion on Cruise Critic so that I could have the time to gather more information from management. I thought that a “complete” reply detailing our communication plan would be more meaningful than just a part of the response. I can see after reading about your accelerated drop in your confidence and trust in our shoreside operation that I was very wrong to do so. From now on, I’ll let you know up-front that I’m checking for more information and that I will get back to all of you. It was very upsetting for me to realize that I was exacerbating your frustration and for doing that I apologize.

 

It seems that most of you could understand and accept our decision to change our policy, but were dismayed by the way in which we communicated this change to you. I included Susan-M’s comment in my reply because of her diagnosis that our problem was “a case of unintentional administrative dysfunction.” Fortunately we’re aware that our “symptoms” sometimes create discomfort for our guests, but we’re working on treating the underlying “connectivity” problem.

 

I will get back to you with the communication schedule that we used to communicate this policy change along with any other information that I might learn. Regardless of what it states, the very fact that I'm writing this means that our plan did not perform as well as we thought. Simply stated, we made a mistake.

 

At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I will reiterate once again that Larry Pimentel and his team understand that there is much to improve in our shoreside operation if we truly want to fulfill our goal to provide a “seamless” quality Azamara experience on both land and sea. Recently I read a comment by Gen. David Petraeus about Afghanistan saying that “hard isn’t impossible” and I immediately thought of Azamara's internal operation presenting that same type of challenge in improving its functionality so that it operates more efficiently. It will be hard –but we will persist in that endeavor. I respectfully ask you not to give up on us. Sometimes the best of lines do wrong things.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

 

Bill, as the instigator of this thread (and others), I congratulate you and the team at Azamara for acknowleging the problem and for looking into the situation further. In a case like this one, a business must weigh financial impact with the risk of damage to reputation. At the end of the day, reputation is all any of us has to live by and I don't concur with Donald Trump's coined phrase "It's just business"

 

 

Bottom line, we are looking forward to a wonderful trip this summer and know that the ship and crew will be amazing.

 

 

Best regards,

Suzanna

[uktog]

Bill

I would certainly appreciate your review of the non-offer. In our case (27 Dec cruise on Journey) the flier said date through to 27 Dec for Journey which was confirmed as applying when we made our on board booking - we were ready to book excursions but were then advised by the UK office the offer could not apply to us as there were no excursions available to book until 4 months before sailing.

Maybe naively we have had hopes that when the excursions are loaded, early bookers will be able to still take advantage of the offer for a limited period but now I read the responses some of my fellow UK cruisers have had I am less certain this will be so

Not a deal breaker because we know life on board will be good, but as others say a frustration that overall scores about will be Azamara will be depressed despite the fantastic efforts of every single person on board

I wonder if it would be useful if on the on board end of cruise form guests were asked to rate all of the pre cruise communication process to see if we on CC are the minority (perhaps because we are well informed and spot things fast))

A

[Bill Leiber]

Bill, as the instigator of this thread (and others), I congratulate you and the team at Azamara for acknowleging the problem and for looking into the situation further. In a case like this one, a business must weigh financial impact with the risk of damage to reputation. At the end of the day, reputation is all any of us has to live by and I don't concur with Donald Trump's coined phrase "It's just business"

 

 

Bottom line, we are looking forward to a wonderful trip this summer and know that the ship and crew will be amazing.

 

 

Best regards,

Suzanna

Hello to you all,

 

I have learned after reviewing our communication schedule about the expiration of 50% Land Discovery Savings program on March 31, 2011 that we did not communicate to travel agents or to guests who had booked directly. Although we included “reminders” about its expiration in two of our “Weekly Connections” emails to the travel agents; posted each of these two reminders on our travel agent website for a week; directed our sales team to communicate it to their accounts and our reservations department to mention the program’s expiration in their conversations with consumers and the trade, our approach was too passive and now we realize that we should have been more proactive and immediately notified travel agents and direct guests about the program’s expiration. We did not handle it well.

 

Our executive management team has carefully reviewed your comments about this situation and I should be able to let you know the outcome of their discussion about a resolution by the end of business on Tuesday afternoon, April 26th.

 

Once again, thank you for your patience.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

[Jade13]

Hello to you all,

 

I have learned after reviewing our communication schedule about the expiration of 50% Land Discovery Savings program on March 31, 2011 that we did not communicate to travel agents or to guests who had booked directly. Although we included “reminders” about its expiration in two of our “Weekly Connections” emails to the travel agents; posted each of these two reminders on our travel agent website for a week; directed our sales team to communicate it to their accounts and our reservations department to mention the program’s expiration in their conversations with consumers and the trade, our approach was too passive and now we realize that we should have been more proactive and immediately notified travel agents and direct guests about the program’s expiration. We did not handle it well.

 

Our executive management team has carefully reviewed your comments about this situation and I should be able to let you know the outcome of their discussion about a resolution by the end of business on Tuesday afternoon, April 26th.

 

Once again, thank you for your patience.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

 

Bill,

 

Thank you for the update and acknowledgment. Have a great weekend.

[Andy]

Hello to you all,

 

I have learned after reviewing our communication schedule about the expiration of 50% Land Discovery Savings program on March 31, 2011 that we did not communicate to travel agents or to guests who had booked directly. Although we included “reminders” about its expiration in two of our “Weekly Connections” emails to the travel agents; posted each of these two reminders on our travel agent website for a week; directed our sales team to communicate it to their accounts and our reservations department to mention the program’s expiration in their conversations with consumers and the trade, our approach was too passive and now we realize that we should have been more proactive and immediately notified travel agents and direct guests about the program’s expiration. We did not handle it well.

 

Our executive management team has carefully reviewed your comments about this situation and I should be able to let you know the outcome of their discussion about a resolution by the end of business on Tuesday afternoon, April 26th.

 

Once again, thank you for your patience.

 

Sincerely,

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

 

Good Evening Bill,

 

Thank You for your communication. I hope this will have a favorable resoultion for Azamara Guests. We look forward to your next update. Enjoy your weekend !

[grammy2009]

Went on line to work on my shore excursions at the promised 1/2 off and now they are full price. When I first booked 2 weeks ago, they weren't available yet. Now they are available and at full price. I do not understand this and all the posts above make no sense to me. Mine is a European sailing in August-Sept. 2011

HELP

[Jade13]

Went on line to work on my shore excursions at the promised 1/2 off and now they are full price. When I first booked 2 weeks ago, they weren't available yet. Now they are available and at full price. I do not understand this and all the posts above make no sense to me. Mine is a European sailing in August-Sept. 2011

HELP

 

What date did you book your cruise? Exactly which cruise/itinerary are you on that had no shore excursions available to book at all two weeks ago? Did you book directly through Azamara, or through a travel agent?

[Bill Leiber]

Hello again,

 

I’m passing on to you the apologies from our executive management team for falling short in properly communicating the expiration of our Land Discoveries promotion. They have evaluated your comments and I have good news!

 

The 50% savings promotion on the Azamara Land Discoveries will be re-opened for a short period of time, so that affected guests will be able to take advantage of the savings. Azamara Club Cruises will be sending a letter and/or email to guests (or their travel partner if booked through a travel agent) with the complete terms and conditions for booking through our Reservations Center rather than going online. When these details have been completed, I will let you know.

 

Going forward, any specific questions that you may have about this program should be addressed directly with our reservations/customer service staff so that you can be better served. I’m hopeful that this solution will make it easier for a few of you to feel confident in deciding to vacation with us again.

 

One aspect of my role is to listen and comprehend your feedback and communicate it to our executives to improve our ability to articulate our unique features, benefits and programs, which I did with this issue. My other duty is to share with you our future product and itinerary plans and to capture your feedback about them. Frankly, I’m concerned about the Azamara Cruise Critic site becoming a customer service forum, and in the future I will be happy to help direct you to the relevant department in our headquarters when/if issues arise.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

[Emdee]

Bill

Cruise critic has always been about every aspect of cruises. The joys,the sorrows, the pain of dealing with incompetent customer service departments. I dont think that has changed over the years on any of the boards.

 

The difference with Azamara is as CBO you have been a direct company voice. On other boards Mark Conroy or FDR have been know to drift in and out with comments. This means that you take things directly and personally and address some of our issues which we appreciate and is in my mind a lot better than just drifting in.

 

Thanks for your attention to our issues on more than one front.

[WesW]

+1 (well said, Miriam)

[orlenda]

Thank you Bill. I think you handled yourself and this issue very well. You certainly faced a lot of controversy and dealt with it graciously. I am a huge fan of Azamara and have been very pleased and fortunate in my dealings with your shore service. Kudos to you and your executive management team for their resolution.

[grammy2009]

Hello again,

 

I’m passing on to you the apologies from our executive management team for falling short in properly communicating the expiration of our Land Discoveries promotion. They have evaluated your comments and I have good news!

 

The 50% savings promotion on the Azamara Land Discoveries will be re-opened for a short period of time, so that affected guests will be able to take advantage of the savings. Azamara Club Cruises will be sending a letter and/or email to guests (or their travel partner if booked through a travel agent) with the complete terms and conditions for booking through our Reservations Center rather than going online. When these details have been completed, I will let you know.

 

Going forward, any specific questions that you may have about this program should be addressed directly with our reservations/customer service staff so that you can be better served. I’m hopeful that this solution will make it easier for a few of you to feel confident in deciding to vacation with us again.

 

One aspect of my role is to listen and comprehend your feedback and communicate it to our executives to improve our ability to articulate our unique features, benefits and programs, which I did with this issue. My other duty is to share with you our future product and itinerary plans and to capture your feedback about them. Frankly, I’m concerned about the Azamara Cruise Critic site becoming a customer service forum, and in the future I will be happy to help direct you to the relevant department in our headquarters when/if issues arise.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Bill Leiber

__________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

Bill- I am happy to read that we will be able to book at 1/2 price again. I look forward to receiving the offiial notice mentioned, so that I will know the dates of the open window in order to book.

Thank you.

[Jade13]

Bill- I am happy to read that we will be able to book at 1/2 price again. I look forward to receiving the offiial notice mentioned, so that I will know the dates of the open window in order to book.

Thank you.

 

grammy2009 - I thought you said you just booked two weeks ago, which would have been in April. I believe you had to book your cruise by March 31 in order to get the 50% off on Shore Excursions. That was never in dispute, just the fact that originally once the cruise was booked by that date, guests had a longer time period to pay for the excursions.

 

Maybe someone else can confirm.