Tag Archives: refunds

It’s not a great time to woo first-time cruisers

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Cruise ships in Costa Maya, Mexico.
Cruise ships in Costa Maya, Mexico. Photo Credit: Byvalet/Shutterstock

In January, Jessica Fricchione and 10 of her family members booked what would have been her first cruise, a Bermuda sailing out of Baltimore leaving on May 31.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, the group’s sailing was cancelled — and they have no interest in taking a future cruise credit.

“No one in the family wants to book a cruise again,” she said, adding that they were looking into a stay at an all-inclusive resort instead. “I don’t ever, ever want to be stuck on a cruise ship.”

Justified or not, the cruise industry’s reputation took a hit from the high-profile Covid-19 outbreaks on a handful of ships in March and April.

Industry stakeholders acknowledge that media coverage of those ships being turned away from ports and, in some cases, of passengers being quarantined in their cabins for weeks on end is most likely to have an impact on the potential-cruiser set.

In a media call last month, Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald said there was “no question” that the media attention would have an impact on that market segment.

“There have been people who may have been considering [a cruise] who would be having second thoughts at this point in time,” he said.

The first-time cruiser has always been considered critical to the growth of cruising. Despite CLIA lines’ global passenger growth of about 60% since 2009, to 30 million in 2019, cruising is still vastly underpenetrated compared with other vacations: 11.9 million Americans cruised in 2019, only about 3% of the population.

Travel advisors expect that the crisis will cause a decline in the new-to-cruise market.

“When you’re dealing with first-time cruisers, you typically have to overcome some fear of the unknown with cruising, such as seasickness, boredom, claustrophobia,” said Anthony Hamawy, President of Cruise.com. “The current negative press around cruising will add to those fears.”

Signature Travel Network CEO Alex Sharpe said that those who’ve never been on a cruise can’t draw upon personal experience to put into perspective what they are seeing and hearing from the media.

“If you’ve been watching the news and you’re not a cruiser and you can’t put what [ships with Covid-19 outbreaks] have been through in any context with your own family’s great times on a ship, it’s hard to reconcile that and say, ‘That’s my next vacation,’” Sharpe said. “I think new-to-cruise will take a hit in the short term. That will take some time.”

Some cruise lines have found that booked passengers who were new to cruise have been more likely to cancel cruises they had booked during the current operations pause.

Mark Conroy, Silversea Cruises’ managing director of the Americas, said that new cruisers have been more likely than past passengers to cancel and take a refund versus a future cruise credit because they are “more nervous.”

Loyalty program members “will come back first,” he said. “They’re the people that know us and love us and travel with us every year or every other year. They’re the ones that are eager to go.”

Repeat cruisers will lead the way

Many think that those who were once potential cruisers and are now on the fence can be swayed back once cruise lines are up and running.

Charles Sylvia, CLIA’s vice president of membership and trade relations, said that there will be “more challenges ahead with regard to the first-time cruisers” but that people returning from cruises with positive stories will put them at ease.

“Once they see the resumption of operations and once they see friends and family members and co-workers going on cruises and coming home with that same level of enthusiasm and satisfaction, then they will be back — the first-time cruisers will come to us,” Sylvia said.

Donald also said that returning cruise passengers, as well as travel advisors, will be the most important messengers in overcoming the additional concerns non-cruisers have. He added that this is something the industry is accustomed to dealing with.

“We were busy knocking down myths before, and we’ll have to return to that,” he said, adding that the two “most powerful ways” to do that is through travel advisors, “with their knowledge and experience and personal relations with their clients,” and the passengers, who will “provide the kind of testimonials and credibility with their friends and colleagues and relatives.”

And as has always been true for travel coming out of every crisis, for some people, the right price is a big persuader.

“I think, with time, this will be overcome because the vacation value will ultimately win out,” Hamawy said.

Germany, Italy and Spain join calls for suspension of EU airline refund rules

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After the Brexit: Quo vadis, EU? | Heinrich Böll Stiftung ...

The governments of Germany, Italy and Spain have joined 12 others in the EU demanding a suspension of airline refund rules.

Under EU 261 denied boarding regulations, airlines must refund customers within seven days of a flight being cancelled.

However, many airlines are facing drastic liquidity issues and are unable to issue cash refunds within that time frame.

The European Commission has issued new guidance and sanctioned credit notes being issued instead of cash only when passengers accept them.

Last Wednesday 12 EU governments called on the union’s executive body to suspend the rules and yesterday Germany, Italy and Spain were reported to have joined them.

French transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said in a statement: “I’m glad a very large majority of member states are supporting my request to authorise airlines and maritime groups to temporarily use vouchers when trips are cancelled, so as to relieve their cash reserves while protecting passengers’ rights to a refund.”

Governments in favour of a temporary change in the rules have said vouchers should be valid for a set period and include the right to reimbursement if they are not used before the expiry date.

They also want to ensure that financial protection is provided in the case of airline bankruptcies.

DOT orders airlines to pay out refunds

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DOT orders airlines to pay out refunds
Photo Credit: Oliver Le Moal/Shutterstock

The Transportation Department on Friday issued an enforcement notice, telling airlines that they remain obligated to pay out refunds for flights that they have cancelled.

The order was prompted by an increase in complaints from ticketed passengers who have been denied refunds, the DOT said. Airlines instead are often giving travel vouchers.

“The longstanding obligation of carriers to provide refunds for flights that carriers cancel or significantly delay does not cease when the flight disruptions are outside of the carrier’s control,” the DOT said in the order. “The focus is not on whether the flight disruptions are within or outside the carrier’s control, but rather on the fact that the cancellation is through no fault of the passenger.”

The unprecedented schedule cuts airlines have made in response to the Covid-19 crisis has left the airline industry with a $35 billion refund liability worldwide, according to a recent IATA estimate.

With airlines already struggling due to enormous losses in revenue, IATA has been lobbying governments to suspend refund requirements. Thus far Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Colombia have issued favourable rulings for airlines.

Airlines have also acted individually to make refunds more challenging to obtain. Some have stopped processing them entirely while many others are making it difficult for customers to find information on applying for refunds. In the U.S., United recently altered its refund process so that international ticket holders will have to wait a year to get repaid for a flight cancelled by the airline.

In addition, 33 airlines (as of April 3) have unilaterally suspended refunds through the GDSs or ARC’s Interactive Agent Reporting system, forcing travel advisors to deal directly with the carrier.

Meanwhile, the sheer volume of refund transactions facing airlines that are still processing them in the GDS has compelled ARC to delay its weekly remittance schedule. ARC will now turn over refunds to agencies 10 days after the Sunday end of each business week, rather than five. That decision, said ARC’s managing director of airline services Chuck Fischer, was prompted by the fact that with current refund volumes, many airlines simply can’t go through their procedures fast enough to meet the five-day schedule.

Fischer said ARC doesn’t like that some airlines have cut off GDS refund processing, “but we can’t stop them from doing that.”

IATA, which oversees agent channel billing and settlement for most of the world other than the U.S., has no such reluctance. In an open letter to travel agents Thursday, IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac said that the best solution right now for airlines and agents alike is for governments to suspend refund requirements.

“This would remove the pressure that is currently on agents to issue cash refunds at a time when airlines are making decisions based on their own need to preserve cash,” he wrote.

The DOT’s enforcement notice pushes back against such airline efforts. The department stated that it considers any contract of carriage provision by an airline that denies refunds for cancellations or significant schedule changes to be a regulatory violation. (The DOT does not specifically define “significant schedule change.” A DOT spokesperson said it is determined on a case-by-case basis.) The notice applies to both U.S. and foreign carriers that operate in the U.S.

The department said that for now, it will hold off on enforcement action against airlines that have provided travel vouchers in lieu of refunds to travellers with cancelled flights, but only if they meet three conditions:

• Carriers must contact passengers to tell them they have an option for a refund.

• They must update contacts of carriage to make refund rights clear.

• They must brief all relevant personnel on the circumstances in which refunds should be made.