A day at Sea

Monday, February 11, 2019

Where am I?

So, here’s what’s on my mind

This evening while returning to my stateroom to freshen up for dinner I found this letter in my mail drop. It has to do with that mess of events that led to some very unhappy passengers while we were at Easter Island.

If you recall my previous post, there were problems associated with getting people on and off of the tenders. Those problems slowed the process way down. And on the surface, the math for how long it took to load a tender and how many people wanted to go ashore did not equate to everybody being happy. Some win and some lose. It’s the luck of the draw, right? First come, first served. It’s only fair. (OK, I’m now out of cliches.)

But, there’s more to this story, and the situation is slightly more complex than it might seem on the surface. When I showed up for my shore excursion, there were already people who had been waiting hours to go ashore. Yet my group was called before those who had been waiting for a very long time. I got to go ashore, some others who queue up earlier did not. Was I just lucky? Well, it should be clear to all of you that I’ve been very lucky for most of my life, but I don’t think luck had much to do with me getting ashore while others waited (im)patiently and never made it.

Why would that happen? I have every reason to believe its all about the Benjamins.

Shore tours – Second party vs. Third party tours

The way I see it, you have three options for what you do when you go ashore.

The first option is to wing it! Be adventurous and blaze a trail of your own. Just get off and walk around, or do some planning and then hire a cab to take you to the places you’re interested in. This can be fun and it’s likely to be the cheapest option when you go ashore. If you’re looking to save money, you can certainly accomplish that this way.

Another option is to book a tour with a third party. Essentially, this is what the cruise ships do: they book with local tour conductors who meet their standards. The cruise ship handles all of the bookings then pays the local company. Passengers who are willing to spend some time doing research about their ports of call can often find those same tours conducted by the same operators for 10% to 50% off the cruise ship price. This option allows passengers in this category to enjoy the same experiences as other passengers who booked through the cruise ship company, but save some money in doing so. Same experience, less money! Sounds great.

Then, there is the opportunity to book directly through the cruise line. This is the most expensive option because the tour conductors still get the amount they need, but the cruise line adds a premium so they can make money on the tours as well! So, why would anybody ever book through the cruise line if you get the same tour as those who went directly to the third party and paid less? What do you get for that premium?

Well, for one, you get a guarantee that if your tour does not return you to the ship by the time the ship is scheduled to depart, the ship will wait for you to arrive. You only get this guarantee if you book through the ship line.

Personally, I have seen situations where passengers with third party bookings arrive late to the port only to watch their cruise ship steam off toward the horizon.

In contrast, on this cruise, a few people on a cruise-sponsored shore excursion were trapped in Fuerte Amador in horrible traffic resulting from a fatal accident. In this case, the ship waited for them because that’s one of the things you get (a guarantee) when you book through the ship.

In the case of the Easter Island fiasco, the other side of that same coin appeared for the first time in my experience, and that is where a passenger is given priority departure and guaranteed reboarding. If you book your tour through the ship (or even before you sail) the ship has a financial interest in you taking that tour. If your tour is cancelled, you get a full refund and the ship makes no money on you. Multiply that by a couple of hundred people and the captain has a decision to make: if time constraints will not allow everybody to go ashore that desires to do so, who do we let go? The decision is between those people who have chosen to do their shore excursion via one of the first two methods I mentioned and who have likely been waiting in line for hours to leave the ship, or the ones who have paid money to go ashore, money that the cruise line will need to refund if they don’t go?

Before you decide which is the right decision for the captain to make, keep in mind that cruise ships are here to make money for the cruise line and the captain is an employee of that cruise line. I think you have the complete picture now. And for the travelers that decided to “go it on their own,” well as they say, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

What to do?

Personally, on this cruise, I have a mix of second party (the cruise line) and third party (dealing directly with the vender) shore excursions lined up. For Easter Island, I booked with the cruise line and that turned out to be a solid, if slightly more expensive, investment. Why did I do that? Because, for me, Easter Island was very important as a place to stop and look around. It was important enough that I was willing to pay extra to book with the cruise line as a form of insurance. In this case, that insurance paid off!

In other places, like my approaching visit to Cairns, Australia, I’ve taken a more casual approach. I’ve booked a Segway tour that starts a couple of hours after we are to dock, and ends many hours before we are to depart. Any slack time will be used to explore town on foot. Plus, if the whole experience were not to happen, the amount of money that I’d be out is a burden I think I can bear.

What would you do? Save money? Operate with a guarantee? A little of both?

In any case, this incident of disappointed travelers drives home the benefits of planning one’s trip well in advance, giving oneself time to do the required research, and asking oneself about the importance (vs. the cost) of future plans at each port of call.

That’s it for today. No photos. Just dribble.