Tourists bash 'Pride of Aloha' cruises
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) - by Prabha Natarajan Pacific Business News
The difficulties faced by Norwegian Cruise Line in retaining crew members on its first U.S.-flagged Hawaii cruises have raised concerns in the tourism industry about the company's ability to deliver a carefree vacation to its passengers.
In its most direct acknowledgment of service problems on its new interisland cruises, Norwegian this week began issuing 50 percent service fee refunds to Pride of Aloha passengers, amounting to $35. Discounts for future cruises also were offered.
Starting this week, more than a dozen trainers and experts from NCL America's head office in Miami are on board the Pride of Aloha to resolve issues with crew service.
"We've just gotten to a period where ever since the second or so cruise we have been rotating people and replacing them with inexperienced people," said Robert Kritzman, executive vice president and managing director of Hawaii operations for NCL America.
State tourism officials, island visitor bureaus and travel agents are hearing from passengers about their "unpleasant" Pride of Aloha cruises and the state is working with NCL to make sure it responds to all concerns, said Marsha Wienert, the state's tourism liaison.
At the Hawaii Tourism Authority meeting this week, some industry members expressed concern that NCL's problems would cause visitors to have a negative impression of Hawaii. Usually, Hawaii reports the highest visitor satisfaction levels.
"With every new business there's growing pains and NCL is experiencing much more difficulties than expected," Wienert said.
In receiving a special exemption from federal law that allows Norwegian to operate Hawaii-only cruises, the cruise line was obligated to hire American crew members. But much to the embarrassment and
frustration of the cruise line and the elected officials who pushed for the exemption, Americans have not applied for the jobs
in large numbers and many of those who have been hired have either been fired or quit.
Since it started sailing as a U.S.-flagged ship on June 7, Pride of Aloha has lost at least 150 employees, though NCL would not say exactly how many.
After three months of training and one month aboard the Pride of Aloha, NCL had to let an average of 50 employees a week go on month-long vacations. The vacationing crew members were replaced by inexperienced hires, some of whom joined the crew as it island-hopped.
NCL says it tries to maintain a crew of 750 people.
Most cruise ships employ foreign-born workers happy to find stable employment. While American workers are attracted to the romance of the cruise industry, NCL is finding that it has to change its work culture aboard ship because Americans don't like to work 10-hour shifts six days a week.
Since the initial Pride of Aloha cruise, various Internet chat boards and blogs reviewed by PBN have been filled by complaints from passengers. Nearly 40 negative comments were posted on www.cruisecritic.com, with many saying they would never book a cruise on NCL again, despite being offered a discount.
It got so bad at one chat room hosted by Cruise Critic, which aims to encourage cruising, that the Webmaster intervened to put an end to the NCL-bashing.
The company had raised its Hawaii fares, citing demand, to start at $800 per person. With the crew issues getting mileage on all cruise line newsletters and Internet chat boards, the cruise line had to back off. It now offers its Pride of Aloha passengers a 20 percent discount on future cruises in Hawaii to be completed by 2005, and a $50 bonus to travel agents.
"Although the company has received many positive comments on the initiative it has taken to make this product possible and indeed on the friendliness and quality of the crew onboard, it recognizes that for a variety of reasons the service on the initial cruises was generally not up to the standard for which NCL is known," the company said in a statement.
In addition to Pride of Aloha, the Pride of America is to be launched in 2005 and the Pride of Hawaii is set for 2006. All will have American crews.
To attract workers, NCL said it is working with staffing agencies, setting up offices in West Coast cities and reaching out to Guam.
Reach Prabha Natarajan at 955-8041 or pnatarajan@bizjournals.com.
Related Industry News |
Latest News |
Most Viewed Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
