Three-year Life at Sea cruise is canceled; company acknowledges it has no ship ABC7 Los Angeles
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Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged travelers to avoid cruises, even after vaccination. The agency raised its Covid-19 warning level for cruise ships to 4, the highest level. He said all passengers would be given full refunds in installments between December and February. Hotel accommodations in Istanbul will also be covered until Dec. 1, and “subsequent travel expenses to your chosen destination will be reimbursed,” Ugurlu said in his statement. With Petterson and his team gone, plans for the cruise continued apace.
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Three-year, around the world 'Life at Sea' cruise canceled at the last minute - FOX 5 New York
Three-year, around the world 'Life at Sea' cruise canceled at the last minute.
Posted: Sat, 25 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Witman, who owns a marketing agency named Clever Lucy, was planning to work remotely aboard the ship, using its Starlink internet service. And as a single woman, she had been looking forward to exploring the world with a group. The original itinerary mapped 1,095 days of travel, heading from Istanbul to Europe and then to South America and the Caribbean. Passengers would then pass through the Panama Canal before seeing the U.S.
This 3-year cruise around the world is called off, leaving passengers in the lurch
I don't know what I'm going to do because I'm running out of money. I'm trying to organize treatment, and I have to worry about the hassle of paying future medical bills. So, around September and October, I was looking for an out. My contract said if Miray defaults or doesn't sail, we get a refund. With the contract obligations, my only option was to wait until the end of November.
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Some passengers reportedly only learned of the cancellation after arriving in Turkey. When the Life at Sea cruise line failed to purchase the German cruise ship AIDAaura, seen here in 2020, its plans for a worldwide cruise embarking in November began to unravel. Life at Sea's website now says that the cruise is set to depart in November 2024, though some of the web pages still list this as fall 2023. It still advertises the trip as being aboard the MV Lara. The website still lets potential passengers express their interest in the trip, though it's unclear whether Miray intends for it to ever go ahead.
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In fact, Civitavecchia is approximately 1,400 miles from the Suez Canal and the start of the Red Sea. Just a day after Ugurlu's glimmer of hope, another staff member of Life at Sea, Chief Operating Officer Ethem Bayramoglu messaged passengers to confirm that the cruise was off. It's unclear why Holmes was chosen to make the announcement, which was provided to CNN by a passenger. But after six weeks of uncertainty, during which Life at Sea repeatedly told guests that the sale was taking longer than planned, on November 16 another company, Celestyal Cruises, announced that it had bought the AIDAaura. Passengers may be able to transfer their booking to another cruise in place of a refund, Kuther said. If they are rebooked on a voyage that costs less than their original sailing, they would be refunded the difference, but if the new sailing costs more, they would need to pay the remaining balance.
Life at Sea cruise company cancels three-year cruise leaving passengers stranded
Dry docking – when ships are taken out of passenger service for regular maintenance or refurbishment – is usually planned years in advance, according to Jared Feldman, owner of travel agency Jafeldma Travel. However, if a ship is damaged while in service, it may need to go to dry dock immediately for repairs. The company said this month that it had called off planned trips on three ships — Serenade of the Seas, Symphony of the Seas and Jewel of the Seas — and delayed the return to cruising of another, Vision of the Seas, to March. In recent weeks, hundreds of passengers have contracted the coronavirus onboard ships, with many falling ill and spending days in quarantine. We were told via Circle, the online social platform used by all the would-be passengers.
Jumping ship
“There’s a whole lot of people right now with nowhere to go, and some need their refund to even plan a place to go — it’s not good right now,” a passenger who wanted to remain anonymous told CNN. Vedat Ugurlu, CEO of Life at Sea’s parent company Miray Cruises, said the cruise was facing “challenges due to investor withdrawal” in a statement shared with USA TODAY. Life at Sea Cruises advertised interior rooms starting at $38,500 per person per year, double occupancy, to include accommodations, food, internet access and even medical care. After doing the math, Witman believed it was a sound financial investment.
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On October 24, Miray’s PR spokesperson told CNN that the departure date had been moved to November 30. On November 13, with still no ship on the horizon, the same PR rep said that Holmes had resigned as CEO. Varner had spent 30 years traveling the globe for the US Foreign Service, but 18 years earlier she had settled in Maine. She loved her community there, but reading about the cruise, she’d felt a pull. Kelter immediately put her house up for sale and called Life at Sea, asking if she could put down a third of the money they wanted – it was all she could afford until her house sold.
I quit my job to go on the 3-year Life at Sea cruise that was canceled. I still haven't received a refund.
It has also offered to pay for accommodation until December 1 and flights home for anyone now stranded in Istanbul. But now the dream is over for passengers who'd signed up for Life at Sea Cruises' inaugural three-year voyage. After weeks of silence, the company has acknowledged to passengers that it has no ship, and has canceled the departure, vowing to refund those who'd signed up for cruises costing up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Life at Sea Cruises also stated in the translated statement that any customers who want a refund will receive it, including money spent on acquiring visas and other travel expenses.
The company has said it will make refund repayments in monthly installments starting mid-December and will complete them in late February, according to CNN. It has also offered to pay for accommodations until December 1 and flights home for anyone who has already traveled to Istanbul. In exchange, passengers — or residents, as the company called them — were promised a long list of amenities, including an onboard hospital and doctor. Some cabins could host cats; travelers were also promised high-speed internet, free dining, alcohol and laundry service, and "enrichment seminars." Cruise Hive was established back in 2008 and among the earliest blogs in the industry. Since the start, it's been our aim to provide the latest cruise news covering all the major cruise lines.
"There's a whole lot of people right now with nowhere to go, and some need their refund to even plan a place to go - it's not good right now," said one passenger, who wished to remain anonymous until they get their promised refund. If a cruise is canceled, the line typically notifies passengers directly or through their travel adviser, Feldman said. “We were all upset because we were like, ‘How the hell can you cancel a cruise (around) two weeks out?
"We sold everything we have to make this dream happen," Kara Youssef told The New York Times.
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