For cruise lovers, the recent incident involving Carnival Splendor brought reasons for many concerns. For starters, the “what ifs” that cross everyone’s mind: what if next time it will be worse, what if it happens to me, and so on. But for Carnival Cruise Lines customers the main concern had a different nature: what if the Carnival Splendor never sails again? But she will, although, officially she is out of service for repairs till January 9, 2011 and it will reenter service January 16.
Guests who were scheduled to cruises till the above mentioned dates, will receive a full refund of their cruise fare and air transportation costs, along with a 25 percent discount on a future cruise. The company is also contacting travel agents and guests on the affected sailings to provide assistance in finding alternate cruises. Moreover, travel agent commissions on the canceled sailings will be protected. In the end, the only true losers appear to be Carnival Cruise Lines, who have to pay for everything, including repair costs.
“We realize how much guests look forward to their vacations and know that they are very disappointed by this news. We too are disheartened that we are not able to fulfill the dreams of those who have entrusted us with their important vacation plans. We sincerely apologize to everyone who was scheduled to sail on these cancelled voyages and look forward to welcoming them aboard in the future. Now that we have a full technical team engaged in the assessment, we wanted to provide this information as quickly as possible,” said Gerry Cahill, Carnival president and CEO.