After three years “on the hard,” I was eager to cruise again on a line and ship that I had been on before. As our inaugural effort, we selected 12-night Fall Foliage Cruise on the Seabourn Quest. We started in New York City earlier this week and are now approaching Halifax in Nova Scotia. My intent is to describe how cruising has changed in the past three years.
As dedicated small-ship cruisers, we have sailed on 2-3 voyages a year for more than two decades: mostly on high-end lines including Silversea, Regent, Crystal, Oceania, Azamara, Windstar, and Seabourn. Later this year, I will do the same while we are cruising on some of the newest offerings from Viking Ocean and Regent.
The Seabourn Quest
Despite a refit a few years ago, the Quest was much like we remembered it. With fewer than 500 guests and nearly as many crew, the onboard facilities and crew size are close to ideal. The only area where the ship falls short is offering just a main dining room and one specialty restaurant. Most competitive ships provide three or more specialty restaurants.
Quality of Service
Everyone on the ship is welcoming and eager to please. Whether it’s the maid who knows your name by the second day and always greets you with a smile, or the service staff in Seabourn Square who help guests with connectivity issues, everyone is patient and encouraging. They nearly always come up with a solution to your issues.
Computer Services
This is a ship where the number of guests with walkers and canes outnumber those who appear under 40, by at least 3:1. According crew members, corporate staff ashore insist on complex sign-on procedures; when all that is needed are bar codes and QR images, since free IT services are available to everyone onboard. They say IT issues are the single largest source of guest complaints.
Evening Dining Hours
For some reason, evening dining on the Quest begins at 7 PM. Despite staff and guest requests that it be moved back to 6 PM, this is evidently another area where managers who have minimal contact with guests (especially septuagenarians) are standing firm. They point out that the entire restaurant menu is available through 24-hour room service ignoring that, for many guests, communal dining on ships is the highpoint of the day. As a travel advisor, carefully check the earliest dining time in the main dining room and most specialty restaurants. For many elderly guests, particularly those with gastric issues, having to wait until 7 PM to dine communally, may be a deal killer or a reason to no longer book with you in the future.
Evening Showtime
Beginning dining hours at 7 PM on the Quest causes the main evening show to begin at 9:30 PM. This has resulted in there being plenty of space in the showroom. If dining starts at 7 PM in the restaurants, before- and after-dinner shows should always be offered. Better still would be the usual practice of offering early and late shows after two dinner seatings. Since the entertainers, cooks, and wait staff are on the ships anyway, the bean counters should not object to this return to the usual practice.
Evening Newsletter for the Next Day’s Activities
Another change that needs to be reconsidered is converting the evening schedule of the next day’s activities to display on the stateroom’s TV or guests’ smartphones. The dense paragraphs describing excursions and what’s to see don’t translate well to low-resolution TVs, or to smartphones with five-inch screens. One guest missed dressing for formal night—an event to which she had carefully packed and was looking forward to attending—when it went unnoticed in her suite. It has also resulted in light attendance at events, because guests aren’t aware of them until they have passed.
Seabourn’s “Secrets”
Few travel advisors and first-time guests are aware that you can have free caviar, blini, and either iced vodka or champagne, served in your guest’s staterooms at any time—including before they go to dinner? Most are also unaware that anything on the evening’s dinner menu can be served in your stateroom free-of-charge. Your guests are often unaware of these features until they learn them from other guests, rather than hear about them from you. This can lead to them booking with others who have more insider knowledge. Seabourn needs to ensure that all travel advisors know about these features; especially if you undertake special certification courses offered by Signature or the Seabourn website.
Safety, Health, and Accommodation Issues
These are all areas that deserve a grade of A. The ship is clean, uncrowded, and masks are always available in our stateroom if we wish to use them. Guests with physical disabilities are accommodated and made to feel welcome by crew members and fellow guests. Don’t be convinced by marketing hype that COVID is done. We were in Bar Harbor, Maine yesterday and some masking policies were re-instituted because of COVID breakouts across the state. Both local inhabitants and guests readily went along with the changes; recognizing that they were the only way tourism could flourish in the state.
Verdict Thus Far
All the problems we have encountered thus far on this cruise can be corrected by policy changes made by corporate staff. Except for the IT issue, none have much financial impact. Most seem to have emerged from efforts to streamline and simplify luxury cruising by younger corporate staff who are unaware of the generational gap. Similar efforts are undoubtedly underway on other cruise lines and ships.
The message for travel advisors is clear: Check on these issues before your guests make final payments or, better yet, before you book. Make it clear to corporate representatives which policies and issues are likely to cost you sales, or lead to distrust between you and returning guests.
Dr. Steve Frankel and his wife have cruised on most of the Seabourn, Silversea, Crystal, Azamara, Oceania, Regent, and Windstar ships. Steve is the founder of Cruises & Cameras Travel Services, LLC. He has been recognized as a “2021 Top Travel Specialist” by Conde Nast Traveler magazine and a “Travel Expert Select “by the Signature Travel Network. His specialties are luxury small-ship cruises and COVID-19 safety measures, and has a doctorate in Educational Research with minors in Marketing and Quantitative Business Analysis. He’s also earned a Certificate in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he managed qualitative and quantitative research in the private & public sectors. He’s a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has written 13 books and hundreds of articles. His email address is steve@cruisesandcameras.com.
