NCLA Pulls More Hawaii Service!

External Since: Dec 01, 2006 Posts: 209

George Leppla wrote:
>
> "Ray Goldenberg" <ray.RemoveThis@lighthousetravel.com> wrote in message
>
>> NCL Corporation Announces Adjustments to Hawai'i Fleet
>> Company announces Pride of America's deployment through 2010 Pride of
>> Aloha to leave the fleet in May
>>
>> Honolulu - Feb 11, 2008
>> NCL Corporation ("NCL") today announced the withdrawal of Pride of
>> Aloha from the Hawai'i market effective May 11, 2008. The ship is
>> being transferred to Star Cruises and will be reflagged and deployed
>> in Asia in the summer of 2008.
> snip
>
>> Commenting on the Pride of Aloha withdrawal, NCL's President and CEO
>> Colin Veitch said: "Our Hawai'i business has been extraordinarily
>> difficult, and although we have progressively established a stable
>> operation, delivering a good product in a great destination, the
>> overall price level in the market has been driven down, to a
>> significant degree, by an unprecedented expansion of capacity from
>> low-cost foreign flag ships based on the west coast operating domestic
>> Hawai'i itineraries that the Customs Service has indicated are legally
>> the preserve of U.S. flag ships.
>
> Please allow me to translate this into real-speak:
>
> Commenting on the Pride of Aloha withdrawal, NCL's President and CEO
> Colin Veitch said: OK, so we had good intentions. We paid off various
> politicians and bought the USS United States as a jingoistic sweetener,
> and purchased ourselves legislation that awarded us the only legal
> monopoly on Hawaii itineraries. In spite of having NO competition, our
> management team was so inept that we were unable to make a profit. Of
> course, we can blame this all on the fact that some ships do a few
> seasonal repositioning cruises and tried to get the screws put to them
> by getting our political lackeys to expand the scope of the outdated
> Passenger Services Act. Now, in an act of desperation, we are pulling
> the second of three ships from this market. This decision was made by
> our new management team which includes people who ran NCL into the
> ground back in the mid-90's. We feel the new management team has enough
> experience that we are willing to let them take another whack at the
> piñata that NCL has become.
> --------------------------
>
> Bottom line is that NCL has a monopoly on 7 day Hawaii cruises. That is
> like being the only vendor selling ice-water in Hell... and they just
> couldn't get the job done.
>
>

LOL LOL LOL....best read of the morning and I got my daily laugh, and so
true George!

Jeff

External Since: Jul 20, 2004 Posts: 379

"Jeff" <jeff-no-spam-coud DeleteThis @no-spam-yahoo.com> wrote

>> Bottom line is that NCL has a monopoly on 7 day Hawaii cruises. That is
>> like being the only vendor selling ice-water in Hell... and they just
>> couldn't get the job done.
>>
>>
>
> LOL LOL LOL....best read of the morning and I got my daily laugh, and so
> true George!

It is funny today but dealing with NCL yesterday set my teeth on edge. I
was the absolute first person to get through to their special NCLA
re-booking desk with a pile of reservations to move (I started speed dialing
at 8:58 AM). They were ill-equipped to deal with this. Everything (and I
do mean everything) had to be manually entered and then approved by a
supervisor.

When I started calling them on Monday, some of the NCL people I talked with
did not even know about this at all. That's right, NCL published a press
release about pulling a ship out of service without first bothering to tell
their own people (or customers, or travel agents.)

That is pathetic.

--
George Leppla http://www.CruiseMaster.com

May 12, 2008 - 5 nt New Orleans http://www.cruisemaster.com/fantasy.htm
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