A Malaysian woman took to Facebook recently to lament the cancellation of her cruise on the Genting Dream cruise ship.
In a post on Sep. 3, the woman wrote at length about her frustration with the sudden cancellation and opined that Resorts World should not have sold them the cruise tickets if it had been fully booked out.
The post has since garnered over 2,000 reactions and 1,300 shares as of Sep. 5 on Facebook.
Planned cruise for birthday and family trip
The woman, who goes by the username Coco Lim, shared that she planned the cruise trip for her family as they had not been able to travel amid the pandemic.
She opted for a cruise trip during the September holidays, as the kids had never been onboard a cruise before.
The date of the cruise's departure also coincided nicely with her birthday.
Thus, Lim proceeded to make the full payment for the trip.
According to a receipt she shared in a comment on her post, the 4D3N cruise cost her 8,970 MYR (about S$2,790.13), an amount she paid in July 2022 — more than a month in advance.
However, two days before the intended sail date, her much-anticipated travel plans went awry.
Cancelled cruise two days before departure
Lim received a call from her travel agency, informing her that the cruise was overbooked and that they needed to cancel her trip.
Lim attached a screenshot to her Facebook post — apparently a memo dated Sep. 3 from Resorts World Cruises.
It said that some guests who had confirmed reservations with Genting Dream's sailings departing from Port Klang were affected by the overbooking.
These affected customers were invited to "voluntarily change" their cruise to another date.
A full refund would be offered, on top of complimentary cruise rebooking (for the same cabin category, itinerary, and duration) before Apr. 28, 2023.
"Not fair"
In another comment, however, Lim alleged that it had not been a voluntary decision, and writes:
"We were essentially forced to accept this invitation. Because the travel agency told me, about 600 tickets had been overbooked.
As such, if I insisted on not cancelling the trip, I would have to bring my entire family and our luggage down to the pier. We would have to queue on the day of the cruise's departure, to see if there were any available seats. Can you imagine that situation?"
In her post, Lim also questioned whether the sudden cancellation of the cruise was fair to her as a customer:
"One phone call effectively ended my holiday, is this fair? Aside from being a trip for the kids, it was also to celebrate my birthday, and one phone call cancelled all that?"
Lim noted that her entire family had made a lot of preparations for the cruise, including having queued several times at the immigration centre in order to renew their passport.
She commented: "We even renewed five passports [for the trip], who is going to pay for that cost? They make cancellation sound so easy."
According to Lim, her kids had also been very excited for the cruise, and were disappointed upon hearing of the sudden cancellation.
You can find the full Facebook post here:
https://mothership.sg/2022/09/cruise-overbooking-sudden-cancellation/
